In yesterday's New York Times Chief Archivist Allen Weinstein lambasted the recently outed government document reclassification program. This program, spearheaded by several un-named but most likely three-letter government agencies, has been under way for the last seven years and has seen unprecedented numbers of documents listed as classified and unavailable for public review.

This is a serious blow to transparancy in government, and business as well. Federal Archives ands FOIA requests are standard tools used by investigators to protect their clients's from fraud and deception. While one certaily needs to balance the needs of national security with public disclosure, Weinstein's statements seem to indicate the goal here was not to serve such precise needs, but rather to push back the line on docs across the board.

Check out the NYT article before it dissapears behind their subscription services, and check the above back-link for more background on the issue.

-- MDT

Labels: background checks, FOIA