The House Armed Services Committee has recommended that Pentagon spending for declassification be cut by about 90 percent. Energy's Office of Declassification has been renamed the Office of Nuclear and National Security Information to convey the diminished priority of declassification. This is a wrongheaded and counterproductive response to the alleged Chinese nuclear espionage that misconstrues the function of declassification. Declassification, properly conceived and executed, enhances security. Aside from its value for public policy, historical, environmental, or other matters, declassification is an essential component of an effective information security program.
Declassification winnows out information that no longer requires protection.
In the absence of this winnowing, the universe of classified information rapidly expands out of control. Security resources are spread too thin in an ultimately futile effort to protect more than can be effectively protected. The Energy Department's Openness Initiative was undertaken with precisely these considerations in mind, and it was designed to yield a net improvement in security. In the course of the initiative, dozens of categories of information were identified for declassification because they no longer warranted protection. But in a little noticed move, the same initiative also specified 130 categories of nuclear weapons information for increased classification.