New Report Shines Light on Secrecy Labeling of Government Information
Source: OMB Watch

oday, OMB Watch published a report that explores the impacts of secrecy labeling practices within the federal government. The report, Controlled Unclassified Information: Recommendations for Information Control Reform, shines a light on how government withholds unclassified information from the American people and offers recommendations on how to balance the need to protect sensitive materials with the duty to disclose information to the public.

Sean Moulton, Director of Federal Information Policy at OMB Watch, said, “For too many years, the government’s patchwork of secrecy labels has kept crucial information out of the hands of Congress, the media, and the general public.” Moulton added, “This report offers recommendations to the Obama administration as it seeks to rework the government’s secrecy labeling system, and we hope the White House and agencies will acknowledge that Americans’ right to know should prompt the disclosure of all but the most sensitive unclassified materials.”

The report walks the reader through some of the aspects of secrecy labeling and explains technical terms such as sensitive but unclassified (SBU) information and controlled unclassified information (CUI).

+ Full Report (PDF; 195 KB)

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 7:11 am and is filed under Government and politics, National security, Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.