Civil Liberties Groups Praise DNI Clapper for Information Transparency Effort

A dozen civil liberties and open government groups expressed support Monday for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's effort to get intelligence agencies to consider changes in how they classify and declassify information in a move toward more transparency. In a letter to Clapper, they wrote "far too much information" is unnecessarily classified, and also for far too long and at too high a level. The groups, including Access Now, Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, Electronic Frontier Foundation and New America’s Open Technology Institute, said Clapper's March 23 memo directing intelligence chiefs to consider some changes such as "implementing a proactive discretionary declassification program" could be successful "if strongly promoted and sufficiently resourced."