Federal secrecy: Complaint to fight gratuitous classification

The former head of the Security Oversight Office, J.William Leonard, has filed a complaint against two federal agencies for classifying a document that has no secrets. The complaint asked that officials be punished for overclassification.

Leonard said in his 34 years in government, he often saw documents unnecessarily classified as secret, and no one was ever punished for it. He said that since the government is indicting workers for leaking classified information, it is essential to make sure that only real secrets are classified. -db

From The New York Times, August 2, 2011, by Scott Shane.

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