EVERYTHING should be declassified after a set period of time. Preferably a rather short one.
It should be as hard to classify information and it should be to get welfare benefits: not impossible, but damned difficult with very frequent checking to see if it is still necessary.
No argument there. Part of my career dealt with data that was super critical but had a very short shelf life as far as our being able to leverage it for our purposes. Top Secret in the morning and on AFRTS that evening. My comment was more specifically aimed at the fact that most agreements we sign are archived for 50 years - such as when we are removed from access programs for reasons like retiring/separating from jobs that required access.