A final rule offered by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) mandates that anyone seeking the declassification of its records must be responsible for the full costs of disclosure.
The regulation was published last week in the Federal Register, and first reported on by investigative journalist Steven Aftergood with the Federation of American Scientists. Declassification costs vastly more for ODNI than it does for other government agencies.
“Requesters making requests directly to the ODNI shall be responsible for paying all fees under this regulation,” the rule states. It refers to anyone asking for a “mandatory declassification review,” which can be asked for by individuals seeking documents they believe should be unlocked from secret status. The process was established via an executive order signed by President Obama in 2009.
The new rule would establish particularly high costs for clerical work, including $20 per hour for computer or manual searching, $40 per hour for “professional/supervisory” work, and $72/hour for “manager/senior professional” tasks. It also seeks to charges fifty cents per photocopied page. Aftergood said Tuesday that “the proposed ODNI fees seem extravagant on their face.”
“No commercial enterprise charges anything close to fifty cents to photocopy a single page. Neither do most of ODNI’s peer agencies,” Aftergood wrote.
The Department of Defense and the State Department charge thirteen and fifteen cents per page, respectively. The Pentagon’s overall declassification fees on an hourly basis are also lower than ODNI’s proposed highest fee: $52.60 compared with $72 dollars.
Aftergood noted that the Central Intelligence Agency once attempted to adopt a similar rule, charging fifty cents per page copied, but was forced to abandon it “in response to public criticism and a legal challenge from the non-profit National Security Counselors.”
The high fees could discourage anyone with limited resources from making requests, particularly those who may not be certain about what they’ll find. The rule stipulates that requesters will still be responsible for all fees, “even if the search locates no responsive information or some or all of the responsive information must be withheld under applicable authority.”
The regulation is slated to take effect April 26, 2016, unless ODNI receives “adverse comment” from the public in response to it before March 28.
