The CIA Wants To Delete Years Of Old Emails

The CIA Has Made A Rather Disturbing Request
Danita Delimont via Getty Images

The CIA has submitted plans to wipe all the emails of every employee three years after they leave the company.

Worryingly this decision is actually as a response to a government sanctioned initiative to clean up the way that governmental agencies deal with their email archives.

Gizmodo has scoured the report and found that while most of the agencies have a policy of seven years, both the CIA and Homeland Security have opted for just three years.

The only records that would be kept would be those of top 22 officials within the agency.

Unsurprisingly this revelation has concerned quite a few people, including Lee Tien, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

"I'm concerned that destroying this data might destroy data that's material to policy questions about government action,"

Tien goes on to point out that while this -- from a transparency point of view -- sound worrying, the National Archives' decision is grounded in good sense.

"There is a certain irony in questioning the government's reasons here, because privacy advocates normally cheer this kind of move, it's kind of sad. I want to applaud the government for choosing to discard unnecessary data about people. But we have good reason to question the government's reasons because of what we've learned about what we've NOT been told."

According to Gizmodo the plans are still very much in the early stage so if US citizens feel that this is not the right way to go about saving money then they'll have the option of speaking their mind and potentially reversing the decision.

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