Securing Expanded Confidentiality in Reports Evidence and Transmissions Act

Passed by the Senate on 11 July 2025 and signed by the President on 12 July 2025.

Whereas our current classification systems only expand to text documents,

Noting the decision in Notcom v SDIOA which destroys our classification system,

Recognizing that this could, by anyone's measure, be disastrous for national security,

Hoping that taking notes from the past can help fix this,

I, Justice Ivy Cactus NC, hereby propose the following act:

Securing Expanded Confidentiality in Reports, Evidence, and Transmissions Act

Part 1 — Classification

Article 1 — Clearance Levels

§1. All documents, communication channels, pieces of evidence, and other information and messages are to be clearly marked as either classified or non-classified. If no such mark is provided, it is to be considered non-classified.

§2. All non-public information in law enforcement departments or government bodies that are likely to deal with classified information often (such as the Judiciary or Senate) shall be considered classified.

§3 There shall be two kinds of Clearance, Read Clearance, and Write Clearance.<ref name="shh">Securing Hidden Hierarchies (SHH) Amendment 2026 passed 6 March 2026 and signed 9 March 2026.</ref>

(a) Read Clearance (RCL): This provides an individual with the ability to participate in, and view/listen to information classified at the clearance level they’re provided.

(b) Write Clearance (WCL): Provides an individual with Read Clearance along with the authorization to designate information as classified or to elevate its level.

§4. Classification Levels:<ref name="shh" />

• Level 1 (Case-Specific): Read access to a specific investigation or project.
• Level 2 (Departmental): Read/Write access within one’s own department.
• Level 3 (State-Wide): Read access to all standard data; Write access for DOJ departmental heads.
• Level 4 (State Secret): Full Read/Write access. Held by the President, Vice President, and Chief Ombudsman.

§5. Exempted information, also known as level 4 classified information, must be clearly marked as such.

§5.1. The President, Vice President, and Chief Ombudsman shall have Clearance Level 4 (Exempted State-Wide Clearance).

§5.2. Any person with Clearance Level 4 may grant access to any piece of Level 4 information to another individual or entity, but they may not grant any given person full Exempted State-Wide Clearance. Access to a piece of level 4 classified information shall not constitute general level 4 clearance.

§5.3. A person with Clearance Level 3 may designate a piece of information as exempted, in which case they, and any successor to their position, shall hold access to that information unless someone of Clearance Level 4 specifically revokes it.

§6. The Attorney General, SDBI Director, and heads of other offices within the Department of Justice shall have Clearance Level 3.

§7. All Executive Officers shall have Clearance Level 2 (Department Clearance) within the respective department or departments they lead.

§7.1. Unless otherwise stated in an Executive Order issued by the head of a governmental body (or one of their superiors), all members of a body shall have level 2 clearance within it.

§8. Notwithstanding any other provision, any Judge or Justice of the Judiciary shall be granted Level 4 Read Clearance for any material they deem relevant to an active legal proceeding. This access is limited to the specific material requested and does not grant general Level 4 Write authority.<ref name="shh" />

§9. Senators shall be given RCL2 within the senate, and the Senate shall be given WCL2, requiring a simple majority(50% + 1) to exercise its ‘write’ powers up to CL2.<ref name="shh" />

§10. Any executive employee may grant clearance of a level equal to or less than them to any other individual or entity, with the exception of Clearance Level 4, which is to be handled in accordance with §5.1.

§11. Holders of WCL3 or higher may apply a 'Partition' to Level 2 information, restricting access to specific sub-units or roles within that department, notwithstanding general CL2 access.<ref name="shh" />

Article 2 — Subpoenas and Declassification

§1. Evidence may be declassified, in which case it immediately loses its privileged status and may be released, spoken about, or otherwise spread publicly.

§2. The power to declassify level 4 information shall be held solely by the President, unless otherwise stated in further legislation.

§3. The power to declassify other pieces of information may be made by the President, Vice President, Executive Officer overseeing the relevant executive body, or any other government employee specified in further legislation.

§4. The Senate shall have the power to subpoena relevant lists or copies of classified information of any clearance level. The Senate may only subpoena Level 3 or Level 4 classified information via a simple majority(50% +1) vote.<ref name="shh" />

§4.1. The relevant lists or copies of classified executive documents under subpoena shall be delivered to the Senate through private channels, unless the Senate explicitly directs otherwise.

§4.2. The Senate, by a simple majority vote, shall have the power to declassify classified executive documents of any clearance.

§4.3. The executive may choose to exclude Senators who are implicated or otherwise involved in the matter at hand from gaining access to the subpoenaed information.

§4.3.1. If the Senator believes this decision to be applied unfairly or prejudicially, they may petition the inferior courts for a writ of mandamus requiring the executive to give them access. Whether the executive had proper reasoning and intent in choosing not to include the information shall be at the sole discretion of the assigned judge.

§5. The SDIOA shall have the power to subpoena relevant lists and classified information regardless of classification level.

§6. Upon classifying any information, the classifying officer must log the "Sunset Date" (6 months for Levels 1–3; 12 months for Level 4). The SDIOA shall utilize a spreadsheet to track these dates.<ref name="shh" />

§6.1. If the classified information is still relevant to ongoing matters after its period of classification has elapsed, the executive may, within two (2) weeks of its automatic declassification, extend its classification for a period of another 3 months.

§6.2. The date of classification and date of extension must be marked; no person may be punished for leaking information they could not have reasonably been expected to recognize as classified.

§7. When a Sunset Date is reached, the SDIOA shall notify the department. If no extension is filed within 48 hours, the SDIOA has the authority to move the data to the Public Archives. If an extension is filed, the SDIOA shall have the authority to check if the classified information is relevant to ongoing investigations, and approve the extension for up to 3 months if the information is relevant. <ref name="shh" />

Article 3 — Exemptions

§1. The power to classify executive documents shall not extend to documents which are:

§1.1. already publicly available through legal means, or

§1.2. previously declassified.

§2. The power of those who possess clearance to access classified executive documents shall not extend to documents which are related to a legal case, or the preparation of one, against them (such as prosecution, civil lawsuit, or judicial review).

§3. This act does not apply to documents protected by attorney-client privilege, which shall be illegal to share unless explicitly permitted by the client.

Part 2 — Freedom of Information

Article 4 — Freedom of Information Requests

§1. All citizens of SimDemocracy have the right to request access to all information held by public bodies. This Act applies to the Executive, the Senate, and the Judiciary, as well as publicly funded government agencies and entities. The only exceptions to this are information that is:

§1.1. Classified to protect national security, public safety, the personal safety of individuals, or ongoing law enforcement investigations,

§1.2. Personal data that would constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy,

§1.3. Internal communications, drafts, or records related to ongoing judicial deliberations and judicial records that may compromise the administration of justice or violate court confidentiality,

§1.4. Proprietary business information submitted to the government in confidence,

§1.5. Records related to Senate deliberations, unless explicitly made public, and,

§1.6. Records where disclosure would breach the legal obligations of the government.

§2. Citizens may submit a Freedom of Information (FOI) request to the relevant public body by sending the request to them through official and public means on the SimDemocracy Discord server, providing the specific records being requested, and the name of the receiver of such information.

§3. A public body must certify to the requester that they have seen the request within two (2) days of its posting.

§4. Public bodies must respond to FOI requests within three (3) days of receipt, either by providing the requested information or explaining why the request cannot be fulfilled under the exemptions outlined in this act. An extension of up to three (3) additional days may be granted for particularly complex or voluminous requests, with written notice provided to the requester.

§5. The response to an FOI request must contain either the requested information or the specific reasons why the information is exempted under Section 1. If the requester believes this information to be wrongfully exempted they may send a complaint to the SDIOA which shall investigate and, if the information was incorrectly withheld, declassify the information accordingly.

<ref name="lfid">Law for the Investigation of FoI Denial’s 2025 (LFID) passed and signed 1 December 2025.</ref>§5.1. The SDIOA shall have authority to investigate all FOI request denials, including denials by bodies not generally within the operational jurisdiction of the SDIOA

Part 3 — Retention

Article 5 — Storage

§1. Departments (both statutory and non-statutory) and the Speaker of the Senate may request the Archives Commission to appoint an Archives Liaison who archives transcripts of important conversations, exported chats, reports, and/or other documents.

§1.1. This provision, and others within this article, do not extend to Clearance Level 4 information — unless granted explicit exception by the President.

§2. Classified information will be stored in private areas where only the Chief Archivist, liaison of the respective department, executive officer of said department, and other employees with clearance over said information may access.

§3. The executive officer of the relevant department may ask that the data be declassified on a certain date, which may not extend past the date of its automatic declassification.

§3.1. All data may either be stored in the National Archives discord or the relevant category for the archives commission, regardless of any other written law.

§4. Information shall be separated based on the department that owns it, or separately for the Senate.

§5. The Archives Liaison and Chief Archivist are, to avoid doubt, granted sufficient clearance to obtain and store the data.

§6. No classified message, file, or transmission may be deleted from a government server or channel unless a screenshot or full transcript has first been transmitted to the Archives or to a designated channel within the department’s server.<ref name="shh" />

Note from Chief Archivist Ben: exporting the matter as a file transcript is preferred over a screenshot, to enable future ability to search the material.

Part 4 — Implementation

Article 6 — Continuity

§1. Any documents that are currently classified shall continue to be classified, with the same people retaining access over them.

§2. There shall be a one (1) month period after this passage of this bill for governmental bodies to properly label information as classified under this law, after which any piece of information which is not clearly marked shall be considered non-classified.

Article 7 — Repeals

§1. The Executive Documents Act 2023 is hereby supplanted and abrogated.

§2. The Archives Storage Act 2025 is hereby supplanted and abrogated.

§3. The Freedom of Information Act is hereby supplanted and abrogated.

References

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