Secrecy News -- 07/23/12
Steven Aftergood
saftergood at fas.org
Mon Jul 23 07:55:11 PDT 2012
Format Note: If you cannot easily read the text below, or you prefer to
receive Secrecy News in another format, please reply to this email to let
us know.
SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2012, Issue No. 73
July 23, 2012
Secrecy News Blog: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
** SECURITY-CLEARED POPULATION TOPS 4.8 MILLION
** NSA RELEASES DISPUTED EMAIL FROM DRAKE CASE
** SOME NUCLEAR WEAPONS-RELATED INFO TO BE DECLASSIFIED
** REPORTERS SEEK CLARIFICATION OF PENTAGON ANTI-LEAK POLICY
** CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE LAW, AND MORE FROM CRS
SECURITY-CLEARED POPULATION TOPS 4.8 MILLION
The number of people who held security clearances for access to classified
information increased last year to a new reported high of more than 4.8
million persons as of October 1, 2011, a new intelligence community report
to Congress said.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/intel/clear-2011.pdf
Last year's annual report, the first official count of security cleared
personnel, had indicated that there were over 4.2 million clearances in
2010. That number astonished observers because it surpassed previous
estimates by more than a million. ("Number of Security Clearances Soars,"
Secrecy News, September 20, 2011).
But it turns out that the 2010 number itself underreported the number of
clearances, and the new report to Congress presents a revised 2010 figure
of 4.7 million. Even so, the number of clearances rose in 2011 by about 3%
to 4.86 million, the new report said.
The total clearance figure is composed of cleared government employees and
contractors, at all clearance levels -- Confidential, Secret and Top
Secret. (The number of Top Secret clearances alone was over 1.4 million.)
It includes all persons who have been cleared for access to classified
information whether or not they have actually been granted such access.
While the total reported figures are "likely to include some duplicate
entries," the report explains, efforts have been made to eliminate them and
only "a minimal number of duplicates" remain.
The annual report on security clearances was required by Congress in the
FY2010 Intelligence Authorization Act. It represents a new degree of
transparency in national security classification policy. Until the first
report was issued last year, only rough estimates of the size of the
cleared population were available, and those estimates proved to be
unreliable.
The latest ten-page report includes numerous details that are ordinarily
withheld from public disclosure, whether they are classified or not. For
example, the new report indicates that 5.3% of the security clearance cases
that CIA processed last year resulted in denial of clearance. At NSA, the
number of denials reached 8.0%.
Six of the seven intelligence community agencies that do their own
clearance adjudications reported that they had cases that had been open for
more than one year, the report said. The number of pending security
clearance cases at CIA requiring more than one year to complete was 3,755
for government employees, and 732 for contractors.
"The IC faces unique challenges in clearing individuals with unique or
critical skills -- such as highly desirable language abilities -- who often
have significant foreign associations that may take additional time to
investigate and adjudicate," the report said.
The new report was transmitted to Congress in early July, and was first
mentioned in a July 12 report from the Government Accountability Office.
The report itself was publicly released last week by ODNI in response to a
request from Secrecy News.
NSA RELEASES DISPUTED EMAIL FROM DRAKE CASE
On Friday, the National Security Agency released a declassified email
message entitled "What a Wonderful Success" that had been used as the basis
for a felony count against former NSA official Thomas Drake in 2010, who
was charged with unlawful retention of classified information, including
that message.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2012/07/nsa-wws.pdf
Although all of the felony counts against Mr. Drake were eventually
dismissed, the "What a Wonderful Success" email remains controversial
because it has been challenged by a leading classified expert as an
exemplar of reckless overclassification.
The document is "an innocuous, internal communication that never should
have been classified in the first place," according to a petition filed
last May by J. William Leonard, the former director of the Information
Security Oversight Office. He asked the presiding judge in the Drake case
to lift the protective order which currently bars him from discussing the
NSA document.
The release of the NSA document was first reported in "Ex-federal official
calls U.S. classification system 'dysfunctional'," by Ellen Nakashima,
Washington Post, July 22.
Without getting into the specifics of the newly disclosed document, Mr.
Leonard said: "I can generally state that the very critical national
security tool of classification of national security information is
becoming dysfunctional and requires the highest level of attention if it is
to continue to be an effective national security tool."
"Specifically, the system clearly lacks the ability to differentiate
between trivial information and that which can truly damage our nation's
well-being. At the same time, and even more importantly, it appears to be
incapable of holding government officials accountable for abusing the
classification system."
"If the system continues to be one-sided, where individuals are routinely
held to account for supposedly improperly disclosing protected information
but no one is ever held accountable for improperly classifying information
in the first place, it sends a very clear message to the millions of
individuals with security clearances to continue to overclassify with
impunity. That does not bode well for either the security of our nation or
our democratic form of government."
"Absent meaningful corrective action by the Government at the highest of
levels, to include the President, I despair for the integrity of the
classification system," Mr. Leonard said.
SOME NUCLEAR WEAPONS-RELATED INFO TO BE DECLASSIFIED
Certain types of classified information pertaining to nuclear weapons are
going to be downgraded or declassified, the Department of State indicated
in a newly disclosed report.
"Over the past fiscal year, the Department [of State] has been actively
working with the Departments of Energy and of Defense to identify
information that had previously been classified under the Atomic Energy Act
or various national security executive orders," wrote Sheryl Walter, the
director of State's Office of Information Programs and Services, in a
February 10, 2012 letter to the Information Security Oversight Office.
"Several categories of this information, including topics concerning
nuclear weapons, weapons testing, improvised nuclear devices, and
international cooperation relating to nuclear forensics, will be
downgraded, classified for shorter durations, or declassified," Ms. Walter
wrote. No schedule for declassification was mentioned. The letter was
released last week under the Freedom of Information Act.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dos-fcgr.pdf
REPORTERS SEEK CLARIFICATION OF PENTAGON ANTI-LEAK POLICY
After the Department of Defense issued a statement last week saying that
it would "monitor all major, national level reporting" for evidence of
unauthorized disclosures of classified information, Pentagon reporters
wrote to the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff to ask whether such monitoring extended to surveillance of the press.
"We are asking you to clarify in writing what is meant by 'monitor all
major, national level reporting'," wrote reporters Robert Burns (Associated
Press), Kevin Baron (National Journal), Luis Martinez (ABC) and Barbara
Starr (CNN) on behalf of the Pentagon Press Association.
"The phrase 'monitor all major, national level reporting' could be
interpreted by some as authorizing intrusive actions aimed at members of
the news media who report on defense issues. We have received no answers as
to specific monitoring authorities, and 'reporting' is much broader than
'published reports'," they wrote.
In particular, they asked, what specific authorities does the Pentagon
claim for monitoring the media?
"Do you have authority to do the following: *tap phones at work or home?
*intercept or monitor emails? *conduct monitoring or surveillance of
Pentagon press workspaces?"
"Are you authorized to monitor phone conversations, emails or press
workspaces without our knowledge?"
See the July 20 letter from the Pentagon Press Association here:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2012/07/ppa072012.html
The letter was first reported by Dylan Byers in Politico on July 20. As
of last night, no reply from DoD had been forthcoming.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE LAW, AND MORE FROM CRS
New reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been
made otherwise available to the public include these.
Climate Change and Existing Law: A Survey of Legal Issues Past, Present,
and Future, July 2, 2012 (published July 19):
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42613.pdf
A Brief Overview of Actions Taken by the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau (CFPB) in Its First Year, July 18, 2012:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42615.pdf
Conflict Minerals in Central Africa: U.S. and International Responses,
July 20, 2012:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R42618.pdf
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
The Secrecy News Blog is at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, go to:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/subscribe.html
To UNSUBSCRIBE, go to
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/unsubscribe.html
OR email your request to saftergood at fas.org
Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html
Support the FAS Project on Government Secrecy with a donation:
http://www.fas.org/member/donate_today.html
_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood at fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
twitter: @saftergood
----- End forwarded message -----
--
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
More information about the cypherpunks-legacy
mailing list