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The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

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Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#41

Post by bediger »

sounds wrote: post #5
bediger wrote: post #2

Well, this sure puts a different spin on the arrogance of the US Government. The new Aristocracy, those with "clearances", receive and can act on information that the rest of us can't be allowed to have. The Fed's "We just know better than you" attitude probably derives directly from this secret pool of knowledge. But why would you divide up information into 15 or 20 categories? I bet that even at "Top Secret" levels…

I agree that the attitude is off-putting and the narrow view afforded to individuals is counterproductive. There are, however, members of the intelligence community who have the breadth of view to make good judgment calls. Just not enough of them, and no accountability.

But isn't that what the Kissinger story was about? Getting the breadth of view, the knowledge, leads almost inevitably to (arguably) terrible arrogance about what you (the cleared) know vs what everyone else knows, and what you (the cleared) get to do about it.

Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#42

Post by rdl »

derefr wrote: post #26
firemanx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's likely referring to the SCI status - the point of SCI, over and above just Secret or Top Secret, is that you have different "compartments" (clearances) for different categories of information. A guy with SCI working for the DOE would see much different information than a guy working for the DOD, or the FAA. And it's much more granular than that. I don't know anything about how the SCI compartments are created, o…

> I suspect there isn't really anyone who knows what every compartment is. Unless the process is completely decentralized, there must be someone approving new compartments. They probably know at least a little about each one.

The main constraint is budgetary authority; it's easier to create a new secret program than to fund it. Ultimately all funding authority comes from the US Congress, although there are layers of obfuscation.

The ability to create new Special Access Programs is usually delegated to the level in an organization that actually does this routinely; definitely below Department level, above Combatant Command level.

On the Army side, check out AR 380-381, and legally, 32cfr159a. Basically someone more operational creates it, and then gets approval from above, but the authority to create the program is closer to the action than the ability to finance it.

They deconflict on names at one level, usually per department (e.g. Army, Navy). I think this is done by pre-assigning names in batches to be used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_cryptonym is an interesting article.

Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#43

Post by frisco »

firemanx wrote: post #21
fragsworth wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article spoke distinctly of security clearances that you don't even know exist. You probably didn't have those.

It's likely referring to the SCI status - the point of SCI, over and above just Secret or Top Secret, is that you have different "compartments" (clearances) for different categories of information. A guy with SCI working for the DOE would see much different information than a guy working for the DOD, or the FAA. And it's much more granular than that. I don't know anything about how the SCI compartments are created, o…

One thing I've always wondered about was what the President's clearance consists of. Are there things he doesn't have access to? Does he know he doesn't have access? Can he see a list of every secret program, but perhaps not get details? Does he have totally unfettered access to everything the US does?

Edit: the corollary is, "how many people have access to everything?" or alternatively, "if the president doesn't, does anyone have access to everything?"

Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#44

Post by bediger »

throwaway31 wrote: post #11

I used to be in the intelligence field, and I held a top secret SCI clearance for about five years. What most people don't realize about classified information is that it's not the information itself that's so sensitive; it's the means via which such information is acquired that must be protected. If this were not so, targets could simply sidestep our intelligence collection vectors. I rarely dealt with any classifie…

I had a "Secret" clearance twice upon a time. Absolutely nothing I saw while I had that clearance was of the slightest interest. In fact, everything that I knew that was classified ended up appearing in Aviation Week. And no, I wasn't the leaker.

But I regard that as a symptom of over-classification, and speaks directly to the "fifteen or twenty" clearances Kissinger was about to get that were above a Top Secret.

Ultimately, there's only a few "national security" secrets, but there's mega boatloads of career-ending blunders, minor and major wastes of time and money, graft and corruption. Over-classification and compartmentalization solves all of those problems by covering them up.

Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#45

Post by SoftwareMaven »

frisco wrote: post #19
fragsworth wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article spoke distinctly of security clearances that you don't even know exist. You probably didn't have those.

Top Secret SCI ("secret compartmentalized information") isn't one clearance: each SCI has a codeword, and you get cleared individually for each one. That's probably what Ellsberg means by about to receive "15 or 20 special clearances", and what throwaway is referring to. It's not uncommon for TS-cleared individuals to be additionally cleared on at least one TS-SCI thing. Obviously codeword-classified information can…

It doesn't even need to be top secret. There are "special access" projects at secret level as well.

Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#46

Post by ImprovedSilence »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #16

There's a flip side to this as well: as a voter, I don't know what information my elected leaders have when making decisions. In theory, with a small amount of secrecy needed to make diplomacy and security function, this makes sense. The problem is that it's not actually working in practice. There are so many un-elected people who have jobs for life and also the ability to classify broad swaths of information that th…

It gets even worse when you start to think that this information is probably also used to achieve a political ends to a means. By that I mean, those in charge of classifying things, know who has what classification, and should they play favorites or the opposite therof for anyone in their bureaucracy, information will lay hidden to all, just to keep it away from a few, solely for personal gain.

Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#47

Post by Sniffnoy »

scott_s wrote: post #35
Sniffnoy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If this were not so, targets could simply sidestep our intelligence collection vectors. Sorry, could you explain this? I can't seem to put this together.

If the people we're gathering intelligence on (the "targets") knew how we are collecting that intelligence (the "vectors"), then they'd be able to avoid being spied on.

Ah, so by "if this were not so" he meant "if they weren't protected"? I read it as "if they didn't have to be protected", which is why I was confused.

Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#48

Post by nimblegorilla »

sneak wrote: post #27
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #16

There's a flip side to this as well: as a voter, I don't know what information my elected leaders have when making decisions. In theory, with a small amount of secrecy needed to make diplomacy and security function, this makes sense. The problem is that it's not actually working in practice. There are so many un-elected people who have jobs for life and also the ability to classify broad swaths of information that th…

> In theory, with a small amount of secrecy needed to make diplomacy and security function, this makes sense. It does not make sense to me. Perhaps you could explain to me how you reached this conclusion?

What part doesn't make sense? An example from WWII was when the Allies cracked the enigma code. Obviously the intelligence value goes down if the British brag about it to all the voters and the Germans stop using it.

Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#49

Post by joshuarrrr »

falcolas wrote: post #14

A side note to the content of the article, which was interesting, but I couldn't zoom the text. I'm using Chrome, and when I zoomed in, the pictures, headers and footers all grew appropriately, however the text remained a constant size. I'm not sure how they managed that, but it makes for a terrible user experience when you want (or need) to increase the font size to make it more readable.

It's because it's their mobile website. The text on the normal version of the story seems to zoom fine: http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-li...

Re: The mental gymnastics involved in having a high security clearance.

#50

Post by bediger »

marshray wrote: post #12
oldstrangers wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of it like this: if one person only knows part of a system, they can only reveal so much about it. 15 people might know the entirety of one system, but individually they don't know enough to be a threat. This idea can be stretched out to cover entire levels of security clearance and information (as it does).

It also makes it more difficult for them to collaborate and conspire without the coordination of those above.

Let's flip that around: it makes it easier for "those above" in the hierarchy to deceive a whole pile of compartmentalized people into performing useless work, and thereby consuming lots and lots of government money.
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