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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.

#71

Post by wnoise »

scottkduncan wrote: post #56
sneak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

More mundane than protecting secret codes and espionage, I think there's a strong argument for keeping the private conversations between the representatives of two governments confidential. Much as my conversations with my close friends would be very different if I knew the contents would be published in the New York Times today, to have functioning relationships governments need to know that some level of confidenti…

> to have functioning relationships governments need to know that some level of confidentiality will be kept when requested.

To have relationships that function the exact same way they do now. It's clear that things would be different. It's probably true that things would be harder for people in those roles. It's not at all clear that things would be worse for those outside of government, which is the real question of whether it is desirable.

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

#72

Post by count »

lesterbuck wrote: post #28
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 thought I read somewhere once that it was a violation of security procedures to reveal your security clearance level (unless it was in doing your job to access information). Is it ok to mention you used to hold a top secret SCI after the fact?

There is no formal guidance (that I'm aware of) about revealing a secret, top secret, Q, or L clearances, nor is there formal guidance on revealing that you are SCI eligible.

Each SCI compartment and SAP has its own unique rules about what you can and cannot reveal (some SCI compartments mere existence is classified at the SCI level itself, meaning you can't say you hold that clearance to anyone who doesn't hold that clearance, for example).

Each SCI compartment also comes with it's own unique rules about when you can or cannot talk about what you learned or were cleared to access (most are probably lifetime NDAs).

That said, it's pretty shitty opsec to tell someone, or the Interwebs, that you hold a specific clearance or do a specific job.

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

#73

Post by count »

epoxyhockey wrote: post #65
lesterbuck wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I read somewhere once that it was a violation of security procedures to reveal your security clearance level (unless it was in doing your job to access information). Is it ok to mention you used to hold a top secret SCI after the fact?

Security procedures don't apply to you once you no longer have a clearance. Except for, of course, revealing the protected information until it is declassified. Yes, the security structure can seem a bit artificial at times, like: - During cleared professionals-only job fairs. - Leaving a cleared job and all of a sudden there are no reporting requirements or security procedures. It's as if the gov't refuses to acknow…

Depends on the compartment...

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

#74

Post by wnoise »

sethg wrote: post #59
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…

You don’t even need that much justification. http://www.samefacts.com/2002/12/secrecy-in-government/shhhh... [quote] When I was young and irresponsible, I worked for the Justice Department, analyzing drug policy. In that capacity, I was put through the full security mumbo-jumbo and received a Top Secret clearance and, on top of that, clearances for various very highly taboo Codeword categories.... Having been cleared…

It's not clear to me that "impeding U.S. foreign policy" is a bad thing in this case.

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

#75

Post by count »

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…

SCI is 'Sensitive' compartmentalized information, not 'secret'. SCI information can be SECRET or TOP SECRET (or, in theory, FOUO, although that would be weird).

Not all SCI compartments are codeworded, some just have names or acronyms (e.g. HCS - HUMINT CONTROL SYSTEM [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Informa...)

As a Govt leader, rather than a working-class flub DOD employee, Ellsberg was probably referring to various SAP access that Kissinger was about to be read into. SCI is just one SAP (well, most people consider it as such, but the IC seems to disagree for legal basis reasons). This article is actually pretty good for once:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_access_program

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

#76

Post by count »

frisco wrote: post #43
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…

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, do…

Not being the President, this is purely speculation, but I would guess:

There are many things the President probably does not have unfettered access to.

There are many, many, many trainings and shit you go through that reinforce that seniority and superiority do not in themselves constitute the 'need to know' for classified information.

There should NOT be someone who has access to everything, as the entire point of the compartmentalization is that no one breach can be used against everybody/everything. I have a suspicion that there are actually compartments which are mutually exclusive - if you're in Compartment X, you are, by definition, not allowed in Compartment Y, specifically for that segmentation reason.

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

#77

Post by count »

rdtsc wrote: post #69
lesterbuck wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought I read somewhere once that it was a violation of security procedures to reveal your security clearance level (unless it was in doing your job to access information). Is it ok to mention you used to hold a top secret SCI after the fact?

I think what is not OK is revealing the specific code word of the compartment not the fact that a person has a top secret clearance in general.

Every compartment is entirely unique. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Informa...

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

#78

Post by count »

derefr wrote: post #38
extension wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once the authority to keep secrets has been delegated, it seems almost inconceivable that anybody would know all of them.

It seems to me that either someone knows about all the compartments, or there is a high likelihood of redundant and overlapping compartments being created accidentally. It probably is okay for one clearance to actually be represented as five or six because of bureaucracy (that's basically just denormalization, and product management systems deal with it all the time); the real problem is that project X might be half-…

This is the United States Federal Government we're talking about here, remember.

Holy crap is there every redundancy and overlap!

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

#79

Post by ivansavz »

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.

This.

The pyramid structure that seems to permeate all things //system// has the following salient feature. Say a system pawn is a node at level $L$ and his/her boss is at level $L+1$ and the boss' boss is at level $L+2$. Depending on social skills and intelligence, the pawn might have information about "what is going on" at level $L+1$ by talking to the boss, but for sure he/she has //no// information about what is going on at $L+2$. In a way secrecy (i.e. information non-awareness) is the //essence// of the pyramid.

Assange has this paper [1], which talks about information being the perfect way to choke the system.

[1] cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf [ abstract: Consider the Gonspiracy G = (V,E) where V is the set of conspirators and E is the set of inside information links. The conspiracy G is embedded in a larger graph, society, S. Let |G| be the power of the Gonspiracy. The 'good guys'[2] want |G| to be small, the bag guys want |G| to be large. Assange defines the total conspiratory power as

   |G| = sum information flows in e for all e in E
So to fight G, one must either cut edges e, or generally reduce the flow of information flowing on edges, by scaring the nodes {v \in V} that they might be found out. ]

[2] http://markpasc.org/blog/gems/athena.html

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

#80

Post by alf »

mmaunder wrote: post #54

I wonder if any game theorists have thought about whether a country with no secrets could be militarily stronger. It's similar to the Linux vs Windows debate: at first glance it seems ludicrous that an open source OS could be more secure than a closed source OS. But with enough eyes and enthusiasts, all problems are quickly fixed. A small inner-circle who have access to the inner workings may find it hard to compete…

Really interesting question. I wonder if there are any small countries willing to give it a try.

I bet there are more countries without a military than ones without military secrets.

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