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US Security Classifications Needs Re-Thinking, Says Board
coondoggie writes "The U.S. government's overly complicated way of classifying and declassifying information needs to be dumped and reinvented with the help of a huge technology injection if it is to keep from being buried under its own weight. That was one of the main conclusions of a government board tasked with making recommendations on exactly how the government should transform the current security classification system (PDF)."
US Security Needs Re-Thinking
So a board tasked with finding a way to revamp our security classification system came to the conclusion that our security classification system needs a revamp?
Everything is better with chainsaws.
You wouldn't happen to have a friend waiting in the wings who owns a company that just so happens to supply such solutions at great cost to government entities would you?
Uk is currently moving from the 7 tier IL 0-6 markers to a three tier system, so doesnt surprise the US are looking to follow this
"Current page-by-page review processes are unsustainable in an era of gigabytes and yottabytes. New and existing technologies must be integrated into new processes that allow greater information storage, retrieval, and sharing. We must incorporate technology into an automated declassification process" So this article isn't about changing the classification levels, etc. It's about making a computer decide what should be classified or not. Does anyone think it is a good idea to have a computer decide which information is sensitive, based on some kind of context analysis or something? This is someone trying to sell to the government. It just has to be-
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
The military view of security (from the part that uses weapons) is that information needs to be protected only until the enemy can't use it. A classic line is "Where the ship was last week is UNCLASSIFIED. Where the ship was yesterday is CONFIDENTIAL. Where the ship is now is SECRET. Where the ship will be tomorrow is TOP SECRET."
The important secrets in the combat arms are about future plans and current vulnerabilities. The significant ULTRA interceptions during WWII were mostly boring but important position and strength returns from German units. They'd intercept daily reports like "13th Panzer: 1245 men, 45 tanks, 3350 liters fuel, 245 rounds tank ammo." Intel people would translate this into "13th Panzer down to half strength, has only enough fuel to move 6 km and fight for 1/2 hour." Churchill would then sometimes issue orders like "Do not lose heart! Press on and you will be victorious!" Allied tank units would attack the vulnerable unit, the German unit would run out of fuel and ammo and be destroyed.
The intel side wants to classify everything forever, because they don't want the enemy to know how much they know and what sources they have. There's something to be said for this, provided that the intel side shuts up. In the era when NSA was targeted on the USSR and didn't share with law enforcement, that worked. The problem now is a big collection vacuum coupled with selective leaks to the rest of the government.
Then there's pure bureaucratic classification to avoid embarrassment. This has become much worse since anti-terrorism paranoia. It was a big problem before that, though; too much of the USAF budget, for example, is "black". Eventually it comes out what was being built, and there really haven't been significant breakthroughs comparable to, say, the SR-71 in a long time.
Man, let me tell you how hard the current situation is to work with. This one time, I was working on (REDACTED) and then (REDACTED) comes up to me and (REDACTED), "Dude, where are the (REDACTED) on the (REDACTED) flesh-eating (REDACTED)?" To which I had to say, "Well, the problem is that (REDACTED) is all kept over in (REDACTED) so that in the event of (REDACTED) most of the (REDACTED) will be (REDACTED)."
I mean, who here can't identify with that?
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
The founding fathers 1. distrusted parties and 2. distrusted the mobs of democracy. The idea was that people would choose wise men who would chose the president. This happened once with the election of Washington – and never again.
It was also supposed to give smaller states more weight and it sort of works for that.
It works less well when you have states that are persistently blue / red - which would have left them aghast.
The classification system, as written, is actually pretty decent--information should only be classified under specific circumstances and for a limited duration. How it's applied in practice is not; information is often restricted because people are worried that they might get in trouble for releasing too much, because they don't want scrutiny from the public or other government agencies or even divisions within the same agency, or just because they want control. I don't see how technology solves any of these problem--it's generally a good thing that classified information is need-to-know only, so widespread data sharing and indexing just isn't feasible for most kinds of classified data. Classified data requirements generally aren't too onerous and do a good job keeping classified systems airgapped from unclassified systems.
I think the best solution is to enforce the rules we have in place, and require a higher standard to be met to classify data. The executive isn't going to do this; perhaps Congress needs to impose some limited oversight. That said, I don't trust Congress to do a better job these days, either. American society values perceived security way above government transparency these days; and the way the classification system is interpreted today is a direct result of how values have changed in this country. Things won't get better until the American people stop being afraid and start being critical of their government again.
This will not happen, because if the mindset of: "What if something that is important slips through? Its better to just classify everything just to be safe."
You want to be the general who's staff accidentally leaks something important? Goodbye career, because a corporal forgot to look at the last page in a folder before handing it to a reporter.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!