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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
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?
"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.
Here is the thing about security, you want it simple. You need people to easily understand what they can and can't access. The Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret classifications do that. But at the same time, when your security classification is too broad, then people without a "Need to Know" can access items they don't need to within their security classification. The Jonathan Pollard case is a good example of this. Due to his style of espionage, things like SCI were invented that further restrict sensitive items to only those who have a "Need to Know". Now your security system is complicated. Who do you give SCI tickets to and how do you track them and adjust over time? There is no simple solution. SCI complicates security and makes it difficult to work or share work with people that can help you out. It prevents people from knowing the Big Picture. But it also prevents assholes from selling major national security secrets to foreign countries.
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.