Treasury Classification Guide, and Other Resources
The Department of the Treasury has recently produced a consolidated classification guide, detailing exactly what kinds of Treasury information may be classified at what level and for how long. It is in such agency classification guides, not in high-level government-wide policy statements, that the nuts and bolts of government secrecy policy are to be found, and perhaps to be changed. See “Security Classification Guide” (pdf), Department of the Treasury, December 2010.
The Congressional Research Service yesterday offered its assessment of the Stuxnet worm, which was evidently designed to damage industrial control systems such as those used in Iran’s nuclear program. See “The Stuxnet Computer Worm: Harbinger of an Emerging Warfare Capability” (pdf), December 9, 2010.
Intelligence historian Jeffrey Richelson has written what must be the definitive account of the rise and fall of the National Applications Office, the aborted Department of Homeland Security entity that was supposed to harness intelligence capabilities for domestic security and law enforcement applications. The article, which is not freely available online, is entitled “The Office That Never Was: The Failed Creation of the National Applications Office.” It appears in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counter Intelligence, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 65-118 (2011).
The latest issue of the Journal of National Security Law & Policy (vol. 4, no. 2) is now available online. Entitled “Liberty, terrorism and the laws of war,” it includes several noteworthy and informative papers on intelligence and security policy.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.