The national census in 2020 will be the first to rely primarily on the Internet for collecting census data, thereby creating new avenues for fraud and disruption.

A new report from the JASON scientific advisory panel describes the problem and outlines some solutions.

Why would anyone want to interfere with the constitutionally-mandated census, which maps the population of the United States every ten years and serves as the basis for apportioning congressional districts? The JASONs identified a number of reasons.

“Several distinguishable types of fraud against the census must be considered, including: hacking the census for fun or bragging rights; social media attempts to discredit the census and reduce cooperation; mimicry of the census forms or apps for purposes including phishing; city or district-level attempts to changes population numbers or distributions; large scale attempts to affect apportionment of the House of Representatives; individual mischief and anti-government protest.”

Not all of these threats are equally important.

“Non-organized fraud from random individuals (e.g. pet names listed as family members) is unlikely have any significant impact on the outcomes of the U.S. Census,” the JASONs said. And “individual mischief, for example, a response from Seymour Butts of 6 E. Psycho Path” is to be expected.

But large-scale, organized fraud could pose a threat to the integrity of the census, and the threshold for effectively manipulating the census process is surprisingly low.

“Occasionally, small numbers of census responses determine the loss or gain of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. For example, in the 2000 U.S. Census, Utah fell only 80 persons short of gaining a congressional seat, which was instead allocated to North Carolina.”

The JASON report, prepared for the U.S. Census Bureau, included several technical and procedural recommendations to impede fraudulent activity, to facilitate its detection, and to mitigate its consequences.

“The goal of the 2020 Decennial Census is… to count every person, exactly once, onApril 1, 2020, by the geographical location within the U.S. where they ‘live and sleep most of the time’ (or a similar formulation). The total number of people thus counted is expected to be about 335 million.”

A copy of the JASON report was obtained by Secrecy News. See Respondent Validation for Non-ID Processing in the 2020 Decennial Census, November 2015.

Updated below

The Government Accountability Office this week quietly published a list of titles of its restricted reports that have not been publicly released because they contain classified information or controlled unclassified information.  A new link to “Restricted Products” appears at the bottom of the GAO homepage (under Reports & Testimonies).

“This list is intended to keep Congress, federal agencies, and the public informed of the existence of these products. The list consists of all such classified or controlled products issued since September 30, 2014 and will be updated each time a new report is issued,” the GAO webpage says.

“We did not issue a statement or announcement” concerning the new listing, said Timothy L. Minelli of GAO Congressional Relations.

A congressional staffer said the move was prompted by concerns expressed by some Members of Congress and staff that they were unaware of the restricted reports, since they had not been indexed or archived by GAO.

Publication of the titles of restricted GAO reports “was not necessarily universally desired by everyone in Congress,” the staffer said, and “it took about a year” to resolve the issue. But “GAO deserves a lot of credit. They decided it was the right thing to do, and they did it.”

Although primarily aimed at congressional consumers, the new webpage also serves to inform the public. GAO is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, but will usually entertain requests for records anyway. However, GAO is not authorized to release information that has been classified or controlled by an executive branch agency.

There are several limitations to the new disclosure policy. It does not reflect restricted GAO reports that were generated prior to 2014. It will not cite titles that are themselves classified. And it will not include reports that focus on an individual intelligence agency.

“We excluded titles of products primarily focused on an element of the intelligence community to be consistent with the general practices of the IG [Inspector General] Offices within that IC community, who generally don’t post these titles,” said Mr. Minelli of GAO. “Only titles of products that that are primarily focused on an element of the IC won’t be listed, which we believe will be a very small number, likely less than a handful per year.”

“More common are GAO products that address activities/operations of IC elements in the context of a broader set of questions we are answering, and the titles of these products are being posted,” he said.

“Finally, in a number of cases and pending the classification and sensitivity reviews conducted by the appropriate agencies, GAO will follow its usual practice of trying to issue public versions of classified and sensitive-but-unclassified  products that have had classified and SBU material removed.  These reports are posted on our website and publicly available,” he said.

Update: A listing of GAO restricted report titles from 1971-2011 was obtained and published by GovernmentAttic.org, which also obtained copies of the first page of each GAO report issued prior to 1972 that remains classified.

In 2010, then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair convened a panel to review the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting committed by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan and the Christmas Day bombing attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab aboard Northwest Flight 253.

A redacted version of the resulting panel report was finally declassified and released this week. See Report to the Director of National Intelligence on the Fort Hood and Northwest Flight 253 Incidents, Intelligence Community Review Panel, 15 April 2010.  The panel was led by former Acting DCI John E. McLaughlin.

In a nutshell, the report found, “There were several missed opportunities that could have increased the odds of detecting Abdulmutallab or Hasan. The causes of the missteps ranged from human error to inadequate information technology, inefficient processes, unclear roles and responsibilities, and an occasional lack of individual inquisitiveness.”

Beyond a detailed recounting of what was known by U.S. intelligence about the perpetrators, much of which has been withheld, the report fills a gap in the literature of intelligence reform with a look at systemic issues such as the state of information technology in the intelligence community (as of 2011), the process of watch-listing, and disagreements over the handling of U.S. person information.

“Inadequate information technology runs through both the Fort Hood and the NW Flight 253 narratives, particularly the inability of IT systems to help analysts locate relevant reporting in a sea of fragmentary data or to correct for seemingly minor human errors.”

“NCTC [National Counterterrorism Center] analysts, for example, have access to more than 28 separate databases and systems, each of which, for the most part, has a separate log-on. This means analysts have to search each database separately before trying to identify connections among their results.”

The existing search capacity “is intolerant of even simple mistakes in the queries and does not enable questions like: list everyone that is potentially affiliated with AQAP and has a passport or visa that would permit entry to the United States or UK.”

But the problem is not purely one of technology, the report said. “The Community cannot realize the potential of information technology to assist the counterterrorism mission without clarifying… procedures for sharing information on US persons.”

The report reflects a view that restrictions on collecting and disseminating US person information had become onerous and counterproductive.

“Many of the people we interviewed assessed that policy on handling US Persons data… was limiting the Intelligence Community’s ability to aggregate and exploit available data, especially information pertaining to critical domestic-foreign nexus issues.”

“We noticed a strong belief among collectors and analysts that restrictions on collecting, disseminating, accessing, and analyzing data on US Persons impede mission performance…. We also saw a surprising level of disagreement — even among experienced practitioners — on whether current US Person authorities allow intelligence officers to accomplish their missions, or whether new legal authorities are needed.”

(“Sharing US Person information with foreign partners, and tasking them to collect on US Persons appeared at various points,” the report says at the start of an otherwise redacted paragraph.)

“We see a need to simplify, harmonize, update, and modify the Community’s procedures relating to US persons,” the McLaughlin panel wrote.

What exactly this might mean in practice was not spelled out, but it didn’t seem to entail tightening, narrowing or curtailing the use of US person information, or increasing oversight of it.

“The report’s finding on the Intelligence Community’s ‘caution’ and ‘risk aversion’ in the collection of US persons information is particularly notable,” said Christian Beckner, Deputy Director, GW Center for Cyber & Homeland Security, “leading the review group to worry that ‘the next terrorist surprise could be the result of confusion or excessive caution about how to manage this issue.’  This finding is in striking contrast to much of the public dialogue following the Snowden leaks about intelligence activities related to US persons.”

The panel report also includes various incidental observations of interest.

“The panel is concerned that the overlap between CTC [the CIA Counterterrorism Center} and NCTC [the National Counterterrorism Center] extends beyond healthy competition and that the turf battles, duplications, and clashes are a drain on the resources and creative energy of both organizations.”

Furthermore, “It appears that much of the tension between the two organizations centers on issues related to the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) — everything from who takes the lead to what is said in the articles.”

The report cites inaccuracies in news media coverage of the Fort Hood shootings and Christmas Day bombing “that have skewed the discussions.” For example, contrary to some accounts, “There is no evidence indicating that [Anwar al] Aulaqi directed Hasan.”

The report also presents a previously unreleased 2010 DNI directive on “lanes in the road” (included as Appendix D to the report) that “establishes the responsibilities and accountability of leaders of major organizations with counterterrorism analytic missions.” In other words, it assigned specific counterterrorism roles to each of the relevant intelligence agencies.

“Each organization within the IC with a significant counterterrorism analytic effort is expected to work seamlessly with its counterparts, drawing on the specific strengths and advantages of partners, but is also expected to place particular emphasis on those missions they are uniquely positioned to conduct,” wrote DNI Dennis C. Blair in the April 7, 2010 memorandum.

The Central Intelligence Agency has improperly classified and withheld from release at least five categories of information related to its post-9/11 rendition, detention and interrogation program, according to a detailed complaint filed by Openthegovernment.org with the Information Security Oversight Office.

Classification of this information has impeded government accountability for the controversial CIA programs and derailed a full public reckoning over abuses that occurred, the complaint said.

“Secrecy regarding ‘black sites’ and torture has played a major role in ensuring that no CIA personnel could be prosecuted for torture, war crimes, destruction of evidence, or other relevant federal crimes. It has ensured that civil courts were closed to victims of torture, indefinitely delayed trials of the accused perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, and put the United States in breach of its obligations under the Convention Against Torture,” wrote Katherine Hawkins, National Security Fellow at Openthegovernment.org, who authored the complaint.

She specified five categories of information that she said had been classified in violation of the executive order governing classification policy and redacted from the summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on interrogation:

*     The pseudonyms and titles, and in some cases the names, of CIA officials and contractors implicated in the torture program.

*     The names of countries that hosted black sites (i.e. unacknowledged locations of CIA detention centers abroad).

*     Former CIA detainees’ descriptions of the details of their own torture.

*     The CIA’s involvement in the torture of prisoners in Iraq.

*     The CIA’s rendition of prisoners to torture in foreign custody.

The 38-page complaint presents extensive arguments that certain particular information in each of these categories was improperly classified by the CIA.

“There is strong evidence that classification of evidence regarding the torture program violated the Executive Order, in some cases willfully so,” Ms. Hawkins wrote. “It is important that there be consequences for this abuse of the classification power to deter similar violations in the future. But it is even more important that the cover-up end, and that ISOO act to oversee ongoing CIA classification decisions regarding the rendition, detention and interrogation program.”

John P. Fitzpatrick, the director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), which oversees the classification system, said his office has already begun “digging into the complaint in detail…. I don’t yet know what level of effort this will require.”

Under Executive Order 13526 (section 5.2(6)), the ISOO director is authorized and required to “consider and take action on complaints and suggestions from persons within or outside the Government with respect to the administration of the [classification] program established under this order.”

As a practical matter, ISOO’s capacity to investigate classification errors is limited by the Office’s size and budget.

Nevertheless, Mr. Fitzpatrick said, “handling complaints like this is part of our mission, so we will have to see what can be done.”

The immediate next steps, he said, include identifying the specific claims advanced by the complaint and the parts of the executive order they may relate to; gathering relevant facts that would support or refute the claims; and performing analysis to reach a conclusion. Considering the length and detail of the complaint, reviewing it “will take time.”

*    *    *

If there is a systemic solution to the problem of overclassification, it is likely to involve the kind of independent review that has been urged on ISOO by Openthegovernment.org in this case.

Government agencies that are left to their own devices will almost always classify more information than is necessary or appropriate. Without assuming any malign intent on their part, it is simply the path of least resistance.

However, when an agency is required to justify its classification activity to an impartial reviewer, even on a non-adversarial basis, a reduction in the scope of classification results more often than not. This has been confirmed repeatedly.

*    Between 1996 and 2014, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel directed the declassification of information in 71 percent of the documents presented to it by members of the public whose direct requests to agencies had been denied, ISOO reported in 2014.

*    Documents concerning covert actions that the CIA had refused to acknowledge on its own were approved for declassification and publication in the Foreign Relations of the United States series after deliberation by the so-called High-Level Panel composed of representatives of the National Security Council, State Department and CIA.

*    CIA classification of many records related to the JFK assassination could not withstand review by the independent Assassination Records Review Board. The Board ordered declassification of tens of thousands of assassination-related records including millions of pages.

*    Even within individual agencies, the process of challenging classification decisions has borne fruit to a surprising extent. Government employees challenged the classification status of various items of information in 813 cases in FY2014, the Information Security Oversight Office reported. Their classification was overturned in whole or in part in 453 of those cases.

It follows that new venues and new procedures for independently evaluating disputed classification decisions would help to reduce or eliminate spurious classification.

Federal employees turned to the Office of Special Counsel in record numbers last year to file complaints of whistleblower retaliation, prohibited personnel practices, and other violations of law and policy.

The Office of Special Counsel (OSC) is an independent federal agency whose “primary mission is to safeguard the merit system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, especially reprisal for whistleblowing.” It has been led by Special Counsel Carolyn N. Lerner since 2011.

“Fiscal year (FY) 2014 was a record-breaking year for the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC),” according to the FY 2014 OSC annual report that was transmitted to Congress last month.

“For the first time, OSC received over 5,000 cases, a 17 percent increase from the previous fiscal year. The number of prohibited personnel practice (PPP) complaints was also at an all-time high, 3,371, nearly a thousand more than just four years prior. We also received significantly more whistleblower disclosures in FY 2014 than in past years.”

OSC said it has effectively intervened in a growing number of cases, which tends to inspire even more complaints to be filed, perhaps to the point of unsustainability.

“The number of favorable outcomes for whistleblowers and other employees across the government continues to break all-time records,” the report said. “OSC secured 177 favorable outcomes in 2014 helping to restore the careers of courageous public servants who blew the whistle on fraud, waste and abuse, or encountered another form of prohibited conduct in the government. This total represents an increase of 185 percent over six years ago.”

“These victories for whistleblowers, the taxpayers, and the merit system showcase OSC’s effectiveness and increase awareness of the agency in the federal community. As a result, the number of employees seeking OSC’s assistance continues to grow, posing daunting challenges to the agency.”

“We anticipate receiving over 6,000 new cases in FY 2015, more than a 60 percent increase over the ten-year averaged annual case load level. OSC already faces the largest case backlog in agency history,” the OSC annual report said.

Effective oversight of intelligence community contractors is a particularly difficult exercise since the reliability of official data on contractor activities is uncertain and most of it is classified and inaccessible to outsiders, a new report from the Congressional Research Service explains.

“Contractors have been and are an integral part of the intelligence community’s (IC’s) total workforce (which also includes federal employees and military personnel). Yet questions have been raised regarding how they are used, and the size and cost of the contractor component.”

The new CRS report “describes several initiatives designed, or used, to track contractors or contractor employees. [It also] addresses the questions of whether IC contractor personnel are performing inherently governmental functions and whether the IC’s acquisition workforce is equipped to monitor contractors performing critical functions….”

The CRS report itself was prepared without access to classified data on the role of contractors, so it sheds no new factual light on the subject. Instead, it summarizes the recent literature on internal IC contractor management and congressional oversight of IC contractors.  See The Intelligence Community and Its Use of Contractors: Congressional Oversight Issues, August 18, 2015.

Dozens of other new and updated CRS reports were obtained and posted online last week, including these:

The Greek Debt Crisis: Overview and Implications for the United States, August 19, 2015

China’s Currency Devaluation, CRS Insights, August 17, 2015

Powering Africa: Challenges of and U.S. Aid for Electrification in Africa, August 17, 2015

Unaccompanied Alien Children: An Overview, updated August 18, 2015

Mandatory Minimum Sentencing: Federal Aggravated Identity Theft, updated August 20, 2015

Medal of Honor: History and Issues, updated August 18, 2015

Sentence for Killing a Bald Eagle Found Too Severe and Unauthorized, CRS Legal Sidebar, August 18, 2015

Biopower: Background and Federal Support, updated August 14, 2015

California Drought: Hydrological and Regulatory Water Supply Issues, updated August 14, 2015

Automatic Continuing Resolutions: Background and Overview of Recent Proposals, August 20, 2015

“Who is a Veteran?” — Basic Eligibility for Veterans’ Benefits, updated August 19, 2015

Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy, updated August 17, 2015

Women in Combat: Issues for Congress, updated August 18, 2015

Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty: Background and Current Developments, updated August 14, 2015

Not new, but of renewed current interest is Birthright Citizenship Under the 14th Amendment of Persons Born in the United States to Alien Parents, January 10, 2012.

*    *    *

The long-term vitality of the Congressional Research Service is threatened by Congress’s repeated refusals to appropriate the modest budget increases ($5 million in FY2016) that the agency has requested in recent years. Reductions in the quality of CRS publications and in the depth of staff expertise are foreseeable.

Other congressional support agencies and professional staff face similar curbs on funding, to the detriment of the legislative process.

“Why would Congress cannibalize its own legislative and creative capacity?” ask political science professors Anthony Madonna and Ian Ostrander. See “If Congress keeps cutting its staff, who is writing your laws? You won’t like the answer,” Washington Post, August 20.

The House of Representatives yesterday approved its version of the FY 2016 intelligence authorization act (HR 2596).

The bill includes “several” new reporting requirements intended “to enhance Congress’ role in and understanding of the classification process,” said Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA). One of these requirements is for a report to Congress noting each occasion in the past 5 years in which non-compartmented intelligence reporting has been disseminated through a (more restrictive) compartmented channel.

The bill passed by the House preserves a proposed new restriction on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board barring its access to covert action information. The Washington Post reported last week that the restriction was prompted by an op-ed written by the Board chairman suggesting that the Board might be able to assist in oversight of covert targeted killing operations.

Also yesterday, the Senate voted 78-21 to affirm a ban on torture and to limit the use of interrogation techniques to those that are included in Army Field Manual 2-22.3 (Appendix M). The measure was sponsored by Senators McCain and Feinstein.

“Current law already bans torture, as well as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment,” Sen. McCain noted.

“However,” he said, “this amendment is still necessary because [after 9/11, so-called ‘enhanced’] interrogation techniques were able to be used, which were based on a deeply flawed legal theory, and those techniques, it was said, did not constitute ‘torture’ or ‘cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.’ These legal opinions could be written again.” The amendment is intended to preclude that possibility.

“I ask my colleagues to support this amendment,” Sen. Feinstein said, “and by doing so, we can recommit ourselves to the fundamental precept that the United States does not torture–without exception and without equivocation–and ensure that the mistakes of our past are never again repeated in the future.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who opposed the amendment, said “the effect of this policy is to hand our entire interrogation playbook to groups such as the self-declared Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, ‘ISIL,” Al Qaeda, and the Taliban, which is a profound mistake.”

Updated below

The House Intelligence Committee inserted language in the pending intelligence authorization bill that would bar access by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) to classified information pertaining to covert action.

“Nothing in the statute authorizing the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board should be construed to allow that Board to gain access to information the executive branch deems to be related to covert action,” according to the new Committee report on the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2016 (section 306), published yesterday.

To the extent that covert action is employed against terrorism and is therefore within the scope of PCLOB’s charter, the House Committee action would preclude PCLOB oversight of the implications of such covert actions for privacy and civil liberties.

That “unduly restricts” PCLOB’s jurisdiction, according to Rep. James Himes (D-CT), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who unsuccessfully sought to modify the provision.

It is possible that there is some tacit rivalry between PCLOB and the congressional intelligence oversight committees, particularly since the PCLOB found that the Section 215 program for collection of telephone metadata was unlawfully implemented while the oversight committees had approved and embraced it. (The recurring failure of the intelligence oversight committees to accurately represent broader congressional and public perspectives over the past decade is a subject that remains to be addressed.)

By contrast, the same House bill directed that the DNI shall provide the Government Accountability Office with the access to information that it needs to perform its authorized functions. The relevant directive (ICD 114) “shall not prohibit the Comptroller General [i.e., the head of the GAO] from obtaining information necessary to carry out an audit or review at the request of the congressional intelligence and defense committees.”

The new House Committee measure may be gratuitous in any event, since the PCLOB is an executive branch agency and is already subject to the authority of the Director of National Intelligence to protect intelligence sources and methods, and to regulate access accordingly.

The PCLOB has recently posted a plan for its review of two counterterrorism-related activities governed by Executive Order 12333.

“The Board plans to concentrate on activities of the CIA and NSA, and to select activities that involve one or more of the following: (1) bulk collection involving a significant chance of acquiring U.S. person information; (2) use of incidentally collected U.S. person information; (3) targeting of U.S. persons; and (4) collection that occurs within the United States or from U.S. companies,” the PCLOB plan said.

Yesterday, Senators Dianne Feinstein and John McCain introduced an amendment to the 2016 defense authorization act “to reaffirm the prohibition on torture.” The amendment would limit interrogation techniques to those included in the unclassified Army Field Manual 2-22.3 (Appendix M). And it would require regular review of “to ensure that Army Field Manual 2-22.3 complies with the legal obligations of the United States and reflects current, evidence-based, best practices for interrogation that are designed to elicit reliable and voluntary statements and do not involve the use or threat of force.” The amendment had not yet been voted on as of yesterday.

Update: The origins of the House Intelligence Committee’s apparent animosity towards the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board were explored by Ellen Nakashima in Upset over op-ed, GOP lawmakers seek to curb privacy board, Washington Post, June 10, 2015.

The number of newly created national security secrets dropped to a record low level last year, but the financial costs of protecting classified information increased sharply, according to the latest data from the Information Security Oversight Office.

Original classification activity — meaning the designation of new classified information — declined by 20 percent in 2014 to a historic low of 46,800 original classification decisions, ISOO said in its new annual report for Fiscal Year 2014.

It was the fourth consecutive year of reductions in original classifications. ISOO has never reported a smaller number of original classification decisions. Ten years earlier (FY 2004), for example, original classification activity was reported at 351,150 original classification decisions.

What accounts for the continuing drop-off in the creation of new secrets? The answer is not entirely clear. It is in part a reflection of changes in the national security environment, as well as the vagaries of how agencies report their classification practices. ISOO director John P. Fitzpatrick said it was also likely to be a consequence of the Fundamental Classification Guidance Review that was performed under the Obama executive order in 2010-2012 in an effort to improve the quality of agency classification guides.

In the course of that Review, all existing guides were “scrubbed” to ensure that they provided current classification guidance and in some cases they were also refined to improve their clarity. One result, Mr. Fitzpatrick said yesterday, was that some agency classification decisions that might have otherwise been counted as new secrets were instead deemed to be “derivative” classification decisions that were based on the improved classification guidance.

Significantly, however, the volume of derivative classification decisions also declined for the past two years. Therefore, even if some reported classification actions were displaced from the original classification category to the derivative classification category, the overall result is still a net reduction in new national security classification activity, a significant policy achievement in itself.

While the number of new secrets dropped to a record low last year, however, the cost of protecting those secrets reached a record high.

“The total security classification cost estimate within Government for FY 2014 is $14.98 billion,” the ISOO report said, up from $11.63 billion in FY 2013.

The increase was primarily due to Department of Defense expenditures on information systems security, which increased by a reported $3.2 billion in FY 2014.

While some of the reported increase can be explained by improved accounting methods, much of it “was attributable to the many new initiatives underway in the aftermath of the serious security breaches that have occurred in recent years,” the ISOO report said. The breaches were not specified in the report, but major changes in security policy were prompted by the WikiLeaks disclosures of 2010.

These new DOD initiatives include measures to “improve network security by reducing anonymity, enhancing access controls and user monitoring, establishing enterprise auditing, restricting the removal of media, and developing insider threat programs.”

“None of these improvements come without considerable cost,” the ISOO report said.

The new ISOO report included several other notable observations, such as these:

*     In FY 2014 there were 813 formal classification challenges filed by authorized holders of classified information — government employees or contractors — who believed the information was wrongly classified. In response to the challenges, agencies overturned the classification status of the information in whole or in part in 453 of the cases (56 percent). In FY 2013, by comparison, there were only 68 such challenges and only 12 of them led to changes in classification.

*     The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel maintained its record of granting public appeals of Mandatory Declassification Review requests that had been denied by executive branch agencies in the majority of cases presented to it, in whole or in part. Out of 451 documents considered by the Panel on appeal, 181 were declassified in their entirety, and 157 were declassified in part. The continued classification of 113 documents was affirmed by the Panel.

The Fundamental Classification Guidance Review that apparently led to the recent reduction in national security classification must be performed every five years. The next such Review will soon begin and is due to be completed in 2017.

During the last two years, the U.S. intelligence community has faced momentous challenges and experienced extraordinary upheaval, including the Snowden disclosures beginning in June 2013 and the release of a redacted summary of the Senate report on CIA interrogation practices last year.

Those episodes and others are reflected in a new report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence describing its oversight activities in the 113th Congress from January 2013 to January 2015.

Highlights of the new report include these:

**    Efforts to make U.S. intelligence agencies financially auditable are progressing slowly. “The CIA, NGA, NRO, and NSA conducted audits of their fiscal year 2014 financial statements,” but only the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) completed the process successfully. The CIA, NGA, and NSA “received disclaimers of opinion,” meaning that their financial statements could not be validated by the auditors. “While the DIA and ODNI did not conduct an audit, both plan to do so in 2015,” the report said.

**    Over-control of classified information continues to hamper information sharing even within the intelligence community, the report said. “The Committee has been concerned about the IC’s misapplication and overuse of the originator control marking (ORCON), which can impede the complete and timely dissemination of intelligence, as the agency that originates the information retains control over its dissemination…. Committee staff concluded that the use of the ORCON marking by certain IC elements had increased substantially, and that in some cases classification and control marking policies had been violated.”

**    Efforts to enlist the resources of the Government Accountability Office to strengthen intelligence oversight — a move long advocated by outside observers — are continuing, as the Committee encourages “open lines of communication and collaboration” between ODNI and GAO. The new report reveals that the classified annex of the FY 2014 authorization bill “directed the development of a specific GAO review to bolster intelligence oversight and reduce unnecessary fragmentation, overlap, and duplication.”

**    The report provides some new details of the three-volume structure of the still-classified CIA “torture report”. The first volume addressed the history of CIA’s interrogation program in 1,539 pages. The second volume devoted 1,858 pages to intelligence acquired through the program and CIA’s representations of its effectiveness. And the third volume, in 2,855 pages, focused on the detention and interrogation of 119 CIA detainees.

**    The Committee report said that “Financial intelligence has emerged as a significant are of IC activity, aiming to ‘follow the money’ of adversaries. It has proven to be a powerful tool confronting a range of challenging threats including terrorism, weapons proliferation, and narcotics trafficking.”

**    “The Committee also devoted significant time and attention to lethal operations against counterterrorism targets…. The Committee has worked with the Executive Branch to understand the legal basis for these operations.”  Likewise, “The Committee seeks to ensure that covert action programs are consistent with United States foreign policy goals, and are conducted in accordance with all applicable U.S. laws.”

**    With seeming condescension, the report noted that “The Committee annually receives hundreds of phone calls, facsimiles, mail, and email communications from self-identified whistleblowers on matters they believe to be of urgent concern. Committee staff reviewed and investigated these communications.” If these investigations yielded any actionable findings, they are not mentioned in the report.

**    The report pointedly observed that “Since 1994, the Committee has held annual open hearings to review the Intelligence Community’s assessment of the current and projected national security threats to the United States.” That twenty-year tradition came to an end this year when the new Chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, decided to hold the Committee’s annual threat briefing in closed session.

The new Senate Intelligence Committee report does not contain any note of critical self-examination or any suggestion that congressional oversight itself might have been complicit in the errors and excesses of intelligence agencies. Accordingly, the report does not address any potential changes that might be made to improve the intelligence oversight process.

The Government of Afghanistan is not equipped to manage contracts and “as a result, future direct assistance funds are vulnerable to increased fraud and abuse,” the Department of Defense Inspector General said in a report last month. The IG report was marked “For Official Use Only” and was not publicly released.

See The Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan’s Controls Over the Contract Management Process for U.S. Direct Assistance Need Improvement, DoD Inspector General, February 26, 2015.

The Inspector General assessment was reported by Bloomberg News yesterday (“Afghanistan Can’t Manage Billions in Aid, U.S. Inspector Finds” by Anthony Capaccio, March 10).

Also yesterday, the Department of Defense reissued guidance specifying that unclassified geospatial intelligence products may be withheld from public release under certain conditions, including international restrictions or operational security concerns. See DoD Instruction 5030.59, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) Limited Distribution Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT), March 10, 2015.

Updated (twice) below

U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan have partially rescinded their effort to classify previously public oversight information concerning the status of coalition operations in that country after the move drew sharp criticism.

The sudden reversal was reported in the New York Times (U.S. Declassifies Some Information on Afghan Forces by Matthew Rosenberg, February 2).

In a report issued last week, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) had called the classification action “unprecedented” and said that it left SIGAR “for the first time in six years unable to publicly report on most of the U.S.-taxpayer-funded efforts to build, train, equip, and sustain the ANSF.”

Some officials in the Department of Defense were said to be unhappy with this unexpected development, especially after its negative impact was magnified in editorials in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, and in critical assessments in the Washington Post and elsewhere. And so a modification was made.

The specifics and the extent of the change in classification policy were not immediately clear.

Update (2/4/15): Here is a statement on the matter from Col. Brian Tribus, United States Forces-Afghanistan (USFOR-A) Director of Public Affairs:

“General Campbell [Commander, USFOR-A] has not changed his position in regard to the importance of protecting Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) readiness data, which remains classified.

The ANSF took the lead for providing security in June 2013 and have since assumed full responsibility for securing the Afghan people. As the ANSF have become more capable, we have transitioned to our new, non-combat role. With this transition, the ANSF are now playing a critical role in providing security for coalition forces. In August 2014, General Campbell made the decision to classify Afghan National Security Forces’ readiness data in order to prevent potential adversaries from gaining critical information that could be exploited — endangering the lives of our Afghan partners and coalition forces serving alongside them. Just as we classify our own armed forces readiness reports, it is prudent for us as a reliable partner to do the same for the ANSF — especially considering that ANSF commands are now our primary source for that data and it is provided to us in a classified format. The prudence of General Campbell’s decision was underscored when President Ghani assumed office and, in his role as Commander in Chief of the ANSF, he reiterated the importance of keeping ANSF readiness data classified. The Afghan Chief of General Staff, General Karimi, reinforced this request.

USFOR-A is fully committed to working with the SIGAR. We recognize that SIGAR provides a vital function ensuring transparency and oversight of the expenditure of U.S taxpayer dollars. We have and will continue to implement many of the SIGAR’s recommendations that have helped make us more effective stewards of American funding.

With respect to the SIGAR’s January 2015 quarterly report, the SIGAR was given full access to all ANSF readiness information as well as every other piece of information that was requested. This enabled the SIGAR to share the information with Congress, consistent with its mandate. A large volume of the data requested by SIGAR, when viewed alone, is suitable for public release. However, releasable information was combined with related classified information, requiring it to be published in a classified annex.

USFOR-A has since gone back and separated data releasable to the public from classified ANSF readiness data based on the SIGAR’s request to release more information to the public. USFOR-A provided the separated, unclassified data to the SIGAR.

Again, General Campbell has not changed his position in regard to the importance of protecting ANSF readiness data, which remains classified.

For specifics regarding the unclassified data provided, please contact the SIGAR.

USFOR-A remains committed to working closely with the SIGAR in order to strike the right balance between maximum transparency and prudent protection of information regarding ANSF readiness.”

Update (3/3/2015): SIGAR has released a Supplement to the January 2015 quarterly report reflecting the newly declassified data.