Between September 2001 and February 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation initiated and closed the investigation of 85 reported leaks of classified intelligence information, “all of which concerned unauthorized disclosures of classified information to the media,” FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a written response to questions (pdf) dated February 4, 2008.
“None of these cases reached prosecution,” he said. As of February 2008, “21 such cases are [still] under investigation.”
This information appeared in questions for the record that were appended to “Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States” (pdf), a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee that was held January 11, 2007. The complete hearing volume was finally published last month, and the newly published questions for the record are excerpted here.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has renewed its practice of including questions for the record (QFRs) in published hearing volumes, for which one may be thankful, even when the answers are classified or are not provided by the agencies at all. Some additional QFRs, also newly published last month, appear in “Statutory Authorities of the Director of National Intelligence” (pdf), Senate Intelligence Committee, February 14, 2008.
The clearinghouse will also neutrally mediate the assignment of auditors to audits—strengthening independence, trust, and ethical governance across the AI ecosystem.
The potential implication of these evidence gaps becomes more consequential when you look at how institutions actually make decisions day to day.
Every new institution inherits something – existing incentives, existing staff, decades of prior investment that shaped what’s possible.
This is not the first time Google has agreed to censor imagery at the behest of governments, but be warned: obfuscation at this broad level poses a direct threat to the public’s ability to monitor and scrutinize government operations.