Former ISOO Director Files Complaint on Overclassification
J. William Leonard, the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) has filed a complaint with the current ISOO director alleging that the National Security Agency wrongly classified a document, which was then used as a basis for the Espionage Act indictment of Thomas Drake, the New York Times reported. See “Complaint Seeks Punishment for Classification of Documents” by Scott Shane, August 2.
“If you’re talking about throwing someone in jail for years, there absolutely has to be responsibility for decisions about what gets classified,” Mr. Leonard told the Times.
Mr. Leonard had been a volunteer expert witness for the defense in the recently concluded prosecution of Thomas Drake, the former NSA official. The document that is the subject of his complaint is no longer classified, but it is still subject to a protective order. Mr. Leonard requested and received permission from the court to pursue his complaint last Friday.
“A surprising war on leaks under Obama,” an op-ed by Thomas Drake and Jesselyn Radack, was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer on August 1.
The human cost is measured in deaths. The financial cost is measured in the $52 billion taxpayers pay annually end stage renal disease – double NASA’s budget.
Gilman Louie, Longest Serving Board Chair of the Federation of American Scientists, Named Chair Emeritus
The proposed Office will resurrect the long-closed Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), the archive of which has been maintained by FAS for decades at https://ota.fas.org/.
If Congress needs help understanding the risks and rewards of a piece of technology, they shouldn’t have to rely solely on the sparknotes from a salesman. The rub is much simpler: Congress needs nerds.