Having spent months assessing the role of contractors in U.S. intelligence agencies, U.S. intelligence officials say they cannot disclose how many contractors there are, because that’s classified. See “Government Keeps a Secret After Studying Spy Agencies” by Scott Shane, New York Times, April 26.
Veteran female intelligence officers charge that the Central Intelligence Agency deals more harshly with women employees who have relationships with foreign nationals than it does with men. See “Does the CIA have a double standard when its spies cozy up to foreigners?” by David E. Kaplan, U.S. News and World Report, April 22.
A tumultuous congressional hearing on the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program was captured by Jeff Stein in “A CIA Man Speaks His Mind on Secret Abductions,” CQ Homeland Security, April 20.
In 1967 the United States had a top secret contingency plan for attacking Israel to prevent it from moving westward into the Sinai or eastward into the West Bank, reported Amir Oren in Haaretz. See “The Right to Strike,” April 23.
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.