US Air Force Updates Policy on Special Access Programs
The US Air Force last month issued updated policy guidance on its “special access programs” (SAPs). Those are classified programs of exceptional sensitivity requiring safeguards and access restrictions beyond those of other categories of classified information.
See Air Force Policy Directive 16-7, Special Access Programs, 21 November 2017.
The new Air Force policy makes provisions for internal oversight of its SAPs, as well as limited congressional access to SAP information under some circumstances.
Notably, however, the new Air Force directive does not acknowledge the authority of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) to review and oversee its SAPs.
That’s an error, said ISOO director Mark Bradley.
The executive order on national security classification (EO 13526, sect. 4.3) explicitly says that “the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office shall be afforded access to these [special access] programs.”
Mr. Bradley said that ISOO would communicate the point effectively to the Air Force.
At a recent workshop, we explored the nature of trust in specific government functions, the risk and implications of breaking trust in those systems, and how we’d known we were getting close to specific trust breaking points.
tudents in the 21st century need strong critical thinking skills like reasoning, questioning, and problem-solving, before they can meaningfully engage with more advanced domains like digital, data, or AI literacy.
When the U.S. government funds the establishment of a platform for testing hundreds of behavioral interventions on a large diverse population, we will start to better understand the interventions that will have an efficient and lasting impact on health behavior.
The grant comes from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) to investigate, alongside The British American Security Information Council (BASIC), the associated impact on nuclear stability.