The term “overclassification” is used in two distinct senses: The classification of information that should not be classified at all, and the classification of information at a higher level than is justified. Both are problematic, though in different ways. The second form of overclassification, which unnecessarily limits the sharing of information by cleared persons, is addressed in a new Senate Committee report on “The Reducing Over-Classification Act.”
The latest volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series documents U.S. policy toward Vietnam during January to October 1972, including events surrounding the so-called Easter Offensive of the war in Vietnam. The 1100-page FRUS volume includes a large collection of transcripts of tapes from the Nixon White House.
The National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ have both published declassified documents regarding the 1946 UKUSA Agreement on cooperation between the United States and Great Britain in signals intelligence.
On May 26, two days before his final day as Director of National Intelligence, Dennis C. Blair signed a new Intelligence Community Directive, ICD-705 (pdf), on “Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities” or SCIFs. It mostly says that all SCIFs must comply with technical security standards that are to be issued in the near future.
The Congressional Research Service has an opening for an analyst with expertise in one or more of the following areas: presidential powers, emergency powers, information policy, privacy, and/or transparency, among others.
A lack of sustained federal funding, deteriorating research infrastructure and networks, restrictive immigration policies, and waning international collaboration are driving this erosion into a full-scale “American Brain Drain.”
With 2000 nuclear weapons on alert, far more powerful than the first bomb tested in the Jornada Del Muerto during the Trinity Test 80 years ago, our world has been fundamentally altered.
As the United States continues nuclear modernization on all legs of its nuclear triad through the creation of new variants of warheads, missiles, and delivery platforms, examining the effects of nuclear weapons production on the public is ever more pressing.
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”