Beginning in 1974, the U.S. intelligence community provided the public with a broad selection of foreign news reports, updated daily. These were collected and translated by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which was reconstituted in 2004 as the Open Source Center (OSC). But the CIA has now terminated public access to […]
Digitally-based virtual worlds and online games such as Second Life and World of Warcraft represent a qualitatively new phenomenon that could have profound impacts on culture, politics and national security, according to a newly disclosed report (large pdf) prepared in 2008 for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. “This technology has the potential […]
Years ago, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, conducted routine audits and investigations of the National Security Agency, such that the two agencies were in “nearly continuous contact” with one another. In the post-Snowden era, GAO could perform that oversight function once again. “NSA advises that the GAO maintains a team permanently […]
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has been widely criticized for making a false statement at a March 2013 hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee. What has gone unremarked, however, is the fact that the Committee permitted that statement to stand uncorrected. Sen. Ron Wyden asked DNI James Clapper at a March 12, 2013 […]
New and updated reports from the Congressional Research Service that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following. Bitcoin: Questions, Answers, and Analysis of Legal Issues, December 20, 2013 The Crisis in South Sudan, December 27, 2013 Increasing the Efficiency of Existing Coal-Fired Power Plants, December 20, 2013 Spectrum Policy: Provisions in the […]
The Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series is the official documentary record of U.S. foreign policy published by the U.S. Department of State. The origins, development and continuing evolution of the FRUS series are explored in a massive new history prepared by the State Department Office of the Historian. See “Toward ‘Thorough, Accurate […]
After a declassification review that lasted nearly twenty years, the history of CIA covert action in the Congo from 1960 to 1968 was finally published last week by the State Department, filling an awkward gap in the historical record. “In August 1960, the U.S. Government launched a covert political program in the Congo lasting almost […]
More than a dozen professional societies and public interest groups wrote to the Director of National Intelligence last week to ask him to preserve public access to foreign news reports gathered, translated and published by the Open Source Center and marketed to subscribers through the NTIS World News Connection. The CIA, which manages the Open […]
Updated below The report of a White House advisory group on intelligence surveillance said that reducing undue secrecy was one of its main objectives. “A central goal of our recommendations is to increase transparency and to decrease unnecessary secrecy, in order to enhance both accountability and public trust,” the report of the President’s Review Group […]
Because the Intelligence Community utilizes commercial products including those that may be manufactured abroad, it could be vulnerable to threat or compromise through its supply chain. Intelligence Community Directive 731 issued by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on December 7 establishes IC policy on “Supply Chain Risk Management.” “Many IC mission-critical products, materials, and […]
Newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service obtained by Secrecy News include the following. China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States, December 17, 2013 Iraq: Politics, Governance, and Human Rights, December 17, 2013 Child Support: An Overview of Census Bureau Data on Recipients, December 16, 2013 Nanotechnology: A Policy […]
DC District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle yesterday ordered the Obama Administration to release a copy of an unclassified presidential directive, and she said the attempt to withhold it represented an improper exercise of “secret law.” The Obama White House has a “limitless” view of its authority to withhold presidential communications from the public, she wrote, […]