Updated below Sen. John McCain asked the Obama Administration to appoint a special counsel to investigate recent leaks of classified information to the news media. He condemned the disclosure of classified information in several recent news stories involving U.S. cyber attacks on Iran’s nuclear program and the use of drones in targeted killing programs, among […]
The Department of Defense is by far the largest government consumer of energy, having spent around $17 billion on fuel last year, according to a new report from the Congressional Research Service. “DOD’s reliance on fuel can lead to financial, operational, and strategic challenges and risks,” which are explored in the report. See Department of […]
Last week the House Oversight Committee reported out the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, a bill that is intended to increase protections for government employees and contractors who “blow the whistle” and disclose illegal or improper government activity. Among other things, the bill would require intelligence agency heads to advise employees on how to make lawful […]
Shamai Leibowitz was the first person in the Obama Administration to be charged under the Espionage Act with leaking classified information to the press. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a jail term that he completed last year. (“Jail Sentence Imposed in Leak Case,” Secrecy News, May 25, 2010). Leibowitz, an Israel-American who has […]
President Obama began the fourth year of his presidency with more vacant circuit and district court judgeships than when he took office, a new report from the Congressional Research Service observed. The growing number of vacancies in the federal judiciary and the factors that increasingly impede the successful nomination and confirmation of new judges were […]
By Hans M. Kristensen The U.S. State Department today released the full (unclassified) aggregate data for U.S. strategic nuclear forces as counted under the New START treaty. The data shows only very modest reductions of deployed strategic nuclear weapons over the past six months. The full U.S. aggregate data follows the joint and much more […]
Congress is poised to amend the Atomic Energy Act to allow certain nuclear weapons-related information that is classified as Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) to be restored to the Restricted Data (RD) category. FRD and RD are both classified under the Atomic Energy Act, but FRD generally pertains to the utilization of nuclear weapons, whereas RD […]
Newly updated reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following. Congress’s Contempt Power and the Enforcement of Congressional Subpoenas: Law, History, Practice, and Procedure, May 8, 2012 The Financial Action Task Force: An Overview, May 9, 2012 Reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank: Issues and Policy Options for Congress, May 7, 2012 The National Nanotechnology […]
Secrecy News stated yesterday that the decline in the number of pages reviewed for declassification last year (as reported by the Information Security Oversight Office) means that the goal set by President Obama of reviewing the entire backlog of 25 year old historical records by December 2013 will not be achieved. But that is not […]
The total number of pages of government records that were reviewed for declassification last year, as well as the number that were actually declassified, declined slightly from the year before, according to the 2011 annual report from the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) that was published today. Not only is this trend line unfavorable in […]
An initiative that was started two years ago to declassify significant rulings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court regarding domestic intelligence surveillance has produced no declassified records, a Justice Department official confirmed last week. In response to complaints about the rise of “secret law,” the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National […]
The former director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) asked a federal court yesterday for permission to disclose a National Security Agency document that he said represented an egregious example of overclassification. J. William Leonard was the ISOO director, or what is sometimes called the “classification czar,” from 2002-2008. In that role, he was […]