William J. Bosanko was formally named this week as the fourth director of the Information Security Oversight Offfice, the executive branch agency that is responsible for oversight of national security classification and declassification policy government-wide. A ten-year veteran of the ISOO staff, Mr. Bosanko shares an understanding of the ideals and the realities of classification […]
Prodded by a request from the Federation of American Scientists, the U.S. Marine Corps recently restored online public access to many of its doctrinal publications, Federal Computer Week reported on March 27. One of those Marine Corps documents addresses war crimes (pdf), describing prohibited actions and the need to prevent them. “While we Marines fight […]
Testimony from classification expert J. William Leonard, the former director of the Information Security Oversight Office, will “seriously undercut the government’s case” against two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who are charged with unlawful receipt and transmission of classified information, defense attorneys argued in a dramatic new pleading (pdf) urging […]
Some unauthorized disclosures of classified information in the press can serve a constructive purpose, Sen. John McCain allowed. And so he expressed support for a pending press “shield” law that would increase reporters’ legal protection against compulsory disclosure of their confidential sources. “Despite concerns I have about the legislation, I have narrowly decided to support […]
The latest edition of Nieman Reports, the quarterly magazine of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, is devoted to the subject of “21st Century Muckrakers: Who Are They? How Do They Do Their Work?” It’s a meaty and highly readable issue. I contributed a piece on “Secrecy vs. Citizenship.” Ted Gup, author of the […]
The Senate Intelligence Committee has recommended creation of a new Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Intelligence to prepare the annual intelligence budget. “The [proposed] Subcommittee on Intelligence shall appropriate all funds for the National Intelligence Program (NIP) (as opposed to the current situation where appropriations for the NIP are fragmented among several subcommittees within the Appropriations […]
Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service that have not been made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf). “Tibet: Problems, Prospects, and U.S. Policy,” April 10, 2008. “Judicial Review of Removal Orders,” April 10, 2008. “Avatars, Virtual Reality Technology, and the U.S. Military: Emerging Policy Issues,” April 9, 2008. “International […]
U.S. intelligence agencies have embarked upon a process to develop a uniform classification policy and a single classification guide that could be used by the entire U.S. intelligence community, according to a newly obtained report (pdf) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The way that intelligence agencies classify information is not only […]
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) is among the most highly regarded members of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Not coincidentally, it is also among the most open and accessible. In particular, it is one of the only Intelligence Community organizations that regularly publishes its budget (pdf). (The FBI also discloses much […]
In a stark illustration of how secrecy may undermine rather than reinforce security, the Government Accountability Office found that the Department of Defense has omitted many of its most sensitive assets from critical infrastructure protection planning because they are too secret to be identified. “DOD has not taken adequate steps to ensure that highly sensitive […]
The Department of Homeland Security has not adequately addressed the civil liberties concerns associated with the new National Applications Office (NAO) that would promote the use of intelligence capabilities such as overhead surveillance for homeland security and other domestic purposes, three Democratic Congressmen said this week. “Turning America’s spy satellites on the homeland for domestic […]
Updated/Corrected below The cause of the mysterious deaths of large numbers of honey bees across the United States that began in 2006 has apparently been discovered. Scientists from the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center and the University of California at San Francisco identified both a virus and a parasite that are associated with the massive […]