[net-gold] Secrecy News -- 02/13/12
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 16:33:12 -0500 (EST)
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Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:25:20 -0500
From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@xxxxxxx>
To: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Secrecy News -- 02/13/12
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SECRECY NEWS
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from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2012, Issue No. 12
February 13, 2012
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Secrecy News Blog:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
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** AGENCIES TOLD TO REPORT ON DECLINE IN SECRECY
** DOD ENVISIONS "ROUTINE" UAS ACCESS TO US AIRSPACE
** CIA ADDS HURDLES TO MANDATORY REVIEW REQUESTS
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AGENCIES TOLD TO REPORT ON DECLINE IN SECRECY
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After all the speeches about greater openness have been delivered and
the news releases about secrecy reform have been filed away, one may
ask: What has actually been accomplished? How much improper secrecy
has been eliminated? Specific answers to such questions may soon be
forthcoming.
The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), which is responsible
for oversight of the national security classification system, wants
agencies to answer those questions when they submit their final
reports on the Fundamental Classification Guidance Review in June
2012. The Fundamental Review was mandated by President Obama's 2009
executive order 13526 (section 1.9) in order to identify and cancel
classification requirements that were obsolete or unnecessary. The
Review process is the Obama Administration's primary response to the
widely acknowledged problem of overclassification.
In a memorandum to senior agency officials last month, ISOO Director
John P. Fitzpatrick instructed them how to report the results of each
agency's Fundamental Review, and asked them to explain what practical
difference the Review made.
"To the greatest extent possible, the reports should be informative as
to how much information that was classified is no longer classified as
a result of the review," Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote. "The report should
also provide the best estimate of how much information that would
normally have been classified in the future will now not become
classified," he continued.
The message here is that the Fundamental Review was not supposed to be
some merely perfunctory exercise, but was intended to advance a
specific policy objective, namely a reduction in the scope of secrecy.
It may succeed, to one degree or another, or it may fail. In either
case, Mr. Fitzpatrick's reporting requirements should generate useful
clarity about the outcome. See "Reporting Results of Fundamental
Classification Guidance Reviews to ISOO," memorandum to selected
senior agency officials, January 23, 2012:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/isoo/fcgr-012312.pdf
In a January 31 interim status report on the Fundamental Review, the
Department of Homeland Security said it had eliminated 2
classification guides out of 22 guides that had been reviewed to date.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dhs/fcgr-0112.pdf
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it had also retired two guides.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/nrc/fcgr-013012.pdf
DOD ENVISIONS "ROUTINE" UAS ACCESS TO US AIRSPACE
The Department of Defense currently seeks expanded access to U.S.
airspace for its unmanned aerial systems (UASs), and it anticipates
the routine use of military UAS in the National Airspace System (NAS)
as a long-term goal, according to a 25 year roadmap for UAS
development.
"The number of UAS in the DoD inventory is growing rapidly. The
increase in numbers, as well as the expanding roles of UAS, has
created a strong demand for access to national and international
airspace and has quickly exceeded the current airspace available for
military operations," according to DoD's Unmanned Systems Integrated
Roadmap, FY2011-2036, dated October 2011.
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/usroadmap2011.pdf
"The [desired] end state is routine NAS access comparable to manned
aircraft for all DoD UAS," the DoD Roadmap said. "DoD's immediate
focus is gaining near-term mission-critical access while
simultaneously working toward far-term routine NAS access."
"Current UAS are built to different specifications for different
purposes; therefore, showing individually that each system is safe for
flight in the NAS can be complicated, time consuming, and costly," the
Roadmap stated. "Routine access cannot happen until DoD and FAA agree
to an acceptable level of safety for UAS, and the appropriate
standards are developed to meet that threshold."
Under current procedures, the Federal Aviation Administration permits
a small number of DoD UAS flights outside of restricted military
areas. But the present FAA certification process "does not provide
the level of airspace access necessary to accomplish the wide range of
DoD UAS missions at current and projected operational tempos. This
constraint will only be exacerbated as combat operations in Southwest
Asia wind down and systems are returned to U.S. locations."
In the newly enacted FAA authorization act and the 2012 National
Defense Authorization Act, Congress mandated "accelerated" integration
of UASs into U.S. airspace. ("Congress Calls for Accelerated Use of
Drones in U.S.," Secrecy News, February 3; "Drones Over U.S. Get OK
by Congress" by Shaun Waterman, Washington Times, February 7; "Among
Liberties Advocates, Outrage Over Expanded Use of Drones" by Channing
Joseph, New York Times The Lede, February 7.)
"Over the next 15 years more than 23,000 UAS jobs could be created in
the U.S. as the result of UAS integration into the NAS," according to
a 2010 report by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems
International, a UAS industry advocacy group. "These new jobs will
include positions in industry, academia, federal government agencies
and the civilian/commercial UAS end-user community."
CIA ADDS HURDLES TO MANDATORY REVIEW REQUESTS
In recent years the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process
has become an increasingly useful alternative to the Freedom of
Information Act by which members of the public can challenge the
classification of government records. Remarkably, agency
classification positions have been overturned with some frequency in
the MDR appeals process, which is something that almost never happens
in FOIA litigation.
In a dubious act of recognition of the growing effectiveness of MDR,
the Central Intelligence Agency has recently imposed substantial new
fees that seem calculated to discourage its use by public requesters.
Last September the CIA issued new regulations specifying that
declassification reviews would now cost up to $72 per hour even if no
responsive records were found or released. There is also a minimum
fee of $15 for reproduction of any document, no matter how few pages
it might consist of.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2011/09/cia-mdr.html
"Search fees are assessable even if we find no records, or, if we find
any, we determine that we cannot release them," the CIA wrote last
month in response to an MDR request from the National Security
Archive. "Consequently, we will charge you even if our search results
are negative or if we cannot release any information. Accordingly, we
will need your commitment to pay applicable fees before we can
proceed."
For background and a critique of the new CIA policy, see "The CIA's
Covert Operation Against Declassification Review" by Nate Jones in the
Archive's Unredacted blog, February 10:
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
The Secrecy News Blog is at:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, go to:
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To UNSUBSCRIBE, go to
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OR email your request to saftergood@xxxxxxx
Secrecy News is archived at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html
Support the FAS Project on Government Secrecy with a donation:
http://www.fas.org/member/donate_today.html
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_______________________
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Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@xxxxxxx
voice: (202) 454-4691
twitter: @saftergood
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Other related posts:
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