[net-gold] Secrecy News -- 09/20/11
- From: "David P. Dillard" <jwne@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:24:07 -0400 (EDT)
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Date: Tue, 20 Sep 2011 10:22:50 -0400
From: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@xxxxxxx>
To: Steven Aftergood <saftergood@xxxxxxx>
Subject: Secrecy News -- 09/20/11
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SECRECY NEWS
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from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2011, Issue No. 90
September 20, 2011
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Secrecy News Blog:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/
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** NUMBER OF SECURITY CLEARANCES SOARS
** NRO DECLASSIFIES SECRET SPY SATELLITE HISTORY
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NUMBER OF SECURITY CLEARANCES SOARS
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The number of persons who held security clearances for access to classified
information last year exceeded 4.2 million -- far more than previously
estimated -- according to a new intelligence community report to Congress.
The report, which was required by the FY2010 intelligence authorization act,
provides the first precise tally of clearances held by federal employees and
contractors that has ever been produced. The total figure as of last
October 1 was 4,266,091 cleared persons. See "Report on Security Clearance
Determinations for Fiscal Year 2010," Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, September 2011.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/intel/clearance.pdf
In 2009, the Government Accountability Office had told Congress that about
2.4 million people held clearances "excluding some of those with clearances
who work in areas of national intelligence." ("More Than 2.4 Million Hold
Security Clearances," Secrecy News, July 29, 2009). But even with a
generous allowance for hundreds of thousands of additional intelligence
personnel, that estimate somehow missed more than a million clearances.
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2009/07/security_clearances.html
Likewise, one of the many startling findings in the 2010 Washington Post
series (and 2011 book) "Top Secret America" by Dana Priest and William M.
Arkin was that "An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people
as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances."
http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
But remarkably, that too was a significant underestimate, according to the
new report. In actual fact, as of October 2010 there were 1,419,051 federal
employees and contractors holding Top Secret clearances.
As high as the newly determined total number of clearances is, it may not be
the highest number ever. In the last decade of the cold war, a comparable
or greater number of persons seems to have had security clearances. In
those years the size of the uniformed military was much larger than today,
and a large fraction of its members were routinely granted clearances.
Thus, as of 1983, there were approximately 4.2 million clearances, according
to 1985 testimony from the GAO. But that was an estimate, not a
measurement, and the actual number might have been higher (or lower).
http://www.fas.org/sgp/gao/041685.pdf
By 1993, the post-cold war number had declined to around 3.2 million
clearances, according to another GAO report from 1995.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/gao/nsiad-95-101.pdf
The unexpectedly large number of security clearances today can presumably be
attributed to several related factors: the surge in military and
intelligence spending over the past decade, increased government reliance on
cleared contractors, and intensive classification activity that continues
today.
NRO DECLASSIFIES SECRET SPY SATELLITE HISTORY
On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, the National Reconnaissance Office
declassified and released thousands of pages of historical records
documenting the development and operation of its GAMBIT and HEXAGON
satellite programs. At first glance, many of the documents appear to be
interesting and substantial additions to the historical record on the
subject. (The associated satellite imagery does not yet seem to be
available.)
http://www.nro.gov/foia/declass/GAMBHEX.html
For more than a decade, the most detailed illustrations of the KH-9 HEXAGON
available to the public were a series of widely replicated line drawings
prepared by Charles P. Vick in the 1990s (when he was at the Federation of
American Scientists, as a matter of fact).
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/kh-9-schem.htm
Now that the KH-9 has been formally declassified and put on public display,
as it was last Saturday, it is possible to appreciate what a remarkably
perceptive job Mr. Vick did in portraying the satellite's structure and
operation.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/kh-9-pics.htm
For other accounts of the NRO anniversary releases see "KH-9 Hexagon Spy
Satellite Makes a Rare Public Outing" by Keith Cowing, September 17:
http://www.onorbit.com/node/3850
and "Big Black Throws a Party" by Dwayne Day, The Space Review, September
19:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1931/1
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_______________________________________________
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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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