We're experiencing the PITA of the classified stuff. My spouse just
finished a 25+ year hitech corporate career. She's since landed a much
kinder, simpler life as a new employee at one of the national labs. Where
they hope her clearance won't take more than 2 freaking years!! We lived
overseas for several years thus throwing additional sludge into an already
slooooow system. yes lovely; she's not really looking forward to two years
of being escorted to the can. Sheesh.
It sure seems like this is one area that could be quickly cleared up with
some social media searching and basic database checks. No listed legal
problems; a multi decade career, no social media posts praising some
terrorist group. Boom, grant the clearance. Ok, maybe make it conditional;
but grant it. The productivity gain would be immense. Ironically, her job
is to introduce more efficient corporate methods to this different culture.
The downside? Miniscule. First, the main damage seems to be from hacks.
Like the huge OPM database hack that exposed who knows how many millions of
US Gov employee's security applications.
https://www.wired.com/2016/10/inside-cyberattack-shocked-us-government/
And of the actual bad actors: Manning, Snowden, etc. They all had
clearances. It seems a lot more important to mnitor the ones who have the
clearances rather than so screw up the initial assigning of them.
Oops, guess I strayed a bit off topic, but it is a rather sore spot around
our household.
Cheers,
Brian
On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 9:20 PM, Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jan 2018, Paul Mueller wrote:
If the NRO briefed Congressional members and staff ... and these members
and staff ran to their phones to leak classified information on the success
or failure of the launch, then that scares the hell out of me. Does anybody
care about national security any more?
Lots of people, probably including most of the people involved in the
leaks. As with the excesses of ITAR, far too much is being classified, and
this is actively harmful to both the national interest and the interests of
the people involved, so people are finding informal ways to bypass the
logjam.
There is reason to worry, but it's not because (gasp) *classified* info is
leaking out. That's a false terror; most of it should never have been
classified in the first place. (For a thoughtful discussion of this, see
"Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Secrecy", 1 July 1970.
Sample: "Experience shows that, given time, a sophisticated, determined,
and unscrupulous adversary can usually penetrate the secrecy barriers of an
open society. The Soviet Union very rapidly gained knowledge of our
wartime work on nuclear weapons in spite of the very high level of
classification assigned to it. The barriers are apt to be far more
effective against restrained friends or against incompetents, and neither
pose serious threats.")
The reason to worry is that "most" word. The problem is that those
informal bypass routes don't always pay enough attention to whether some
things really should stay quiet, at least for a while. Especially so when
the leakers have personal axes to grind, and are not just altruistic
protectors of the nation.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't know anything about the mission and
haven't reached any conclusions about whether it failed or not. And that's
the way it should be!
The Defense Science Board Task Force (not exactly a bunch of dope-addled
peaceniks) again: "A democratic society requires knowledge of the facts in
order to assess its government's actions."
Henry
