You can argue about the effectiveness of the United States’ national security classification program, but there’s no disputing one point: Keeping secrets costs money—lots of it. Last year, executive branch agencies shelled out an estimated $11.4 billion on classified information systems and other facets of the program, according to an annual report released this week by the Information Security Oversight Office, a branch of the National Archives and Records Administration. That’s up 12 percent–or $1.2 billion–from 2010, and more than double the figure from a decade ago. The actual tab to taxpayers is likely much higher, because the report doesn’t…
Browsing: Information Security Oversight Office
At the National Archives’ Information Security Oversight Office, they were celebrating today’s release of a first-ever registry for controlled unclassified information, as the government describes records deemed worthy of some protection but not outright classification as secret, top secret, etc. Although a lot of work remains, the new registry “is certainly an important milestone,” John Fitzpatrick, the office’s director, said in a phone interview this morning. To date, agencies have pretty much been winging it in deciding what should fall under the CUI umbrella and what to call it (Examples include “Sensitive,” Law Enforcement Sensitive,” and “For Official Use Only”). …
As of today, the Information Security Oversight Office has a new director in the person of John P. Fitzpatrick, a former top security official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. ISOO, part of the National Archives and Records Administration, is a small but critical cog in oversight of the government’s security classification system. The agency has also been charged with bringing order to the mishmash of agency approaches for handling controlled unclassified information. “A strong advocate for information sharing and protection, he has demonstrated his ability to lead and oversee change both within and beyond the intelligence…
It appears that the Obama administration trusts the nation’s governors to keep a secret. Sort of. In a newly issued executive order on access to classified national security information, the administration said that governors can see such information without undergoing a background investigation, but first have to sign a non-disclosure agreement and can’t have any “disqualifying conduct” in the eyes of the clearance-granting official. Their clearances also can’t go beyond the “Secret” level, except on a case-by-case basis. “To my knowledge, this is a new provision,” said Steven Aftergood, a government secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists who…