The Government's Befuddling Nomenclature
The Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden
media circus' have unsympathetically shone a floodlight on the
clandestine, abstruse and clever ways the US Government denotes
relevant intel, the methods it uses to collect the information and
who ultimately gets to read it.
It
would be difficult to find many people who are bold enough to admit
they believe that all information the Government accumulates should
be immediately declassified and beholden to public scrutiny. However,
there is a vast and palpable number of citizens and civil servants
who opine that once the critical period of secrecy has been abated
then the information ought to be freely disseminated.
TheWashington Post has reported that more than 800,000 people hold
Top-Secret clearances in the United States. That is a monumental
total of people who have access to various levels of government
gossip and national secrecy. Despite that fact, the US Government had
imposed a sliding scale of information gag orders which inhibits a
free flow of information to it's citizenry. The opening phrase,“we
the people” in the American Constitution, implies that the citizens
of the US are the employers of government officials. As employers we
are ipso facto entitled to know just what they've been up to. Whether
it be digital snooping, Old Skool wiretappings and surveillance or
self imposed discretionary memos and communiques; the people of the
US have a codified right to “be in” on the secret not to forget a
fundamental quid pro quo right: our tax dollars are paying for it.
So
what are our rights, by law, to be privy to the secrets? An act of Congress was needed in order to bestow upon US citizens the right to view government secrets.The Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA)
was officially signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966
and took effect in 1967. FOIA is a law which mandates the full or
partial disclosure of hitherto unreleased information and documents
created by the United States government. FOIA is explicit in its
wording to only apply to the agencies which fall under the Executive
Branch of government. Formally, the agencies are subject to penalties
for noncompliance and or obstructing the process after a petition has
been filed for release of information.
Nonetheless,
high profile subject matter, which is classified at some level of
secrecy, is often seen as an overt governmental practice of
dalliance.
The
amount of reasons which motivate people to demand peeking at
declassified documents is almost as vast as the categories of
government secrets. Their latent paranoia might be whetted by the
recent divulgences of unsavory NSA surveillance. Or maybe it's more
prosaic like the apocryphal high level coverups of bigfoot, The
Bermuda Triangle, and Area 51. A matrix of secret keeping is a tool
any investigator needs to change conspiracy theory to conspiracy
fact. Here follows a list of the varied levels of clearance and
secrecy of government documentation: Top, Middle and Bottom Secret.
Top
Secret (TS):
The
highest level of secrecy. A code word is often attached to Top Secret
in order to further refine who can view the information. If this
secret were to be made public the government makes the assumption
that it could lead to "exceptionally grave damage" of
national security.
Secret:
This information,
according to the government, needs to be kept secret because it might
cause "serious damage" to national security.
Confidential:
Information
causing "damage" or is thought to be "prejudicial"
to national security is confidential secret. It is often referred to
as “classified”.
Restricted:
If this
information leaked out then "undesirable effects" would
befall national security.
Unclassified,
Sensitive and Controlled:
These secrets are
occasionally privy to eyes without security clearance. This is by far
the most dizzying array of quasi-classifications are formulated in
this level of secrecy.
Sensitive But
Unclassified (SBU):
This is the level of secrecy which connotes
information in the United States federal government requiring strict
and limited controls over its distribution. It can be applied to For
Official Use Only (FOUO), Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES), Sensitive
Homeland Security Information, Security Sensitive Information (SSI),
Critical Infrastructure Information (CII) ad infinitum. Including in
this level are also Internal Revenue Service documents like
individual tax records, systems information, and enforcement
procedures.
PARD
(Protect as restricted data):
These are secrets which are
unclassified but sensitive and utilized by the Department of Energy.
Limited Distribution, Proprietary, Originator Controlled, Law Enforcement Sensitive:
The secrets here are all nebulous classifications of secrecy designed by the Pentagon attempted in 2011 to exempt from President Obama's Executive Order 13556. These are still evolving.
