[governance] FW: [IP] Top secret clearance holders so numerous they include 'packers/craters'

[michael gurstein]

The issue which is not addressed here but is elsewhere (cf. the widely
quoted work of James Bamford) of the acess/use of surveillance information
for corporate or business agendas which would appear to be also completely
out of control including through the massive numbers of those with
appropriate security clearances and at least some degree of secure
information access.  

This potentially puts non-US businesses of all types and in all places at an
enormous competitive disadvantage.  

If the US surveillance system essentially has access to whatever information
it wishes to access and if that system is accessible either directly or
indirectly (as for example through bribery or through say the promise of
future benefits/jobs/perks etc.) to specific corporate interests then any
notions of "free and competitive markets" are put into very serious
question.

M

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave at farber.net] 
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2013 10:59 AM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Top secret clearance holders so numerous they include
'packers/craters'



Begin forwarded message:

From: Allan Davidson <AllanD at SoundBytesRadio.com>
Subject: Top secret clearance holders so numerous they include
'packers/craters'
Date: June 13, 2013 10:30:11 AM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave at farber.net>



Don't know if you've seen this yet, Dave

Best


Allan



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/06/12/top-secret-clea
rance-holders-so-numerous-they-include-packerscraters/?wpisrc=nl_cuzheads

Top secret clearance holders so numerous they include 'packers/craters'



Edward Snowden (GUARDIAN/GLENN GREENWALD/LAURA POITRAS)

The U.S. intelligence community and its legions of private contractors has
grown so vast, and has required so many of its employees to secure
high-level security clearances, that even people whose job is to move boxes
now hold top secret clearance.

According to Bloomberg News, a private contractor called CACI International
Inc. that works with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies is looking for a
"packer/crater" with a top secret clearance. The CACI job listing, which is
publicly viewable, says that the employee will "perform the full range of
routine to moderately-complex packing and/or crating of various materials to
include chillers, generators, boats, and vehicles for shipment domestically
or overseas."

It's not clear why packing boxes would require security clearance. Unless,
of course, the issue has less to do with sensitive government secrets than
with the ever-expanding U.S. security clearance system.

As many as 4 million people hold "top secret" security clearance, of which
500,000 are private contractors. One reason for this trend is that the U.S.
government has become so reflexive about classifying information, much of
which is not nearly as sensitive as an NSA spying program, that clearance
are required even for totally banal work.

One effect of this classification of nearly everything, and subsequent
granting of clearances to nearly everyone, is that all it takes is one or
two loose cannons among those 4 million clearance-holders to spill out
government secrets. Whether or not you think Edward Snowden was morally
right to release the information about U.S. telecommunications monitoring to
the public, he represents what is becoming a significant problem for U.S.
intelligence.

As the Washington Post's Greg Miller put it, Snowden and Bradley Manning,
who released thousands of classified diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, are
both "leakers who worked at the lowest levels of the nation's intelligence
ranks but gained access to large caches of classified material."

The intelligence community's weakness here is that its classification of so
much data and its reliance on private contractors mean that lots and lots of
people who might not need access to top secret data are still required to
get the clearance. And once there are millions of people poking around
behind the clearance wall, it's only a matter of time until one of them
decides to release some of it. Because once you're granting so many people
access to top secret information that even professional box-packers are on
the list, it's not really so secret anymore.








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