Are government leakers bringing about the end of secrets?
| Washington
If millions of people know something, can it really be considered a secret anymore? That鈥檚 one of the questions at the heart of an ongoing debate in Washington about how much, and which, documents to classify in the age of Wikileaks, iPhones, and Edward Snowden.
The US government has found it increasingly difficult to secure the deluge of digitally-classified information on its systems 鈥撀爁rom personnel records to hacking tools.
That challenge, underscored by Mr. Snowden鈥檚 leaks of details exposing the National Security Agency鈥檚 top-secret surveillance programs, has given transparency experts new hope that they can help intelligence agencies take advantage of new thinking around classification to ensure that what needs to be secret stays secret.
鈥淭he calculation has changed recently, because a single individual, either out of negligence or malice or some other motive, can disclose whole libraries of records,鈥� says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists鈥� Project on Government Secrecy. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 something the government has not yet figured out how to deter or prevent.鈥�
The question of classification is one the federal government has grappled with before. At the height of the Watergate scandal that eventually brought down President Nixon, Congress appeared to be on the verge of a sweeping domestic policy overhaul 鈥� and it wasn鈥檛 an effort to reform the social safety net or create millions of jobs. With trust in the presidency then at an all-time low, legislators appeared ready to bring to light the classified national security secrets that had piled up in the White House.
鈥淭hat was a time when Congress hadn鈥檛 clearly blessed the classification system,鈥� says David Pozen, a law professor at Columbia University in New York.
Yet even with Congress clamoring for reform, that push to regulate what the US government makes secret 鈥� a procedure that鈥檚 historically been determined by the White House 鈥� didn鈥檛 bring about the legislated system of classification rules that some expected. Instead, a patchwork system emerged: Alongside the Church and Pike Committees that established congressional oversight of the intelligence community, the Freedom of Information Act allowed the public to request classified documents.
Combating the threat
With a scourge of suspected leaks聽allegedly involving hackers and disgruntled leakers who can make those records public with just the push of a button, the question of prevention has come to forefront in the past year.
In March, WikiLeaks dumped a cache of purported CIA hacking tools that exploited security vulnerabilities in iPhones, Android devices, Samsung TV sets, and Microsoft systems to carry out covert cyberoperations. Meanwhile, the Shadow Brokers group, which threatened to auction off a gigabyte-sized trove of alleged NSA hacking tools last summer, appears to have returned with a vengeance, . Those tools have already allowed hackers to remotely break into an array of consumer-facing Windows systems, .
Elsewhere, a former contractor for NSA鈥檚 Tailored Access Operations hacking group, Harold T. Martin, walked out of the Ft. Meade, Md., facility with more than 75 percent of the elite unit鈥檚 cybersecurity tools 鈥� including multimillion dollar exploits designed by the agency 鈥� according to The Washington Post. While Mr. Martin with 20 counts of willfully retaining classified information, it may be too late to undo the damage.
鈥淎ll they require now is a smart phone and internet access,鈥� said CIA Director Mike Pompeo, at a Washington think tank last month. 鈥淚n today's digital environment, they can disseminate stolen US secrets instantly around the globe to terrorists, dictators, hackers, and anyone else seeking to do us harm.鈥�
How the system works
Yet the system for classifying that information, transparency experts complain, is poorly understood and isn鈥檛 widely seen as legitimate across the scope of the US government.
The majority of US presidents since the end of World War II have issued executive orders that establish boundaries for the classification of American secrets.
The most recent iteration of those rules, established by the Obama administration in 2010, specifically mandates the authorities that can categorize US government records as secret, and allows for information to be declassified as soon as it won鈥檛 harm national security. It also created the National Declassification Center, an agency designed to coordinate those efforts.
鈥淚t鈥檚 just a modest tool compared to the size of the problem,鈥� says Professor Pozen. 鈥淲hat we haven鈥檛 seen is fundamental reform. We鈥檝e seen tweaks at the margin.鈥�
Although transparency experts worried that then-President Barack Obama鈥檚 wasn鈥檛 clear about defining when public interest outweighed the need for secrecy 鈥撀爐he US government鈥檚 standard for declassification 鈥撀爄t appeared to have some impact. The US Information Security Oversight Office reported that in 2014 the number of government classification decisions dropped by 18.5 percent .
Mr. Obama also signed into law the earlier that year that aimed to promote the sharing of information between state, local, and federal officials, bowing to the failure of US government officials to share information ahead of the Sept. 11 attacks. That measure generally , though transparency experts complained they weren鈥檛 subjected to more external scrutiny by US government agencies.
But there are also national security implications behind the overclassification battle, experts say. 9/11 commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste that failure to share information was the "single biggest reason" why the US government couldn't stop the attacks, and said that declassification could contribute to the free flow of information.
New thinking
鈥淪nowden was actually the collapse of secrecy,鈥� says Richard Aldrich, a professor of history who specializes in intelligence at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. 鈥淓ver since 9/11 we've rushed to share material, we've also had an increase in the size of the intelligence community. By definition, when 5 or 6 million people know something, it's definitely not secret anymore.鈥�
Yet even before Snowden鈥檚 leaks, the US government began thinning the ranks of contractors and employees holding security clearances, according the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Between 2010 and 2015, the number of US government security clearances in circulation sank from 4.7 million to 4.3 million, thanks to an Obama-era the number of cleared individuals by 10 percent by 2018.
Last April, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper calling for the 16 agencies of the US intelligence community to proactively declassify documents, eliminate some low standards of classification, and reduce the number of officials who can make classification decisions. The Trump administration hasn鈥檛 announced any efforts to continue those programs.
But the biggest problem when it comes to determining US government secrets, some experts think, is that Washington isn鈥檛 always following the reviews it aims to put in place. Though the Obama-era executive order calls on agencies to declassify information automatically after 25 years, Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice鈥檚 Liberty and National Security program at New York University to facilitate declassification before that point.
Or maybe, says Pozen, policymakers could find a solution to the problem by looking to the Nixon-era efforts of the past.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a lot of money spent on the classification side, and there鈥檚 very little spent on the declassification side,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t couldn鈥檛 hurt to have Congress get serious about the issue.鈥�
