“OSINT should be more secret” – Wrong!

Jennifer Sims of Georgetown University recently made remarks at the Open Source conference that “open source intelligence should be more secret” — I totally disagree. This is exactly the mindset and secretive culture we need to get away from. While she makes a good case that sometimes open source intelligence products can tell the enemy what critical pieces of information decision makers are seeking, she overstates the risk that unclassified open source reports actually have.

The co-chair of the 9/11 commission, Lee Hamilton, issued scathing remarks against the U.S. government’s propensity to classify information that had no business being classified, putting a huge burden on the special handling requirements and red tape that must be performed to manage that information and eventually declassify it. Additionally, the Director of National Intelligence issued an information sharing policy memorandum calling for intelligence products to be written at the lowest classification, even unclassified, if possible, without loosing context. Moreover, homeland security, law enforcement, and first responders need intelligence in the unclassified form to do their jobs.

Instead, if open source information answers a policymaker’s question, and it is sensitive, then the IC should mark it “CUI” a caveat that means it’s controlled but unclassified. This way it can be released across the federal government, but isn’t posted on the internet or other widely public forums for the world (our enemies) to see. We have a responsibility to provide intelligence information to the widest audience possible.

DNI directs ‘analytic outreach’ for US intelligence community

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell recently signed Intelligence Community Directive 205 (ICD 205), titled “Analytic Outreach, directing analysts across all elements of the Intelligence Community (IC) to engage with individuals outside the IC to explore ideas and alternate perspectives, gain new insights, generate new knowledge, or obtain new information. This is quite a change in attitude from the often risk averse culture in the IC, particularly the CIA. There are of coarse limits and rules to follow, but I think this moves us in the right direction for the 21st century, as well as answers one of the key recommendations of the WMD Commission. This guy gets it…

Security clearance process to be limited to 60 days…

Security clearance process to be limited to 60 days, according to Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence. Officials said the U.S. intelligence community (IC) has been hampered by a shortage of translators and analysts in languages used by Al Qaida.

If there’s something that keeps highly qualified individuals, both from here and abroad, from joining the IC, it’s the ridiculously long security clearance process. If ODNI leadership can help agencies standardize and speed up the process, we’ll see a huge benefit in capability rather quickly…

Social Software Use in the Intelligence Community: Interview with Mr. Chris Rasmussen

Check out the interview with Mr. Chris Rasmussen of NGA on emarv’s blog, discussing the Intelligence Community’s use of social software tools, such as their wiki, Intellipedia. It’s worth your time!

IC seeking recruits from immigrant communities

DNI Mike McConnell reached out recently to Arab- and Asian-Americans to discuss recruiting issues… if the Office of the DNI can fix the broken sytem for hiring people with language and culture skills it so desperately needs, it will vastly improve the IC’s capabilities…

See: The DNI’s 500 Day Plan for Integration and Collaboration

Settling the FISA Dispute – Objectively

I’ve debated heavily whether or not I should blog on this topic, particularly as it has entered the political arena where I wish to stay out of. Yet I can no longer stand on the sidelines as news stories, blogs, and websites continue to show the propensity to inaccurately portray the issue (sites such as media matters, USA Today, and the New York Times) dividing people’s opinions on the matter along party lines. This issue has been grossly misrepresented in the media and blogosphere, and I hope this entry will rectify the disinformation. All of these false accusations and allegations by both sides stem from one erroneous assertion: that the Protect America Act (PAA) revised the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to expand the government’s authority to eavesdrop on Americans’ domestic-to-foreign communications without a warrant. This is absolutely false. The following is an objective look at the FISA debate. I do not address the issue of granting immunity to telecommunication companies who responded to lawful requests by the government.

Before 1978, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency were tapping the phones of U.S. citizens–people like Dr. Martin Luther King, protesters of the Vietnam War, etc.–based on the logic that the U.S. government was authorized to tap the telephone of foreign powers or agents of a foreign power. So the system was being abused. In 1978, FISA was established to prescribe the procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of “foreign intelligence information” between or among “foreign powers” on territory under United States control. The Act was amended by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 to include non-state actors who inherently are not directly supported by a foreign government. As designed, the law protects the U.S. from foreign/terrorist security threats as well as the civil liberties of persons located in the U.S. Essentially, the law said “if you conduct surveillance in the United States, you’ve got to get a warrant from a special FISA court.”

The law was never designed to require a warrant to conduct surveillance against a foreign target outside the United States. This is where the problem arose. FISA contained provisions tied to specific communication technologies–wire. At that time, there was no Internet and no cell phones–global communication was done through (wireless) satellite relay. Since the Act’s passage, telecommunications technology has significantly changed. Now approximately 90% of the world communication is on fiber optic cables (wire), which will very likely pass through the U.S., which requires a warrant under the law. Thus, the Intelligence Community has been bringing cases before the FISA court for which it was never designed. The newly created Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), which was established after 9/11 to coordinate the activities of the 16 agencies of the intelligence community, recognized this problem. The Director, Michael McConnell, brought this issue to Congress in 2007, and led effort to amend the Act, which was subsequently accomplished through the Protect America Act (PAA) of 2007. This law allowed wiretapping without a warrant when the target of surveillance is a “foreign intelligence target” located outside the United States, but, in a compromise with Democrats, contained a sunset provision for the new Act.

So, regardless of the mudslinging back and forth, a warrant is still required if surveillance is to be conducted against a U.S. person, period.

See Also:

1. http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20070802_release.pdf
2. http://fas.org/irp/news/2007/04/doj041307.pdf

 

Re: Some ideas on oversight

I really liked one of Michael Tangi’s recent blogs “Some ideas on oversight,” where he says to “move as much of the IC out of DC as you can as fast as you can. Get people out of the shadow of the political circus tents and they’re less likely to pay attention or feel influenced by it all. Bonus: you radically jack up the resilience of the community to attack, infrastructure failure, or other disaster.”

Moving the IC out of DC would not only reduce the political pressures so influential in DC and make the community more reslient to attack, but it would also greatly expand the pool of potential new employees who may not be willing or able to work in DC. The information-age makes flattening out our physical locations achievable. Physical location should no longer be the primary organization principle. Geat idea. (I believe Chris Rasmussen of NGA has expressed this idea before as well)

Re: Don Kerr: Call Charlie Allen

Michael Tanji blogged recently about Don Kerr’s recent statements that privacy no longer can mean anonymity. While I often find myself agreeing with Tanji’s assessment on current national security related issues, I disagree with his assessment that Don Kerr believes Americans must surrender their privacy for government to ensure their safety. In fact, the very proposal that Michael suggests as an alternative to Kerr (i.e., assigning a unique identifier to be used in place of a real name so whether you’re an FBI Special Agent or NSA analyst, you can talk about an entity freely because you’re not violating “anyone’s” privacy) to me is exactly what Don Kerr was saying. The definition of privacy may no longer mean anonymity–because we give up the what, when, where, and how everyday with daily transactions. Bottom line: I think Donald Kerr is saying we have to think about privacy differently, and not in terms of anonymity, and if we do so, privacy and security need not be paradoxical forces. The rise of one does not mean the unraveling of the other. Both are achievable. Let there be no dobut: the U.S. must continue the legacy of protecting the rights of Americans.