I was absolutely astounded to read this article in the Washington Post.
More than 4.2 million people have security clearances for access to classified information, a number that vastly outstrips previous estimates and nearly rivals the population of metropolitan Washington.
The number was disclosed in a new report that was mandated by Congress and marks the first time that the government has produced a detailed accounting of the clearances issued to federal, military and contract employees.
The official count is so much greater than previous estimates that it caught security experts off-guard. Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists said the new total is an “astonishingly large figure” and “another reminder of how quickly the national security bureaucracy has expanded over the past decade.”
. . .
The vast majority of clearance holders are federal employees or members of the U.S. armed services. But more than a million contractors also have access to classified information. Remarkably, nearly as many contractors hold top secret clearances (524,990) as do federal workers (666,008).
There’s more at the link. Bold print is my emphasis.
This is so mind-bogglingly stupid as to defy reason! I’ve held a top-level security clearance myself, although in another country, and I know the extreme measures that were taken to clear me to get it (it took almost six months, even though I’d already been through four security checks for lower-level clearances). I also know that for such confidential items of information, the fewer people who know them, the more secure they are. It’s an old truism that the risk of a secret being compromised rises exponentially with the number of people knowing it.
If we now have over four million people with security clearances, I’m willing to bet that at least half of them, probably two-thirds of them, and perhaps as many as three-quarters of them, don’t actually need to know the information that’s being so freely provided to them. This is being driven by bureaucratic bloat, not necessity! Also, if so many know our secrets right now, is it any wonder that organizations like Wikileaks can get their hands on so many of them? Or that our national rivals like China and Russia are able to obtain so much of our proprietary information?
Sheesh!
Peter
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There are a few reasons for this from a military standpoint. One has to do with our increasing reliance on radios. 10 years ago, you only had 3 radios in a 43 man platoon that had crypto which required a clearance to use. Now it is not uncommon to see 6 or 7 crypto filled radios in a 12 man squad. That means that every single grunt that is eligible for a clearance is issued one by the time they hit the Fleet.
Another reason is that with the increased fielding of classified network access down to the company and platoon level, more people than ever require a clearance for access.
It is to the point that an Infantry Platoon Sergeant is required to have a secret clearance in order to reenlist in the USMC.
Unfortunately, by granting all of those clearances,You are correct that there is a lot of access to information that people should not be accessing.
The net effect is that the truly sensitive material gets classified further into SAP–Special Access Programs, which are prolific but well protected.
Leatherneck
The first time my ex-husband's military security clearance needed renewed after 9/11, I had an investigator visit me at home and conduct an extensive interview (but not a single contact since, even though he is now a defense contractor with the Middle East as his primary territory). I thought it interesting that their line of questioning was clearly indicative of determining whether he had financial issues that would make him susceptible to taking bribes. They had no interest in what I would think were red flags.
Back in the dark ages I spent a few years working for a contractor. At first my work justified the TS+ clearances I was issued, but after a while I moved into other areas that required absolutely no access to even the lowest level of classified material. Still, I and everyone else in the facility was required to hold at least a Secret clearance, simply because other people (in other parts of the building, behind locked and monitored doors) were doing classified work. As a result I still held TS+ clearance for a couple of years until they got around to reviewing everybody's clearances, at which time those of us not doing classified work were given Secret clearances, because that's just the was things worked.
Come on Peter, government officials misspend everything else- how can you expect them not to do the same with knowledge? Government contracts are already so wasteful as to be scandalous, but here is a perk easily conferred on folks under the pretext that it is vital to national security interests. Those with the clearances in turn, make a lot of money making trades based on what they know, and often provide former gov. officials with cushy jobs.
A lot of contractors clearances are just in case they have to work on a secure job with the skillsets unique to them. 99% of the time you never even see a confidential paper, and then even within a secure project, you'll only be exposed at the absolute minimum to do your job so it's not really as bad as it looks. The scary thing is how much all those clearances cost at roughly $10,000 each
There are a couple of issues–As Justin said, military encripted radios is one issue–and as I understand it, there are stupid rules on military use of encryption that mean every transmission has to be either in the clear, or with NSA-grade, clearance-required encryption.
The other is that basic entry-level tech support on a non-classified government network still requires a Secret clearance. I had an interim Secret clearance for a temporary job upgrading computers from XP to Vista.
It sounds to me like govt bureaucracies are using security clearances like the chemical industry uses contractor safety training. It isn't usually necessary, but everyone has to have it.
MechAg94
The "other side" of it is this: the Gummint has vastly increased the amount of classified info (to an extent that is ludicrous in some cases.)
Not 'classified' but an example: the Census Bureau issued street maps which showed locations (not resident names, nor addresses) of residences which did NOT return mailed Census forms. The maps were given to followup workers who had to contact the residents and manually go through the short-form Census.
The Bureau also required that the maps be returned to the Bureau, not simply tossed into the trash as any normal human being would do.
Justin and Leatherneck are BOTH correct… And it's $40 for a TS clearance and up to 8 months to complete.
One other aspect of US security classification I don't see being mentioned much is that of Need To Know. Despite my (then) Top Secret security clearance, I still had to demonstrate the aforementioned "need to know" to gain access to any of the technical data pertinent to the device I was helping load on an aircraft bomb rack. Atempting to skirt that restriction was grounds for loss of your clearance and a possibly lengthy stay as an unwilling guest of the government.
Security clearance bloat and classification mania are both rampant, but it's not all as dour as it's been presented in the linked article. Else, why so few contributors to Wikileaks, given the (almost literal) universe of potential sources?
Previously I worked as a contractor with a security clearance… I don't know why I needed it and I don't know how I could have accessed anything that should have been confidential. I was told we were given clearance for one level higher than required as a "just in case" scenario…
I had a Secret with crypto in the Navy. After reading some of the comments, I no longer feel special. 🙂