A Push to Elevate Open Source Intelligence
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
2y ago
Open source intelligence — which is derived from open, unclassified sources — should be recognized as a mature intelligence discipline that is no less important than other established forms of intelligence, the House of Representatives said last month in the FY 2022 defense authorization act (sec. 1612). The House directed the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence to develop and implement “a plan to elevate open-source intelligence to a foundational intelligence for strategic intelligence that is treated on par with information collected from classified means ..read more
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Energy Dept Issues More Declassification Decisions
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
2y ago
The formerly classified fact that one metric ton of plutonium metal was to be moved from the Savannah River Site in 2019 for use in nuclear weapon pit production at Los Alamos was declassified in 2018. This recently disclosed declassification decision was one of a handful of such actions that are taken each year by the Department of Energy. DOE is required to perform “continuous review” of information that is classified under the Atomic Energy Act (sec. 2162) and to periodically determine which information can be removed from the category of Restricted Data and declassified. And so i ..read more
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US Army Views Chinese Military Tactics
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
2y ago
How would China fight a war against the US? A new US Army publication sets out to answer that question, offering a detailed account of the military tactics China could employ. See Chinese Tactics, Army Techniques Publication (ATP) 7-100.3, August 9, 2021. The 250-page document is mainly intended to help provide a realistic basis for training of US forces. But in doing so it sheds some new light on China’s military forces, at least as they are perceived by US military observers. It is based primarily on open sources. “This publication presents PLA [People’s Liberation Army] military theory larg ..read more
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New Declassification Reforms Are Classified
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
2y ago
Legislative measures to improve the process of declassifying classified national security information were introduced by Sen. Ron Wyden in the pending intelligence authorization act for FY2022. But they were included in the classified annex so their substance and import are not publicly known. “I remain deeply concerned about the failures of the Federal Government’s obsolete declassification system,” Sen. Wyden wrote in a statement that was included in the new Senate Intelligence Committee report on the intelligence bill. “I am therefore pleased that the classified annex to the bill ..read more
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Pentagon Sees “Increased Potential” for Nuclear Conflict
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
2y ago
The possibility that nuclear weapons could be used in regional or global conflicts is growing, said a newly disclosed Pentagon doctrinal publication on nuclear war fighting that was updated last year. “Despite concerted US efforts to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in international affairs and to negotiate reductions in the number of nuclear weapons, since 2010 no potential adversary has reduced either the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy or the number of nuclear weapons it fields. Rather, they have moved decidedly in the opposite direction,” the Department of ..read more
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DoD Again Presses for New FOIA Exemption
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
2y ago
The Department of Defense is once again asking Congress for an exemption from the Freedom of Information Act for certain unclassified military information including records on critical infrastructure and military tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs). The latest proposal was included in the Pentagon’s draft of legislative language for the Fiscal Year 2022 defense authorization act (section 1002, Nondisclosure of certain sensitive military information). Similar language has been proposed by DoD each year since 2015, and each year (so far) it has been rejected by Congress. (“DoD Se ..read more
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Nuclear Secrecy: In Defense of Reform
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
3y ago
One of the stranger features of nuclear weapons secrecy is the government’s ability to reach out and classify nuclear weapons-related information that has been privately generated without government involvement. This happened most recently in 2001. The roots of this constitutionally questionable policy are investigated in Restricted Data, a book by science historian Alex Wellerstein that sheds new light on the origins and development of nuclear secrecy. One might suppose that nuclear secrecy is merely incidental to the larger history of nuclear weapons, but Wellerstein demonstra ..read more
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A Self-Correcting Classification System?
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
3y ago
Those persons who have authorized access to classified information that they believe is improperly classified are “encouraged and expected” to challenge the classification of that information (Executive Order 13526, section 1.8). Sometimes they do. And every once in a while, their challenges lead to declassification of the information. A new report from the Government Accountability Office notes one recent example of a “classification challenge about military personnel overseas.” In that case, “as a result of the formal classification challenge, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for ..read more
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A Resurgence of Democracy in 2040?
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
3y ago
The world will be “increasingly out of balance and contested at every level” over the next twenty years due to the pressures of demographic, environmental, economic and technological change, a new forecast from the National Intelligence Council called Global Trends 2040 said last week. But among the mostly grim possible futures that can be plausibly anticipated — international chaos, political paralysis, resource depletion, mounting poverty — one optimistic scenario stands out: “In 2040, the world is in the midst of a resurgence of open democracies led by the United States and its allies ..read more
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Army Program Seeks to Heighten Soldiers’ Cognition
Secrecy News Blog Posts | Federation Of American Scientists
by Steven Aftergood
3y ago
A properly trained soldier can distinguish a vegetarian from a meat-eater based on their smell, a new Army publication says, since “different diets produce different human odors.” He or she can to determine the age, gender and even the mental state of a target by studying their footprints. Not simply a warrior, the ideal soldier is also an intelligence analyst, a cultural anthropologist, and a student of human nature with the ability to confront and overcome adversity — Sherlock Holmes and Leatherstocking and a bit of Tarzan, all in one. That, at any rate, seems to be the goal of the ..read more
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