[Intelforum] Secrecy News -- 02/13/12

Mon Feb 13 11:15:09 EST 2012

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SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2012, Issue No. 12
February 13, 2012

Secrecy News Blog:  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/

**     AGENCIES TOLD TO REPORT ON DECLINE IN SECRECY
**     DOD ENVISIONS "ROUTINE" UAS ACCESS TO US AIRSPACE
**     CIA ADDS HURDLES TO MANDATORY REVIEW REQUESTS

AGENCIES TOLD TO REPORT ON DECLINE IN SECRECY

After all the speeches about greater openness have been delivered and the
news releases about secrecy reform have been filed away, one may ask:  What
has actually been accomplished?  How much improper secrecy has been
eliminated?  Specific answers to such questions may soon be forthcoming.

The Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO), which is responsible for
oversight of the national security classification system, wants agencies to
answer those questions when they submit their final reports on the
Fundamental Classification Guidance Review in June 2012.  The Fundamental
Review was mandated by President Obama's 2009 executive order 13526
(section 1.9) in order to identify and cancel classification requirements
that were obsolete or unnecessary. The Review process is the Obama
Administration's primary response to the widely acknowledged problem of
overclassification.

In a memorandum to senior agency officials last month, ISOO Director John
P. Fitzpatrick instructed them how to report the results of each agency's
Fundamental Review, and asked them to explain what practical difference the
Review made.

"To the greatest extent possible, the reports should be informative as to
how much information that was classified is no longer classified as a
result of the review," Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote.  "The report should also
provide the best estimate of how much information that would normally have
been classified in the future will now not become classified," he
continued.

The message here is that the Fundamental Review was not supposed to be
some merely perfunctory exercise, but was intended to advance a specific
policy objective, namely a reduction in the scope of secrecy.  

It may succeed, to one degree or another, or it may fail.  In either case,
Mr. Fitzpatrick's reporting requirements should generate useful clarity
about the outcome.  See "Reporting Results of Fundamental Classification
Guidance Reviews to ISOO," memorandum to selected senior agency officials,
January 23, 2012:

	http://www.fas.org/sgp/isoo/fcgr-012312.pdf

In a January 31 interim status report on the Fundamental Review, the
Department of Homeland Security said it had eliminated 2 classification
guides out of 22 guides that had been reviewed to date.

	http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dhs/fcgr-0112.pdf

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it had also retired two guides.

	http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/nrc/fcgr-013012.pdf

DOD ENVISIONS "ROUTINE" UAS ACCESS TO US AIRSPACE

The Department of Defense currently seeks expanded access to U.S. airspace
for its unmanned aerial systems (UASs), and it anticipates the routine use
of military UAS in the National Airspace System (NAS) as a long-term goal,
according to a 25 year roadmap for UAS development.

"The number of UAS in the DoD inventory is growing rapidly.  The increase
in numbers, as well as the expanding roles of UAS, has created a strong
demand for access to national and international airspace and has quickly
exceeded the current airspace available for military operations," according
to DoD's Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap, FY2011-2036, dated October
2011.

	http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/usroadmap2011.pdf

"The [desired] end state is routine NAS access comparable to manned
aircraft for all DoD UAS," the DoD Roadmap said.  "DoD's immediate focus is
gaining near-term mission-critical access while simultaneously working
toward far-term routine NAS access."

"Current UAS are built to different specifications for different purposes;
therefore, showing individually that each system is safe for flight in the
NAS can be complicated, time consuming, and costly," the Roadmap stated. 
"Routine access cannot happen until DoD and FAA agree to an acceptable
level of safety for UAS, and the appropriate standards are developed to
meet that threshold."

Under current procedures, the Federal Aviation Administration permits a
small number of DoD UAS flights outside of restricted military areas.  But
the present FAA certification process "does not provide the level of
airspace access necessary to accomplish the wide range of DoD UAS missions
at current and projected operational tempos.  This constraint will only be
exacerbated as combat operations in Southwest Asia wind down and systems
are returned to U.S. locations."

In the newly enacted FAA authorization act and the 2012 National Defense
Authorization Act, Congress mandated "accelerated" integration of UASs into
U.S. airspace.  ("Congress Calls for Accelerated Use of Drones in U.S.,"
Secrecy News, February 3;  "Drones Over U.S. Get OK by Congress" by Shaun
Waterman, Washington Times, February 7;  "Among Liberties Advocates,
Outrage Over Expanded Use of Drones" by Channing Joseph, New York Times The
Lede, February 7.)

"Over the next 15 years more than 23,000 UAS jobs could be created in the
U.S. as the result of UAS integration into the NAS," according to a 2010
report by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a UAS
industry advocacy group. "These new jobs will include positions in
industry, academia, federal government agencies and the civilian/commercial
UAS end-user community."

CIA ADDS HURDLES TO MANDATORY REVIEW REQUESTS

In recent years the Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) process has
become an increasingly useful alternative to the Freedom of Information Act
by which members of the public can challenge the classification of
government records.  Remarkably, agency classification positions have been
overturned with some frequency in the MDR appeals process, which is
something that almost never happens in FOIA litigation.

In a dubious act of recognition of the growing effectiveness of MDR, the
Central Intelligence Agency has recently imposed substantial new fees that
seem calculated to discourage its use by public requesters.

Last September the CIA issued new regulations specifying that
declassification reviews would now cost up to $72 per hour even if no
responsive records were found or released.  There is also a minimum fee of
$15 for reproduction of any document, no matter how few pages it might
consist of.

	http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2011/09/cia-mdr.html

"Search fees are assessable even if we find no records, or, if we find
any, we determine that we cannot release them," the CIA wrote last month in
response to an MDR request from the National Security Archive. 
"Consequently, we will charge you even if our search results are negative
or if we cannot release any information.  Accordingly, we will need your
commitment to pay applicable fees before we can proceed."

For background and a critique of the new CIA policy, see "The CIA's Covert
Operation Against Declassification Review" by Nate Jones in the Archive's
Unredacted blog, February 10:

	http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/

_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web:    www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email:  saftergood at fas.org
voice:  (202) 454-4691
twitter: @saftergood