Feb.07

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Setec Astronomy, Part II

Last week, we had an item in which we shared readers' comments on classified documents (see that item for an explanation of the headline, if you don't recognize "Setec Astronomy"). Today, we'd like to run a few more of those reader comments:

• J.L.H. in Los Altos, CA: My career was mostly in SCIFs at the Top Secret/codeword level. I totally agree that much (most, depending on how your staff mathematician measures this) material is over-classified. I have known a public telephone number of a major corporation to be considered Secret and handled as such, merely because it was in our SCIF and our association with that company was Secret. But just to lighten the conversation, here is a contrary example: When our manager wanted some publicity photos of us at work, to ensure that no classified info was visible in the photos we were all ordered (during work hours, of course) to be playing a moon-lander video game on our monitors.
  
  
• A.H. in Newberg, OR: This is part of my life story. It is from my experience +/-50 years ago during the Vietnam era.
  
  I was a "Communication Center Specialist" (switchboard and teletype operator) I had a TS/Crypto clearance... part of my job was encrypting and decrypting coded messages. We had to send and receive one per month. The device, a KL-7, is an updated version of the German Enigma machine of World War II. Usually, we would send back and forth with a different training base. There were a lot of jokes from Playboy shared through "classified" encrypted messages. With nothing better to do, I sat down one night to take care of my monthly obligation. I start typing in the first 5 letter groups and I look at the tape coming out. "UNCLASS EFTO AFEO" (Unclassified, encrypt for transmission only, Air Force eyes only). HOLY S**T. This is a real one. I just blew up the pattern, and started over. I finally got it broken down. It spits the message out on a strip of paper. You then take the strip, cut it into page length lines and glue it to a piece of paper. You seal it in an envelope marked "Classified." Then you call the duty officer and tell him you have a classified message that he needs to pick up immediately and notify the appropriate addressee (remember, this is an E-3 Airman First, telling a 1st Lieutenant to get his ass in gear). The next morning I was still at work when the civilian from the base personnel office strolled over to talk to my NCOIC and ask if the spelling on one of the words was correct. The message was really, really, extremely important: The base was instructed not to hire any dependent children to mow lawns or do other similar maintenance on base during the summer due to budgetary restrictions. Hell, they could have just written a memo and sent it through the regular mail.
  
  I will acknowledge that it said "unclassified."I was stationed at a small backwater pilot training base in South Georgia. 99+% of what we did was "UNCLAS EFTO AFEO," but still, it was a secure system. Everything we sent or received went through a scrambler. Once a year, some strangers in civilian clothes would come through for a couple of days. We were told don't talk to them, don't acknowledge them, they don't exist. They would inspect our facility, look for compromised equipment, scan the building for loose electronic leaks, then disappear. I do not know which alphabet agency they were with.
  
  
• C.I. in Chevy Chase, MD: I think you are exactly right in your explanation of why secret documents can be controlled on a submarine, but not in other situations. All the "three-letter agencies" have large buildings that are entirely a SCIF, with hundreds of employees, and it's just not possible to sign documents in and out from a central authority. And the often-stated fact that some documents are highly classified as a means of drawing attention, rather than the sensitivity of the information contained, is well-known.
  
  My favorite story about classified information concerns The Washington Post. About 10 years ago, I saw a link on the WaPo website that said something like "The document the government doesn't want you to see." I clicked on the link and was horrified to see a document labeled "Top Secret," with various other code letters that indicated what type of information it contained. I was familiar enough with classified material to know that the labels indicated that it was real. I won't go into the information it contained, but it was about as innocuous as classified info could be. I cleared that article out of the browser's cache as fast as I could. The next day at work there was an e-mail telling us not to look at that link. I phoned the security people to tell them that unfortunately, I already had. They responded that they knew some people would have seen it before the warning, and since I had reported it, I needn't worry.
  
  But here's the thing: In that building there was a small shop that sold candy, souvenirs (golf balls stamped "CIA") and... The Washington Post. I didn't have the guts to look to see if there was a printed article with that information in that edition. But if there was a printed article, and I bought a copy of the Post to take home, then I would have been guilty of removing classified information from a secure facility.
  
  
• L.V.A. in Idaho Falls, ID: R.H. in Macungie wrote of their experience with handling classified documents in a military setting. Do not assume the precautions described extend to non-military settings. As an employee at a DOE lab, I have access to classified documents. Many are available on a classified computer system, but many are also available in paper form. They are not required to be logged when in use and occasionally live on someone's desk until returned. Point is, we have been applying military-type standards for the control of classified documents in a civilian setting. Apples and oranges?
  
  
• L.A. in Huntington Beach, CA: I had a security clearance for a few years while working on an NSA contract for an embedded device. The source code was classified, which was understandable since it had some encryption info in it. The binary produced from the source was also classified. However, when the binary was programmed into the memory of the device, it was magically no longer classified. So I could take the device home, if desired, with no problem. Had I felt the urge (I never did), I could have dumped the memory at home, and under the rules I suppose I would have then had classified information at home. This was a minor item, but always struck me as a perfect demonstration of how arbitrary and bonkers the whole classification regime is.

Thanks again to those who wrote in! We'll probably run one more set next week, so if any reader has anything to add to the discussion, you know where to send it. (Z)