Classified information in the United States

For information on practices in other countries, see Classified information.

The United States government classification system is established under Executive Order 13526, the latest in a long series of executive orders on the topic of classified information beginning in 1951.[1] Issued by President Barack Obama in 2009, Executive Order 13526 replaced earlier executive orders on the topic and modified the regulations codified to 32 C.F.R. 2001. It lays out the system of classification, declassification, and handling of national security information generated by the U.S. government and its employees and contractors, as well as information received from other governments.[2]

The desired degree of secrecy about such information is known as its sensitivity. Sensitivity is based upon a calculation of the damage to national security that the release of the information would cause. The United States has three levels of classification: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. Each level of classification indicates an increasing degree of sensitivity. Thus, if one holds a Top Secret security clearance, one is allowed to handle information up to the level of Top Secret, including Secret and Confidential information. If one holds a Secret clearance, one may not then handle Top Secret information, but may handle Secret and Confidential classified information.

The United States does not have a British-style Official Secrets Act. Instead, several laws protect classified information, including the Espionage Act of 1917, the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951, the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. A 2013 report to Congress noted that the relevant laws have been mostly used to prosecute foreign agents, or those passing classified information to them, and that leaks to the press have rarely been prosecuted.[3] The legislative and executive branches of government, including US presidents, have frequently leaked classified information to journalists.[4][page needed][5][6][7] Congress has repeatedly resisted or failed to pass a law that generally outlaws disclosing classified information. Most espionage law criminalizes only national defense information; only a jury can decide if a given document meets that criterion, and judges have repeatedly said that being "classified" does not necessarily make information become related to the "national defense".[8][9] Furthermore, by law, information may not be classified merely because it would be embarrassing or to cover illegal activity; information may be classified only to protect national security objectives.[10]

The United States over the past decades under the Obama and Clinton administrations has released classified information to foreign governments for diplomatic goodwill, known as declassification diplomacy. Examples include information on Augusto Pinochet to the government of Chile. In October 2015, US Secretary of State John Kerry provided Michelle Bachelet, Chile's president, with a pen drive containing hundreds of newly declassified documents.[11]

A 2007 research report by Harvard history professor Peter Galison, published by the Federation of American Scientists, claimed that the classified universe in the US "is certainly not smaller and very probably is much larger than this unclassified one. ... [And] secrecy ... is a threat to democracy.[12]

  1. ^ "Executive Order 13526 – Classified National Security Information". Information Security Oversight Office of The National Archives. Archived from the original on July 19, 2017. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  2. ^ "Executive Order 13526 of December 29, 2009, Classified National Security Information". The National Archives. Archived from the original on September 28, 2012. Retrieved January 5, 2010.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference elsea was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Turner, Stansfield (2005). Burn Before Reading. Hachette Books. ISBN 9781401383466.
  5. ^ LaFaber, Walter (2005). The Deadly Bet: LBJ, Vietnam, and the 1968 Election. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. ISBN 9780742543928.
  6. ^ Peters, Gretchen (2009). Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaeda. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 9780312379278.
  7. ^ Classified Information in "Obama's Wars" Archived June 28, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, September 29, 2010, Jack Goldsmith, Lawfare, via stephenkim.org
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference edgsch was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  9. ^ Judge T.S. Ellis III Archived May 19, 2017, at the Wayback Machine, reduction of Franklin sentence hearing, 2009
  10. ^ "Google Scholar". Archived from the original on April 2, 2019. Retrieved July 4, 2013.
  11. ^ "Sunlight diplomacy". The Economist. September 24, 2016. ISSN 0013-0613. Archived from the original on June 3, 2017. Retrieved September 30, 2016.
  12. ^ Peter Galison (2004), Removing knowledge (PDF), Federation of American Scientists, Wikidata Q116287295