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by easilyBored 3325 days ago
If two people know one secret is one to many. How many people in USA work for the FBI, CIA, NSA, police departments, have top secret security clearances? Millions of them. One is all it takes, as shown by Snowden, Manning etc.

So thanks, but no thanks.
2 comments
tomschlick 3325 days ago
> How many people in USA work for the FBI, CIA, NSA, police departments, have top secret security clearances? Millions of them.

To be fair, the number of people who had direct access to the NSA/CIA exploit archives was probably in the hundreds. TS information is usually compartmentalized so only the people who need to access it can (known as TS-SCI).

Still bad that they have that many who can access it, but not in the millions.

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easilyBored 3325 days ago
Turns out I'm right. I thought about the military and contractors as well. "A Top Secret clearance, meanwhile, costs the government nearly 20 times more, at an average of $3,959 per background check. At that rate, investigating the 1.5 million people with Top Secret passes may have cost as much as $5.9 billion over several years. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/24...

"As of last October, nearly five million people held government security clearances. Of that, 1.4 million held top-secret clearances. More than a third of those with top-secret clearances are contractors, which would appear to include Mr. Snowden." https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323495604578535...

Now we can get into semantics until the cows come home but even tens of thousands of people are way too many. Imagine 1+ million people.

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tomschlick 3325 days ago
My point was that while tens of thousands have TS clearance, they only get access to specific information if and when they need it.

Its not like they go to the "Top Secret File Share" and have access to everything that is Top Secret across the government.

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jpitz 3325 days ago
A TS clearance isn't some magical pass card to every piece of TS information.
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easilyBored 3325 days ago
I know you can't walk to NSA HQ and demand to see everything that they have in TS but Snwoden and Manning case showed that stuff isn't that compartmentalized
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mtgx 3325 days ago
Don't you think at least some of those programs will eventually be pushed to the police? It's already happening in the UK where the police's cyber units now have almost the same hacking and surveillance (legal) powers as the GCHQ. Obama signed a new policy just days before he left the office to allow the NSA to share information with 17 other agencies. And that includes the DHS with its "fusion centers," where it shares data with the police.

And let's not forget how the FBI allowed the police to use stingrays illegally and taught them how to hide them from judges in various ways, including claiming the tools were under NDA and they couldn't tell judges about it. Or when they absolutely had to tell the judges about it, they'd prefer to drop the cases (against drug lords, child pornographers, murderers, etc) so as to not reveal the use of the tools.

And on and on it goes like this.

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leeoniya 3325 days ago
> How many people in USA work for the FBI, CIA, NSA, police departments, have top secret security clearances? Millions of them.

Top Secret clearance && millions of people?

unlikely. maybe some level of clearance && millions.

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uptown 3325 days ago
"As many as 4 million people hold "top secret" security clearance, of which 500,000 are private contractors. One reason for this trend is that the U.S. government has become so reflexive about classifying information, much of which is not nearly as sensitive as an NSA spying program, that clearance are required even for totally banal work."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/06/12...

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hardlianotion 3325 days ago
Beautiful. Reminds me of the way that RIPA legislation in the UK to regulate covert investigation by police and secret services ended up being used by 800-odd bodies, including the odd local authority that used it to police potential abuse of school catchment areas by parents.
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leeoniya 3325 days ago
...well, then.
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pgeorgi 3325 days ago
The numbers are a bit older, but https://fas.org/sgp/othergov/intel/clear-2012.pdf claims there were 1.4 millions top level clearances held in 2012.
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