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Is Government Secrecy Dead In The Internet And Social Media Era?

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In this era of Wikileaks, Snowden disclosures, OPM breaches, DNC hacks and a myriad other breaches and data releases, is government secrecy finally dead? In a world in which disenchanted insiders or hackers from the other end of the world can penetrate some of the most nation’s most secure computing systems, ferret off their secrets and post that data for all the world to see, what does the future of classified information hold? Adding to this mix, the rise of social media and simple human nature means low level employees are often inadvertently broadcasting play-by-play behind-the-scenes live documentaries of government in action, while the ability to aggregate public records at scale means data savvy researchers can increasingly map the government’s most sensitive facilities.

In 2010 the Washington Post showed just how powerful public records can be at scale when they mapped the landscape of companies and facilities conducting classified work for the US Government using only public information, creating a searchable database of SCIF’s and sensitive office spaces across the nation. Yet, the employees working in those facilities also offer a treasure trove of intelligence through their personal social media use. Last year the Transparency Toolkit released ICWATCH, a searchable database of more than 27,000 intelligence community employees, culled entirely from keyword searches of information IC employees uploaded themselves to LinkedIn. Indeed, ICWATCH demonstrated that myriad highly classified programs were openly listed on LinkedIn profiles, often with enough contextual information to at least guess at their application area.

Similarly, it was fascinating to watch public social media conversation, especially on Twitter, in the aftermath of the FBI Director’s press conference about Hillary Clinton’s email server and the classified emails it held. Watching posts stream in on Twitter containing various keywords related to classified information, it was amazing to see all of the highly sensitive information unveiled by various government employees and contractors as they recounted their own experiences handling classified information. Posts described detailed markings, handling procedures, destruction procedures, personnel rotation times in SCIFs, even the locations of contractor SCIFs, their general interior layouts and the kinds of material they handed. Many of the accounts featured a name and photograph that connected directly to a LinkedIn account of an employee or contractor stating their employer and primary projects. Posts frequently mentioned personal experiences handling specific classification levels of material and the agency and sometimes even the project the material was for, revealing the top clearance levels held by that person and who they worked for. In a number of cases it was not very hard at all to determine the location of the SCIF the person worked in simply by looking back at their social media history, seeing for example that the majority of their lunchtime posts were from restaurants within a few block radius and seeing that their employer listed on LinkedIn has an office right there.

Most recently, the commandant of the US Marines Corps noted that the heavy use of personal mobile devices within the Marines and Navy inadvertently yield key intelligence on the layout of front-line military facilities and the locations of forces. A simple keyword search of major social media platforms similarly turns up a myriad photographs taken by military personnel inside their bases around the world, revealing facility layouts, the interiors of buildings and even the positions and types of weapons, vehicles and technology deployed at that base. In fact, such searches have yielded extensive intelligence on Russian deployments around the world.

Inadvertent social media leakages don’t just affect the military and intelligence communities. Such behaviors extend all the way down to the low-level aides that travel with senior US officials. Searching LinkedIn profiles and government press releases, it is relatively straightforward to compile a list of aides to various officials and with only a few additional searches one has their major social media accounts in hand. Most of these low-level aides are young professionals who grew up in the social media era and don’t have the training or experience to recognize how their posts could be exploited for foreign intelligence purposes. Watching these posts, one can literally map where a host of senior officials are each day, including backstage images of the inside of vehicle convoys, government planes and live behind-the-scenes images of the precise security arrangements surrounding those officials, including on occasion tweets or Instagram posts of sensitive scheduling documents. Countless building interiors and exteriors, images taken out of car windows and hotel lobbies chronicle officials’ movements with almost biographical precision. Frequently they document stopovers and visits to facilities not listed on public schedules or track officials for which calendars are not traditionally available to the public or which have long embargoes on public access.

Does this mean government secrecy is finally dead? In a world in which the United States spends more than 11 billion dollars a year to protect classified information, it certainly raises the question of whether the government is fighting a losing battle. At the very least it means that the status quo of attempting to protect anything and everything is lost. Much as corporate cybersecurity has evolved to acknowledge that attackers will get inside the wall and thus building a bigger wall isn’t the answer, government must acknowledge that in our digital era keeping secrets is a losing battle and instead of protecting everything, we must focus efforts on the most sensitive secrets and acknowledge that the rest will likely filter out to the public regardless of how much effort we spend to protect them. This is our digital future, one in which secrecy and privacy are rapidly fading into the dustbin of history.