Comment by derefr
14 years ago
> I suspect there isn't really anyone who knows what every compartment is.
Unless the process is completely decentralized, there must be someone approving new compartments. They probably know at least a little about each one.
The main constraint is budgetary authority; it's easier to create a new secret program than to fund it. Ultimately all funding authority comes from the US Congress, although there are layers of obfuscation.
The ability to create new Special Access Programs is usually delegated to the level in an organization that actually does this routinely; definitely below Department level, above Combatant Command level.
On the Army side, check out AR 380-381, and legally, 32cfr159a. Basically someone more operational creates it, and then gets approval from above, but the authority to create the program is closer to the action than the ability to finance it.
They deconflict on names at one level, usually per department (e.g. Army, Navy). I think this is done by pre-assigning names in batches to be used. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_cryptonym is an interesting article.
Well, you have to keep in mind that compartments, from the way I understand them, are topical, or centered around the specific field they pertain to. Thus, the DOE and the DOD won't have the same compartments, and even the Army and the Navy won't have the same compartments.
This is, I believe, one of the reasons that intelligence sharing between agencies and the armed forces is so difficult. Some intel is compartmentalized in places that are inaccessible to another branch or agency, and changing the classification level or compartment of information is an extraordinarily inconvenient process.
The upside of this, however, is that we really do have a secure system for information
Once the authority to keep secrets has been delegated, it seems almost inconceivable that anybody would know all of them.
It seems to me that either someone knows about all the compartments, or there is a high likelihood of redundant and overlapping compartments being created accidentally. It probably is okay for one clearance to actually be represented as five or six because of bureaucracy (that's basically just denormalization, and product management systems deal with it all the time); the real problem is that project X might be half-covered by compartment A, and half by compartment B, and you just end up getting assigned both (thus exposing you to more classified material than you should know) because there's no one with enough oversight to create compartment C = A∩B, make A and B into A'=A-C and B'=B-C, and then just assign people A and C while leaving out B.
Basically, imagine trying to do library science without being able to know what information you're managing. The classifications created would quickly become senseless and incoherent.
This is the United States Federal Government we're talking about here, remember.
Holy crap is there every redundancy and overlap!