Comment by philwelch
14 years ago
This comment is a little misleading; clearances don't give you unfettered access to classified information, they only allow you to receive whatever information you have a "need to know". A security clearance alone doesn't give you access to anything, it just tells the government you've had a background check and could potentially be trusted with certain information.
Well...it can be conflicting. At the Secret level, you tend to have access to much wider ranging information than in a SAP. A person working Intelligence in Japan for example, might also have access to information about Lithuania at that level. In fact, they probably do.
At TS it starts to get more restricted. You have more ability to request access to things outside your general area, but you may/may not get approved.
In the Compartments, my experience has been they are surprisingly global in nature, but focused in content. Meaning I can pretty much get that "kind" of information for any place on the planet, but it's only that "kind" of information. There's some exceptions, but not many.
SAP programs tend to be where it gets very focused. Often because they represent information only collected in your area using only a specific means. So there isn't a global collection of that kind of data -- well, there might be, but you aren't in all of the SAP programs to try and figure it out.