2 ms·

It's not really so much about the clearance as it is about network access. A tremendous amount of classified information is essentially public on the high side

It's not really so much about the clearance as it is about network access. A tremendous amount of classified information is essentially public on the high side networks. So, if your job entails access to a classified network (particularly an IC one), you have a lot of reading you can do. This situation is sort of intentional: one of the big findings of the 9/11 commission is that intelligence information was too siloized and analysts were missing big things because they didn't have access to products of other agencies. But there's a balancing act here, and this is the downside of open access.

abeppu 4y ago
So a sibling comment in this tree says there are "about one million US citizens have a top secret clearance" ... is it known roughly how many would have access to those IC networks? I'm realizing my initial impression of the landscape here is also skewed by some peripheral awareness of how government contractors may have narrow access to specific material for their work. I understand why intentionally, some actual government employees have a much broader view. But how large is that group with broad access?
- jcrawfordor 4y ago
  When it comes to classified networks, "SCIF" usually implies "JWICS." A quote from the DISA CIO [1] puts the JWICS user count at "hundreds of thousands." Even better, a 2016 article about TS Intellipedia [2], the MediaWiki install on JWICS, says it has "255,402 registered users." That's probably pretty similar to the JWICS user count at the time. [1] https://fedscoop.com/jwics-modernization-dia-douglas-cossa/ https://fedscoop.com/jwics-modernization-dia-douglas-cossa/ [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-version-wikipedia-called-intellipedia-2016-9#statistics-released-via-foia-requests-in-2014-showed-the-top-secret-version-had-255402-registered-users-that-wiki-had-113379-entries-with-more-than-290-million-page-views-and-62-million-edits-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-version-wikipedia-called...

abeppu 4y ago

So a sibling comment in this tree says there are "about one million US citizens have a top secret clearance" ... is it known roughly how many would have access to those IC networks? I'm realizing my initial impression of the landscape here is also skewed by some peripheral awareness of how government contractors may have narrow access to specific material for their work. I understand why intentionally, some actual government employees have a much broader view. But how large is that group with broad access?

jcrawfordor 4y ago
When it comes to classified networks, "SCIF" usually implies "JWICS." A quote from the DISA CIO [1] puts the JWICS user count at "hundreds of thousands." Even better, a 2016 article about TS Intellipedia [2], the MediaWiki install on JWICS, says it has "255,402 registered users." That's probably pretty similar to the JWICS user count at the time. [1] https://fedscoop.com/jwics-modernization-dia-douglas-cossa/ https://fedscoop.com/jwics-modernization-dia-douglas-cossa/ [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-version-wikipedia-called-intellipedia-2016-9#statistics-released-via-foia-requests-in-2014-showed-the-top-secret-version-had-255402-registered-users-that-wiki-had-113379-entries-with-more-than-290-million-page-views-and-62-million-edits-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-version-wikipedia-called...