More than 4.2 Million People Have U.S. Government Security Clearances
September 20th, 2011Ha. That’s about as many people with security clearances as the population of New Zealand.
Via: Washington Post:
More than 4.2 million people have security clearances for access to classified information, a number that vastly outstrips previous estimates and nearly rivals the population of metropolitan Washington.
The number was disclosed in a new report that was mandated by Congress and marks the first time that the government has produced a detailed accounting of the clearances issued to federal, military and contract employees.
The official count is so much greater than previous estimates that it caught security experts off-guard. Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists said the new total is an “astonishingly large figure” and “another reminder of how quickly the national security bureaucracy has expanded over the past decade.”
Aftergood noted in his blog that just two years ago the Government Accountability Office estimated that about 2.4 million people held clearances. The Washington region’s overall population is just under 5.5 million.
The vast majority of clearance holders are federal employees or members of the U.S. armed services. But more than a million contractors also have access to classified information. Remarkably, nearly as many contractors hold top secret clearances (524,990) as do federal workers (666,008).
I believe that group’s proper designation is “The Outer Party”.
Family members. If mom or dad has some security clearance, other members get their background looked into.
On a database, that count adds up.
Can be fun if your young and looking for work.
Searching a name …. person doing the background work gets a visit.
Well said, A-Nut…
As someone who owned an ENTNAC security clearance in a previous life (more than half my life ago now, ack!), as well as a student of the darker aspects of life, I am about as FAR from “astonished” as one can get while still physically conscious.
When I received my clearance way back when, I did a little homework after a couple relatives made comments about having been rather surprised by unexpected government contacts making inquiries about me. In this case, likely just a low-level FBI desk jockey serving out his pension sentence.
Naturally, I hadn’t informed my entire extended family that my chosen course at the time included technology serviced inside large buildings with no windows and armed sentries.
Now, after posting some harsh truth in the nearby Rumsfeld thread, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and do a little Derrida dance here :
The most obvious technique on display here is a clear use of misdirection. By focusing on the SIZE of the number in question, and expressing opinions based on its LARGENESS, all but the most critical readers will be led nose-first to the required conclusions.
Lesson properly completed, the Eye blinks dispassionately and dispenses your lemon cookie.
For the sanguine and cynical, here’s where it gets interesting. Why the focus on SCALE? Especially size at the BIG end of the measuring stick?
Because the exact *opposite* — that the sheer scale of the numbers actually reveals the increasing COMPARTMENTALIZATION of all aspects of industrialized society in the USSA.
Either you’re a “party member” or you’re not. Such status won’t save your life if you betray the Brotherhood. Quite the contrary. However, it does proffer certain classes of privileges at each upward step toward the altar or power.
Such a BIG number, viewed in the context of the niche-oriented nature of our Net-based society actually demonstrates not just the proliferation of secrecy, but that those secrets are being fragmented into ever-smaller pieces.
Lest we forget, the entire towering edifice of official (and unofficial, undocumented) secrecy is precisely balanced on the sharp point of the “need to know basis”.