Regarding Security of Classified Information

[MineralMan]

Many years ago, while in the USAF, my final duty station was the NSA building at Ft. Meade. Very strict security, as you might imagine, due to the high classification level of materials there. So, how secure?

Well, when I was discharged from the USAF, on the last day I was there, I went to the library in the building to ask if I could have some Russian Language dictionaries that were surplus property for the agency. I explained that I was planning to return to college as a Russian major, and specialized dictionaries were really, really expensive.

The guy I talked to in the library took me to a room full of shelves and said, "Help yourself." So I did. I filled up a big cardboard box with books. Nothing classified, of course, just dictionaries. Then, I left the building, passing through a locked security gate. "What's in the box," the guard asked. "Russian dictionaries," I answered. "OK," the guard said and let me through the gate. That was it. I loaded them in the trunk of my car, and was discharged the next morning.

Just dictionaries. But nobody checked. Big box, too. Weighed about 50 pounds. Nobody looked in the box. They just took my word for it. I remember thinking that I could have carried out pounds of classified documents. I certainly had access to them. Just dictionaries.

And there you have a typical security exit from a building that is jammed full of stuff that is classified at levels hard to imagine. I was cleared for access to most of it, except for stuff that was accessible only to a few specialists. And yet, I could carry a heavy box out the door and pass through a locked security exit. Just dictionaries.

[getagrip_already]

1. True, true, but.....

What gets me is that people talk about classified material, or any portion thereof, as a monolithic entity. Either it is or it isnt.

Not reality. Information is temporal, and it is context specific.

Today, I can talk about x and it isn't classified nor is there any reason to think it should be. A month from now, someone several agencies away could deem it classified. I of course might have no idea they did that. But run my old emails past them and bang, it is classified.

Or, information might be classified until a specific date, but not after.

Or, context is important. The name and location of an embassy by itself isn't classified, but would be in the context of a specific activity.

But to the press, it's either classified or it isnt. So you better not discuss the location of the American embassy in russia, because it appears in several top secret documents. Maybe. I have no first hand information on that.

[MineralMan]

4. I don't know. I still treat what I did in that building as

classified, and never talk about it. It's very, very old news by now, but nobody ever told me it wasn't still classified, so it is, as far as I'm concerned.

See, I take such things seriously. I just think my story of my last day there is funny and informative. I still have those dictionaries, too, all with a Property of the NSA Library stamp inside the cover, along with a "Surplus" stamp.

[getagrip_already]

5. Not saying you dont...

But I'm willing to bet that if you used email on an unclassified nsa network, someone could look back at it now and say some subjects were classified.

And again, I'm not saying they were. Just that after the fact reviews can be wrong. Especially if there was any disagreement between agencies over classification.

[MineralMan]

7. There was barely any email when I was there, and it was all

internal. There was no such thing as an unclassified email account, and I don't remember very many pieces of paper I handled that didn't have a classified stamp of one sort or another. Most were Top Secret with one other compartmentalization word appended. I suppose those words are different now, but who knows?

Everything in there was classified, even before it existed. If I remember correctly, the fact that you worked in that building had a Confidential classification, which was silly, since you took your color-coded badge with you when you went home.

I was just a young guy, 22 years old when I left there. It was all pretty weird, really, but fun at the same time.

[SeattleVet]

11. We were supposed to tuck our badge in if we went out anywhere.

If you went to any local place during lunch it looked sort of like a convention of saxophone players - everyone had a chain around their neck, tucked into the front of their shirt.

And yes, pretty much everything there was 'born classified'. Even the cleaning crews had to have high levels of clearance, since many of the offices were considered to be secure in their own right (at varying levels) and we could leave material out in the desk, as long as it was covered with a black cloth when we left for the night.

Probably one of my favorite assignments. The shop I was in offered to being me in as a civilian employee when I got out at a decent GS rating, but I really was ready to get away from that environment. I went to work as a System Manager at a huge NYC bank, and left there after 8 years as an Asst. VP. The foreign travel restrictions I had (due to the various project accesses I was granted) finally expired in 2001 (17 years after I left).

Fun times!

[MineralMan]

12. Yes. Saxophone players. I like that.

I remember that.

[SeattleVet]

2. When were you there? I was assigned 1981-1984.

It was also my last duty assignment, at the end of 12 years service. USAF, 30574, Digital Computer Repair.

At that time anything you were carrying was searched when you exited the building. If you had books, they would flip through the pages. A folder of papers from my desk file (military records) got a page-by-page check. I had an old broken power supply, and for that I had to have a property pass, and the serial numbers better match.

Since it has expanded so vastly over the past several years, I can imagine that a search of everything going out would become a huge bottleneck every day (unless they had hired a huge number of guards).

[MineralMan]

3. 1968-9. As I said, a long time ago.

They were supposed to check outgoing stuff then, too. But, they almost never did. People carried briefcases and boxes through the exists all the time. At the end of the work day, literally thousands of people exited that building through numerous exits and security points.

I don't remember seeing anyone's stuff being gone through at the time. Maybe it's better now, but likely not.

[SeattleVet]

6. It was definitely better while I was there.

But they had recently suffered one of their biggest breaches to that time, and it seems like they were very vigilant about it. My briefcase got opened and checked every time I brought it through; sometimes even on entry, on a random basis, to ensure no electronics/recording devices/cameras. (One day they even stopped me from bringing in an HP-16C calculator, because it had memory.)

Probably not feasible with the huge number of employees now.

[MineralMan]

8. I have no idea. The place has expanded physically

so much now. I'm from the original building period, with its long, long downstairs corridor. A funny place to work, it was. But, in 1968-9, the technology was pretty primitive, really, at least for desk workers like me.

[SeattleVet]

9. I was in the basement of the original building, while they were building

the first extension (the 'flashcube'). The piledriving for that building was going on all day, right outside of our shop's wall, for a few months. The last time I looked I didn't even recognize the place; they've built an entire city there now.

Interesting times working there, though. Used to love going to Henkel's (no longer there) for a great ham or roast beef sandwich, 'open faced and through the garden'.

[MineralMan]

10. I was still single, and had to live in an open barracks

at Ft. Meade. There were partitions, but it was still a noisy, open barracks building. I was not a happy camper by that time at still being an E-4 in the USAF and living in a freaking barracks with weekly inspections and all the usual military CS.

Fortunately, there was a reduction in force order that let me take an early discharge, 9 months before my scheduled discharge date. I grabbed the opportunity gleefully, dropped all my uniforms in the dumpster near the office near my barracks, got in my 1959 Volvo 544, and drove off the base toward California immediately. That morning was the last time I ever shaved my face. My beard is still there.

I could have stayed at the NSA. I had an offer of a civilian job there, at a GS level that was a big surprise. I had some unusual skills and specialized capabilities. I declined the offer, though. It just wasn't for me.