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Secrecy and Security News

Newer News: February 2017

January 2017

• NRO Denies Release of Unclassified Portions of FY 2016 Budget Justification Book, January 23. "The NRO has determined that a series of unclassified items in the document in the aggregate reveals associations or relationships not otherwise revealed in the unclassified items individually."
• Make America, wait, what again? US Army may need foreign weapons to keep up by Thomas Claburn, The Register, January 23. "A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report published last week finds that the US Army has failed to modernize its ground combat systems and now faces the possibility of operating under the limitations of Cold War-era equipment for years to come."
• Elite Scientists Have Told the Pentagon That AI Won't Threaten Humanity by Ben Sullivan, Motherboard, January 19. "A new report authored by a group of independent US scientists advising the US Dept. of Defense (DoD) on artificial intelligence (AI) claims that perceived existential threats to humanity posed by the technology, such as drones seen by the public as killer robots, are at best 'uninformed'."
• Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, Federal Register, January 19. "This final rule is intended to better protect human subjects involved in research, while facilitating valuable research and reducing burden, delay, and ambiguity for investigators. These revisions are an effort to modernize, simplify, and enhance the current system of oversight."
• DoD support for sporting events 2016, DoD report to Congress, January 19. "In 2016, DoD provided support to 21 sporting events at a total cost of $2,651,513."
• CIA Posts More Than 12 Million Pages of CREST Records Online, CIA news release, January 17. "The largest collection of declassified CIA records is now accessible online. Approximately 930,000 documents, totaling more than 12 million pages are now available through the CIA's Electronic Reading Room on cia.gov."
• Presidential Order Commuting the Sentence of Chelsea Manning, January 17. "I hereby commute the sentence of 35 years' imprisonment adjudged on August 21, 2013, to time served plus 120 days, leaving intact a11 other conditions and components of the sentence."
• Obama commutes sentence of Chelsea Manning, soldier convicted for leaking classified information by Ellen Nakashima and Sari Horwitz, Washington Post, January 17. "President Obama commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, an Army private convicted of taking troves of secret diplomatic and military documents and disclosing them to WikiLeaks, after deciding that Manning had served enough time."
• The CIA's Secret History Is Now Online by Jason Leopold, Buzzfeed, January 17. "After restricting access to just four computers in a room in Washington, DC, the CIA is finally putting 12 million declassified pages on the web for all to see."
• Will Obama pardon Snowden? by Josh Gerstein, Politico, January 17. "It's unlikely, but a 2001 Clinton pardon reflected concerns about using the Espionage Act against whistleblowers."
• There Are Now Questions About Whether The Secret Trump Dossier Is Classified by Ali Watkins, Buzzfeed, January 13. "The dossier, whose contents remain unverified by the intelligence community, was included in a rare, high-level briefing -- and now intelligence officials don't even know if they can talk about it."
• US Nuclear Stockpile Numbers: End of Fiscal Years 1962-2016, DOE/DoD, January 12. There were 4,018 warheads in the stockpile at the end of FY 2016.
• Sentencing Memorandum on Behalf of Gen. James Cartwright (defense memorandum), January 10. "With deepest respect for the rule of law -- and without minimizing his misconduct -- General Cartwright submits this Sentencing Memorandum in support of his request for a noncustodial sentence." US Memorandum on Sentencing (prosecutors' memorandum), January 10. "The United States recommends that the Court impose a sentence of 24 months of incarceration in this case."
• Jeremy Stone, Who Influenced Arms Control During Cold War, Dies at 81 by Richard Sandomir, New York Times, January 6. "Jeremy J. Stone, a mathematician whose ideas about minimizing the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe influenced arms-control negotiators in the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, died on Sunday at his home in Carlsbad, Calif. He was 81."

Older News: December 2016

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Maintained by Steven Aftergood
Updated February 2, 2017