Good morning, Chairman Harman, Ranking Member Reichert, and members of
the Subcommittee. I am pleased to be here today to demonstrate the
commitment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to strengthening
our nation’s ability to share terrorism information. We are diligently
working to fulfill the expectations Congress set forth in the Intelligence
Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.
As the Assistant Director for Intelligence and the FBI’s senior
executive for information sharing, I am at once responsible for, accountable
to, and have a vested interest in a successful information sharing environment.
I am particularly pleased to be testifying today with Ambassador Ted
McNamara, the information sharing environment program manager, and Dr.
Carter Morris, Director for Information Sharing and Knowledge Management,
Intelligence, and Analysis from the Department of Homeland Security. It
has been my privilege over the past many months to work with these professionals
and others as we seek to craft an outcome that matches both the letter
and spirit of the task before us.
I join them today to discuss our collective efforts to develop a standardized
framework for marking, safeguarding, and sharing controlled unclassified
information, or as it is more commonly known, “sensitive but unclassified” information.
On December 16, 2005, the President issued the “Guidelines for
the Information Sharing Environment” as mandated by the Intelligence
Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. These guidelines, among other
things, set in motion a process for standardizing the handling of controlled
unclassified information.
My nearly 24 years in the intelligence community have largely been served
in an environment where I dealt almost exclusively with classified national
security information. While those regimes could be complicated and required
great discipline and attention to detail, by comparison they are far less
challenging than my experience has been in working to organize a functional
controlled unclassified information framework. This is not because of a
lack of commitment, focus, and creativity in trying to address that framework,
but because of the myriad of issues and interests that one encounters in
the transitional world of information between what is controlled and what
is not.
It is essential that we get it right, because it is information in this
environment that can be of greatest utility when we need to share across
a broad range of interests and constituencies. This framework provides
a measure of protection for sensitive information to reassure those who
might seek to hold such information in a classified or overly restrictive
regime, which would deny others access and cause us to fail in our duty
to provide.
From an FBI perspective getting it right is essential. The information
sharing environment, which is the lifeblood of our mission, spans the range
from classified national security information to fully open source. We
must have the capacity to interpose information from all of these regimes
and do so in a dynamic manner. We must have the agility to rapidly move
information across security boundaries and into environments that make
it more readily available and therefore of greater value to the broadest
set of players.
And across all of our partners, we must have a framework that allows
for an immediate and common understanding of information’s provenance
and the implications that imparts. We must make the sharing of controlled
unclassified information a benefit, not a burden—especially on state,
local, and tribal police departments that would be disproportionately affected
if asked to sustain a complex and expensive control framework.
We must manage information in a way that sustains the confidence of people
and organizations who share information that puts them at risk. Most important
of all, we must respect the power of that information and the impact it
holds for the rights and civil liberties of the American people who have
entrusted us as its stewards. That also means that we must never use “control” as
a way to deny the public access to information to which they are entitled.
For the FBI, achieving a streamlined controlled unclassified information
framework is much more than establishing a process; it’s about shaping
mindsets so we can fully shift from “need to know” to “duty
to provide.”
This shift does not diminish our responsibility to properly protect the
privacy rights and civil liberties of all Americans. It does not set up
a framework that puts at greater risk our sources and methods, and it does
not compromise our capacity to conduct both an intelligence and law enforcement
mission with full vigor and impact. Rather, this framework seeks to level
the information sharing playing field through a common lexicon and a shared
understanding of goals.
Unfortunately, the present set of policies and practices make it extremely
difficult for well-meaning individuals to act responsibly, appropriately,
and completely in this regime. There are well over 100 separate markings
for controlled unclassified information, and there is no easy way for the
recipient of information bearing an unfamiliar marking to find out what
that marking means. Moreover, the same marking means different things in
different parts of the federal government.
The FBI, working in close coordination with the Department of Justice,
has drawn upon the experience and the wisdom of state and local law enforcement
personnel to help us understand better what kinds of controlled unclassified
information policies would be most helpful to them as we strive to share
information without compromising either privacy or operational effectiveness.
The Criminal Intelligence Coordinating Council of the Global Justice
Information Sharing Initiative has played an active role in advising us
on this matter, including the convening on December 6, 2006 for an all-day
meeting to discuss the practicability at the state and local level of various
proposed “safeguards” for controlled unclassified information.
I would like to acknowledge here the particularly constructive role played
by the council chairman, Col. Bart Johnson of the New York State Police.
Col. Johnson is forthright in explaining what federal policies would be
most helpful in enabling state and local law enforcement to play their
part in preventing terrorism, but he is also sophisticated in his understanding
of the many other factors that must be taken into account.
In our view there are three aspects of the current draft framework that
are particularly important:
- Every marking that appears on any controlled unclassified information
document in the future must have a clear and unambiguous meaning.
There should be a website—accessible over the Internet to everybody—on
which the approved markings are defined, and no markings should ever
be used that are not defined on this website. This will mean that
recipients of shared information who want to do the right thing will
easily be able to find out what protective measures are expected of them.
I believe that this change will both increase sharing and decrease the
risks of sharing.
- All controlled unclassified information must be marked with a standardized
level of safeguarding. For most information this safeguarding will
be no more than ordinary prudence and common sense—don’t discuss
the information when you can be overheard by people you don’t
intend to share it with; store it in an access-controlled environment;
as needed, protect it with a password.
- All controlled unclassified information must be marked with appropriate
dissemination guidance so that recipients can easily understand what
further dissemination is permitted.
All of us who have been part of this process wish we could have moved
more quickly in reaching the point where we are today, but I believe the
investment of time, the level of effort, and the openness and commitment
that has marked our dialog has done justice to the expectations of the
American people.
Thank you for time, I look forward to answering your questions.
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