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| This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency, June 9, 2013, in Hong Kong. U.S. intelligence officials are planning an electronic monitoring system that would tap into government, financial and public databases to scan the behavior patterns of many of the 5 million government employees who hold secret clearances, according to current and former officials. The system draws on a Defense Department model in development for more than a decade, documents reviewed by the Associated Press show. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Stung by internal security lapses, U.S. intelligence officials
plan to use a sweeping electronic system to continually monitor workers
with secret clearances, current and former officials told The Associated
Press.
The system is intended to identify
rogue agents, corrupt officials and leakers and draws on a Defense
Department model under development for more than a decade, according to
officials and documents reviewed by the AP.
Intelligence
officials have long wanted a computerized system that could monitor
employees, in part to foil leakers like former National Security Agency
analyst Edward Snowden, whose revelations bared massive U.S.
surveillance operations. Such a system might also detect troubling signs
in those who already hold security clearances, such as the shooter in
last year's mass killings at Washington's Navy Yard. Many of the nearly 4
million government employees who hold secret clearances would be
scanned by the new system, officials say.
An
administration review of the government's security clearance process due
this month is expected to support continuous monitoring as part of a
package of comprehensive changes.
Privacy
advocates and government employee union officials expressed concerns
that electronic monitoring could intrude into individuals' private
lives, prompt flawed investigations and put sensitive personal data at
greater risk. Supporters say the system would have safeguards.
Workers
with secret clearances are already required to undergo background
checks of their finances and private lives before they are hired and
again during periodic re-investigations.
"What
we need is a system of continuous evaluation where when someone is in
the system and they're cleared initially, then we have a way of
monitoring their behavior, both their electronic behavior on the job as
well as off the job," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
told Congress last month.
Clapper said the
proposed system would extend "across the government," drawing on "six or
seven data streams." Monitoring of employees at some agencies could
begin as early as September and be fully operational across the
government by September 2016. The price tag, Clapper conceded, "is going
to be costly."
Budget documents released last
week show the Pentagon requesting nearly $9 million next year for
insider threat-related research.
Current and
former officials familiar with the DNI's planning said the monitoring
system will collect records from multiple sources about employees. They
will use private credit agencies, law enforcement databases and threat
lists, military and other government records, licenses, data services
and public record repositories. During random spot checks, the system's
software will sift through the data to spot unusual behavior patterns.
The
system could also link to outside databases to flag questionable
behavior, said the officials, who spoke anonymously because they were
not authorized to publicly discuss the plans. Investigators will analyze
the information along with data separately collected from social media
and, when necessary, polygraph tests.
The
proposed system would mimic monitoring systems already in use by
airlines and banks, but it most closely draws from a 10-year-old
Pentagon research project known as the Automated Continuous Evaluation
System, or ACES, officials said. The ACES program, designed by
researchers from the Monterey, Calif.,-based Defense Personnel and
Security Research Center and defense contractor Northrop Grumman, has
passed several pilot tests but is not yet in full operation.
The
ACES project and clearance-related Defense Department research cost
more than $84 million over the past decade, documents show.
Gene
Barlow Jr., a spokesman for the Office of the National
Counterintelligence Executive, the DNI agency coordinating the system's
development, said ACES and other internal monitoring systems developed
by federal agencies "will align and integrate" with the DNI's system.
According
to project documents, ACES links to up to 40 databases. While many are
government and public data streams already available, ACES also taps
into the three major credit agencies - Experian, Equifax and Trans
Union.
One former official familiar with ACES
said researchers considered adding records from medical and mental
health files but due to privacy concerns left that decision unresolved
for policy makers.
The government's inability
to review information from local police reports, employers, family and
personal health records was cited as a glaring weakness in background
checks on contract computer specialist Aaron Alexis, who fatally shot 12
people at the Washington Navy Yard last September before killing
himself.
The Alexis case and the Snowden
disclosures raised concerns about the flawed or inadequate work of
outside contractors in background checks. A federal official
acknowledged that outside contractors would likely be used to support
electronic monitoring.
Critics worry about the
potential misuse of personal information. Private contractors
supporting the monitoring system would have access to sensitive data.
Credit agencies and other outside data sources would know the identities
of government employees under scrutiny.
"The
problem is you're spreading all this private data around to more and
more people, both inside and outside," said David Borer, general counsel
for the American Federation of Government Employees. Borer also warned
about government efforts to reclassify lower-level employees into jobs
requiring clearances, citing a recent court case backed by the union.
Lee
Tien, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Freedom Foundation, a
civil liberties group, said workers' free speech, political allegiances
and outside activities could be chilled by constant monitoring.
Officials
familiar with the DNI's system said internal guidelines, audits,
encryption and other precautions built into the proposal were designed
to minimize abuses of private information. A 2007 Homeland Security
review of the ACES project concluded that the system contains ample
"security and procedural controls" to ensure worker privacy.
