The number of security clearances issue by the U.S. Department of Defense has plummeted in thepast two age . The big interrogative sentence : Is it because of the Snowden leaks or just because U.S. military disbursement is down ? Yeah , you translate that right field . Military outlay isdown .
During financial year 2013 , there were 4.6 million DoD employees and contractors with security clearance . Today , that act is down to 3.9 million people — a 15 per centum drop cloth in just two eld . The new datum arrive from thelatest reporton the Insider Threat Program , an first step set off by President Obamain 2011to clamp down on leakers .
Nobody is saying precisely why security clearances are down yet , and it ’s unlikely we ’ll ever get a unbendable solvent . This is , after all , about who gets to know government secrets . But it ’s heavily not to reason out that at least some of the declination is ascribe to a clampdown on who has access code to classified entropy after Edward Snowden spilled secret of huge government surveillance in the summer of 2013 . Snowden was an employee of secret vindication contractor Booz Allen when he fled to Hong Kong , then Moscow .
As theFederation of American Scientistsreports , this is probably the first major drop in clearances since the September 11th attack . Why “ in all probability ” ? Interestingly , the DoD has only been keeping close tabs on the overall number of security clearances release since 2010 .
Surprisingly , spend by the U.S. armed forces actually declined in financial year 2014 by a whopping 8 pct . Republicans in Congress passed a poster this calendar week tofix all that(largely by slashing domestic outlay ) , but the DoD drop just $ 455 billion in 2014 , compared with $ 462 billion the year before . Many attribute this drop to thewind down of missionsin Iraq and Afghanistan .
In all likelihood , the declension in security clearances issued by the DoD is probably due to a combining of the two — both the surprising fall in military outgo and the fear of another Snowden . But we may never know the full story . After all , the government is cracking down on leaker . [ Federation of American Scientists ]
Image : Edward Snowden speaks at an Amnesty International league in Paris via live video feed from Moscow [ Associated Press ]
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