An internal surveillance program established in the wake of Wikileaks’ Cablegate publications is set to be “fully operational” throughout the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by the start of 2017.
Department classified computer networks that share information with 23 other federal agencies will soon be equipped with “monitoring technology,” according to Congressional testimony given Wednesday by DHS officials and a US Coast Guard (USCG) Rear Admiral.
The “Insider Threat” program had been mandated across all federal agencies “that operate or access classified computer networks” by President Obama, through an Executive Order issued in October 2011.
“We have made tremendous strides maturing our program to address insider threats to classified information and we expect to meet the Administration’s mandate to make our insider threat program fully operational by the end of the calendar year,” the written testimony submitted on Wednesday stated.
The sworn statement also said that DHS has “implemented the capability to collect, fuse, correlate, and analyze information from various data sources in order to identify suspected insider threats.” It claimed this was under “constant oversight” from DHS lawyers charged with protecting Americans’ privacy.
The testimony was submitted, jointly and before a House subcommittee on Homeland Security, by DHS Chief Security Officer Rich McComb, Rear Adm. Robert Hayes, and DHS Under Secretary Francis Taylor. McComb currently is the chief official tasked with directly overseeing Insider Threat throughout DHS.
The Department’s program alone will cover 115,000 federal employees that “have access to classified national security information.”
Though Insider Threat was created “to identify, detect, deter, and mitigate the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” its scope has since expanded. McComb, Hayes and Taylor boasted of the initiative being useful for rooting out “workplace violence, criminal activity, and misconduct.”
In March, Chelsea Manning, the source of Wikileaks’ Cablegate disclosures and others, decried Insider Threat as a “broad sweep” and a “blank check for surveillance” of federal employees.
Manning did so after requesting and obtaining information about the program through Freedom of Information Act. Her discoveries included highly critical profile of herself, used to train counterintelligence agents.
“Agencies implementing the Insider Threat program could examine anyone who has motives of ‘greed’, ‘financial difficulties’, is ‘disgruntled’, has ‘an ideology’ a ‘divided loyalty’, an ‘ego’ or ‘self-image’, or ‘any family/personal issues’–the words used to describe my motives,” she wrote. “Such subjective labelling could easily be applied to virtually every single person currently holding a security clearance.”
Manning, 28, is currently serving a 35-year prison sentence at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.. She was punished for disclosing troves of data about US government activities to Wikileaks in 2010, while she was in the US Army.
Last week, she attempted to commit suicide. On Monday, she tweeted that she is “glad to be alive” ad thanked supporters.
“For us, hearing Chelsea’s voice after learning that she had attempted to take her life last week was incredibly emotional,” her attorneys said in a statement released Monday. “She is someone who has fought so hard for so many issues we care about and we are honored to fight for her freedom and medical care.”
