Thursday, January 6, 2011

White House’s ‘insider threat’ program targets federal employees for surveillance

In an effort to prevent another Bradley Manning, the Obama administration is urging all federal government agencies to watch its employees for signs they may be leaking classified information.

In a memo dated Monday, Jacob J. Lew, the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, directed government agencies that deal with classified information to ensure that they are in compliance with secrecy rules brought in after WikiLeaks' release of classified material.

The document (PDF), which was leaked to NBC less than 48 hours after it was written, urges agencies to develop an "insider threat program" that would monitor employees for "behavioral changes" indicating they may be leaking classified documents or be willing to do so.

The document calls on agencies to hire psychiatrists and sociologists to measure the "despondence or grumpiness" of federal employees in order to "gauge trustworthiness." It also urges the use of polygraph machines, and the monitoring of computer activities and signs of "high occurrences of foreign travel."

Agencies are urged to "capture evidence of pre-employment and/or post-employment activities or participation in on-line media data mining sites like WikiLeaks or Open Leaks," indicating that the administration wants to see personnel monitored even after they stop working for the federal government...

[Full Article]