United States Intelligence Community/Privatisation

United States Intelligence Community/Privatisation (Privatisation)
The US has outsourced much of it's intelligence capacity to private companies.

Public private partnerships between the military, intelligence agencies and businesses have a history in joint engineering projects. However, the privatisation of the US intelligence and military sector took up speed after 9-11, leading to wholesale outsourcing of what was before understood to be key competence of a nation state.

Criticism

If one were to take the Snowden story as it is told by him, he should have not been employed a second time with that kind of network access since he was considered a risk. Yet he is able to walk out as a contractor with what the national security state considers highly classified material. If this is the true state of affairs with the agencies and their contractors, how likely is it that organised crime has access to sensitive information or can at will channel information out of these systems for the right price or through blackmail?

“I've got murderers who have access to classified information. I have rapists, I have pedophiles, I have people involved in child porn. I have all these things at the interim clearance level, and I’m pulling their clearances on a weekly basis.”
Daniel Payne (2018)  Director of the Defense Security Service at the Department of Defense

“[...]child pornography — as many as 1,700 names, according to a U.S. senator, on a list of 5,200 from an Internet sting operation overlooked the first time around four years ago. Only now are they supposedly getting a second look, and only after pressure from investigative reporters and the U.S. senator you're about to hear from, Republican Charles Grassley. [...]

According to DCIS documents revealed in a Freedom of Information Act request, out of that 3,500, investigators uncovered 264 employees or contractors, including staffers for the secretary of defense and contractors at the NSA. Nine people had top security clearances.

But only about 20 percent of those 264 people were completely investigated. Fewer still were prosecuted, and about eight months — after about eight months, the entire probe was halted. It left about 1,700 names totally unchecked, 1,700 alleged kiddie porn customers, an unknown number of whom may still work in some capacity for the Defense Department.

Late last summer, after investigations by "The Boston Globe" and Yahoo! News revealed the figures, a Pentagon spokesman promised to reopen the investigation, conceding that DCIS had stopped due to lack of resources. DCIS says it is now revisiting all 5,200 names, telling Senator's Grassley staff they have now identified 302 employees or staffers. [...]

But Senator Grassley says he is still not getting the cooperation he needs from the Pentagon.”
Anderson Cooper (2011)  CNN

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