Talk:Classified information in the United Kingdom

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Criticisms / Red-tape / bureaucracy of SC

Not curious or keen, but just wondering anyone would have thought of adding a section on the above. For e.g the typical 'chicken-or-egg' situation (clearance first or job first?) that this vetting process brings infront of a candidate in the temporary recruitment market in the UK. I just got puzzled by seeing 100s of live jobs advertised in the public jobspace. Any value? --SilverAudi (talk) 19:42, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

DV Clearance

There are six surveillance commissioners and they only regulate one aspect of surveillance, they have reported increased requests from non police organizations; over 1000 requests a day for covert access from over 600 public bodies. The police made roughly 20,0000 surveillance requests in the period 2005-2006.

Other organisations including local authorities and quasi government organizations had nearly 125000 surveillance requests authorised in the year ending 31.03.2007.

There is also an interception commissioner,a chief commissioner a security services commissioner. (SIS(SIS II) have powers not available to the police, who have powers not available to local authorities).

Which head of power makes which request to a commissioner is not reported. The commissioners meet three times a year. There is no judicial scrutiny whatsoever of their activities.

The Rt. Hon. Sir Peter Gibson currently holds the position of Intelligence Services Commissioner. He reviews the issue by the relevant Secretary of State of warrants and authorisations for operations by the Agencies and Ministry of Defence (MOD) which fall under his oversight, namely warrants issued under the Intelligence Services Act 1994 and warrants and authorisations for surveillance and agents under RIPA.

The Commissioners are able to visit the Agencies and relevant departments to discuss any case they wish to examine in more detail. They must, by law, be given access to whatever documents and information they need and at the end of each reporting year they submit reports to the Prime Minister. These reports are subsequently laid before Parliament and published.

"Guidelines" are derived from the codes of practice and regulations eg.

SI 2002 No. 1298 – The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Prescription of Offices, Ranks and Positions) (Amendment) Order 2002 SI 2002 No. 1693 – The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Interception of Communications: Code of Practice) Order 2002 SI 2002 No. 1931 – The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Maintenance of Interception Capability) Order 2002 SI 2002 No. 1932; The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Covert Human Intelligence Sources: Code of Practice) Order 2002 SI 2002 No. 1933; The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Covert Surveillance: Code of Practice) Order 2002

The whole security issue is a quagmire caused by the lack of communication between agencies or for example the wrong type of forms being used for requests by ill informed officials.

This whole "Classified information in the United Kingdom" article needs attention, the regulations are published but there will be problems sourcing verifiable references for various sections. Most of the needed references will be classified or will contain only limited information.

Even http://www.privacyinternational.org have problems sourcing.

Opinions ? Omeganumber 10:53, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

More codewords

See here for some more codewords.--Rambutan (talk) 08:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Page not found I'm afraid

ALR 13:22, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It just worked for me - I clicked on the link.--Rambutan (talk) 15:28, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

All I'm getting is an xml parsing error in firefox. Just tried it in MS Explorer and it is an xml document but it's not rendering, I'm getting the raw xml for a document about the stores coding system. It does include some out of date material about descriptors (UK Eyes Alpha and Bravo were withdrawn about 5 years ago).

ALR 15:38, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, yes, all I'm getting is the raw XML code, but one can still glean information from it, for example the list of descriptors. I'm not actually sure when the various systems were withdrawn, so you could add that into the page, maybe.--Rambutan (talk) 15:54, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am thinking over some significant changes to the article, the problem I have is that my source is the Manual of Protective Security, which is itself classified as a whole, although the various descriptions etc aren't. That is providing some challenges because whilst it is authoritative with respect to the system it is not verifiable from WPs perspective.ALR 16:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Source ?

I just reverted the number of protectively marked levels to five. According to the Cabinet Office protected is a marking - in addition, my company (UK defence contractor) uses protected in the normal course of business. http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/207318/hmg_security_policy.pdf Nujjer (talk) 08:51, 25 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm... who publishes the Manual?--Rambutan (talk) 17:47, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Cabinet OfficeALR 20:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'd put the material on, and if anyone challenges the MOPS' verifiability, then take it from there. There's no point worrying yet.--Rambutan (talk) 18:34, 26 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just changed the page to state is has 4 levels of protective marking. Unclassified is not a protective marking (it is the absence of a protective marking), and PROTECT isn't a marking. http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/section14/chapter_i.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.112.54.140 (talk) 17:33, August 25, 2007 (UTC)

As per ELECTRONIC INFORMATION PROCESSING SECURITY NOTICE S(E)N 2007/04 Protect is a marking but not a National Security one:

The purpose of PROTECT will be to delineate a stratum of official information which needs to be protected from compromise of confidentiality, integrity and availability to a known level of assurance, but for which the measures required to safeguard National Security information at RESTRICTED are considered disproportionate.

--Fatchap (talk) 14:36, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

just observing that references 1 and 2 are now both broken. Matt Whyndham (talk) 14:42, 15 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

All the references to the Manual of Protective Security is now out of date now as MOPS was replaced by the Security Policy Framework SPF in December 2008. This is on the Cabinet Office Website. Fatchap (talk) 14:27, 27 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The proper name of the least secure classification is "Protect" not "Protected" (even though the longer established ones are adjectives). See page 22 of [1]. I have corrected the article accordingly. 87.113.151.67 (talk) 10:12, 19 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

CTC?

This reads as though all local government officers need to be vetted. The CTC is just for the security services or something? I've never seen any of this in my local government work, it could be that I've always been to far down the food chain.. Secretlondon 04:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

CTC (Counter Terrorist Check) is the other way, it is below SC. It is used for people like airport workers. They have no need to see classified documents but do have access to terrorist targets like aircraft worth millions of pounds. Andrew Swallow 21:21, 4 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This might be useful. KTC (talk) 02:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

To be replaced by Government Security Classifications system

The article should be updated to reflect a new classification system to go live in 2014.

"The GCSP will reduce the six tiers of the Government Protective Marking System (GPMS) of 'top secret, secret, confidential, restricted, protected and unclassified' to 'top secret, secret and official'."

As far as I can tell, GPMS will be renamed Government Security Classifications (GSC) policy.

Additional links:

http://www.amethystsecurity.com/downloads/Classification%20Management%20Leaflet%20v03%20240213.pdf

http://www.cesg.gov.uk/publications/Documents/CESG_Information_Pack.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.43.26.66 (talk) 11:35, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There will still be the UNCLASSIFIED classification. It is how the author officially tells the filing clerk in writing that she does not need to arrange armed guards for press releases, web-pages and leaflets for the general public. Andrew Swallow (talk) 18:53, 29 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Cabinet Office says otherwise:

Is there an unclassified tier below OFFICIAL?
No, the new classification system has quite purposefully taken UNCLASSIFIED out of the equation.

bobrayner (talk) 15:49, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I read that section too. Never underestimate the ability of bureaucracies to say silly things when talking officially. They need UNCLASSIFIED to keep the indexes straight, so the best they can do is change the name. The rest of us can have fun watching the coverup. Andrew Swallow (talk) 01:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't even make sense. bobrayner (talk) 15:48, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As I said he is being silly/incompetent. Consider press releases. If only 3 classifications exist then the press release has to be Top Secret, Secret or Official. A press release classified one of those 3 cannot be released to the press. The absurdity of the situation will force UNCLASSIFIED to continue. Andrew Swallow (talk) 16:43, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ahh, I see where the mistake is: The faulty assumption that OFFICIAL information mustn't be disclosed. This is understandable since many people assume that protective markings are all about confidentiality rather than integrity, availability, and other business needs &c. False assumptions lead to false conclusions. Have you read the sources? bobrayner (talk) 18:33, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have worked with the British Government. "Knowledge is power". That is not going to change. Andrew Swallow (talk) 19:25, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any good reason to believe that the source is wrong? By "good" I mean something based on sources rather than your own personal non sequiteur. bobrayner (talk) 19:59, 12 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Only the same one when you see a square wheel. Someone is obviously making a beginner's error. I suggest that you stand well back. Andrew Swallow (talk) 09:59, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Security Check Enhanced

The Security Check Enhanced (SCE) has been removed from the 2013 documents. This suggests it is obsolete and is being deleted. Andrew Swallow (talk) 03:05, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, our content should cover historical context as well as the current day.

But why do we gather lots of content about NSV in an article about "classified information"? No doubt they are often encountered in the same context, but so are bacon & eggs, and we don't merge those into a single article. They're different things. bobrayner (talk) 19:31, 9 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone? Why is our content on personnel vetting put in an article about "classified information"? There seems to have been some very fundamental confusion between the two concepts. bobrayner (talk) 15:38, 12 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Because "Classified Information" needed to mention vetting levels, particularly when talking to job applicants, and a " UK Vetting Levels and Procedures " article did not exist. Andrew Swallow (talk) 01:24, 13 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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