“Today, ISOO published its FY 2022 Annual Report to the President. Each year, ISOO reports to the President on the implementation of the Classified National Security Information (CNSI) and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) programs, following requirements in Executive Orders 13526 and 13556. These Reports summarize ISOO’s oversight activities and make key recommendations that seek to improve the effectiveness of how our Government manages and protects this information. A major focus of this year’s Report is making recommendations for improvement of the programs surrounding CNSI, CUI, and the National Industrial Security Program (NISP), including potential changes to the existing Executive Orders and updates to ISOO’s responsibilities. Another primary focus area is methods to prevent any future mishandling of CNSI, as has been reported significantly in the media over this past year. As the Director of ISOO, Mark A. Bradley, stated in his letter to the President, “even those who are serving in our government’s highest offices must follow the same security practices and requirements as the rest of us who have access to this kind of information.” Mr. Bradley continued….Dear Mr. President, This is my last Annual Report to you before I retire from federal service. I am very proud to have been a career civil servant in the United States government. That said, I leave with a deep sense of uneasiness because so much remains to be done to rethink and to recast the ways we classify and declassify national security information. If we don’t change how we do both, our enemies will have an easier time stealing our secrets and many of our citizens will continue to not believe what their government is telling them. Both are threats to our national security. As I write this, another damaging leak of classified information has come to light. Whether this latest one is a glaring failure of character, a costly breakdown of the systems that are supposed to protect this information, or something else, remains to be seen. This follows on the heels of alleged incidents of mishandling classified information that have drawn enormous media attention on how the executive branch classifies and declassifies national security information, especially at its highest levels. Congress, galvanized into action by these alarming reports, is now teeming with proposed legislation – some better thought out than others – to shore up and fix what many of its members believe are badly broken systems. In the meantime, I believe we can solve one of our most glaring problems by applying Aristotle’s principle that all must be held accountable to the same sets of laws and rules for all those who have access to classified information…”
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