The authority to classify information originally as Confidential may be exercised only by:
- Agency heads and officials designated by the president in the Federal Register
- Officials with original Top Secret or Secret classification authority
- Officials delegated such authority under presidential executive orders
What is document classification?
Document classification or document categorization is a problem in library science, information science and computer science. The task is to assign a document to one or more classes or categories. This may be done "manually" (or "intellectually") or algorithmically. The intellectual classification of documents has mostly been the province ...
How do I handle written classified information?
Handling written classified information is generally straightforward. Documents are marked indicating classification levels. It is sometimes more difficult to remember, however, whether specific things heard or learned about in meetings or oral briefings are classified.
What is classified information and how is it protected?
The information is created or received by a federal government agency or contractor. Once information is classified, it is protected until it is formally declassified. Read more: Classified documents and their purpose.
What does it mean when the government classifies information?
By classifying information, the government restricts who can see the documents and where he or she can see them. The Justice Department recently removed some classified documents from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence while executing a search warrant for possible violations of the Espionage Act and other crimes.
How do documents get classified?
Levels and categories of classification. The United States government classifies sensitive information according to the degree which the unauthorized disclosure would damage national security. The three primary levels of classification (from least to greatest) are Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret.
What are the 3 levels of classified information?
(S) There are three levels of classification – TOP SECRET, SECRET, and CONFIDENTIAL. (S) There are two ways to classify a document – ORIGINAL CLASSIFICATION or DERIVATIVE CLASSIFICATION.
What is the law for classified information?
Codified at 18 U.S.C. § 798, it prohibits knowingly disclosing “to an unauthorized person,” publishing, or “us[ing] in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States” a variety of classified information.
Who is responsible for classifying information?
In most cases, the asset owner is responsible for classifying the information – and this is usually done based on the results of the risk assessment: the higher the value of information (the higher the consequence of breaching the confidentiality), the higher the classification level should be.
How does the government classify documents?
The U.S. government uses three levels of classification to designate how sensitive certain information is: confidential, secret and top secret. The lowest level, confidential, designates information whose release could damage U.S. national security.
What happens if you tell someone classified information?
The penalty for a conviction of unauthorized disclosure includes up to 10 years in prison, a large fine, or both.
Why would information be prohibited from being classified?
(d) Information shall not be classified in order to conceal inefficiency, violations of law, or administrative error; to prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency; to restrain competition; or to prevent or delay release of information that does not require protection in the interest of national ...
Is it illegal to release classified information?
Intentionally disclosing classified information without authorization is a federal crime under the espionage act. Punishment may be up to ten years in prison, a large fine, or could even get you charged with treason.
What are the classification levels?
The U.S. government uses three levels of classification to designate how sensitive certain information is: confidential, secret and top secret. The lowest level, confidential, designates information that if released could damage U.S. national security.
What are the 4 data classification levels?
Typically, there are four classifications for data: public, internal-only, confidential, and restricted.
What are the levels of security classification?
The United States uses three classification levels: Top Secret, Secret and Confidential. Each level is defined in relation to the potential for damage to the national security.
What are the 4 types of classified matters?
Documents and other information must be properly marked "by the author" with one of several (hierarchical) levels of sensitivity—e.g. restricted, confidential, secret, and top secret.
What is document classification?
Document classification. Document classification or document categorization is a problem in library science, information science and computer science. The task is to assign a document to one or more classes or categories. This may be done "manually" (or "intellectually") or algorithmically. The intellectual classification ...
What is the task of assigning a document to one or more classes or categories?
The task is to assign a document to one or more classes or categories. This may be done "manually" ( or "intellectually") or algorithmically. The intellectual classification of documents has mostly been the province of library science, while the algorithmic classification of documents is mainly in information science and computer science.
What is the meaning of language identification?
language identification, automatically determining the language of a text. genre classification, automatically determining the genre of a text. readability assessment, automatically determining the degree of readability of a text, either to find suitable materials for different age groups or reader types or as part of a larger text simplification ...
What is labeling a document?
Therefore, the act of labeling a document (say by assigning a term from a controlled vocabulary to a document) is at the same time to assign that document to the class of documents indexed by that term ( all documents indexed or classified as X belong to the same class of documents). In other words, labeling a document is ...
What is request oriented classification?
Request-oriented classification (or -indexing) is classification in which the anticipated request from users is influencing how documents are being classified. The classifier asks themself: “Under which descriptors should this entity be found?” and “think of all the possible queries and decide for which ones the entity at hand is relevant” (Soergel, 1985, p. 230 ).
What are the two main philosophies of subject classification?
There are two main philosophies of subject classification of documents: the content-based approach and the request-based approach.
Is there a overlapping problem with document classification?
The problems are overlapping, however, and there is therefore interdisciplinary research on document classification. The documents to be classified may be texts, images, music, etc. Each kind of document possesses its special classification problems. When not otherwise specified, text classification is implied.
What is classified information?
Classified information is that which a government or agency deems sensitive enough to national security that access to it must be controlled and restricted. For example, I dealt with information related to weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation. Handling written classified information is generally straightforward.
What are the levels of classification?
The U.S. government uses three levels of classification to designate how sensitive certain information is: confidential, secret and top secret. The lowest level, confidential, designates information that if released could damage U.S. national security. The other designations refer to information the disclosure of which could cause “serious” ...
Who decides?
Executive Order 13256 spells out who specifically may classify information.
What does the marker S stand for in a document?
Within a document, paragraphs might carry the markers “S” for secret, “C” for confidential or “TS” for top secret. The highest classification of any portion of the document determines its overall classification.
What does the State Department use for official use only?
The State Department uses the phrase “sensitive but unclassified,” while the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security use “for official use only.”. These markers are often seen in the headers and footers of documents just like classified designations.
Who has ultimate declassification authority?
However, the president has ultimate declassification authority and may declassify anything at any time. Deciding what information is classified is subjective. Some things clearly need to be kept secret, like the identity of covert operatives or battle plans. Other issues are not as obvious.
Can only people with a top secret clearance see your information?
That means only certain people who have a top secret security clearance may view it. Sometimes this information is given a “code word” so that only those cleared for that particular code word can access the information. This is often used for the most highly sensitive information.
How to classify documents?
Classified U.S. government documents typically must be stamped with their classification on the cover and at the top and bottom of each page. Authors must mark each paragraph, title and caption in a document with the highest level of information it contains, usually by placing appropriate initials in parentheses at the beginning of the paragraph, title, or caption. Commonly, one must affix a brightly colored cover sheet to the cover of each classified document to prevent unauthorized observation of classified material ( shoulder surfing) and to remind users to lock up unattended documents. The most sensitive material requires two-person integrity, where two cleared individuals are responsible for the material at all times. Approved containers for such material have two separate combination locks, both of which must be opened to access the contents.
Where are declassified documents put?
After declassification, the documents from many agencies are accessioned at the National Archives and Records Administration and put on the open shelves for the public. NARA also reviews documents for declassification.
What is classified information?
In the U.S., information is called "classified" if it has been assigned one of the three levels: Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret. Information that is not so labeled is called "Unclassified information". The term declassified is used for information that has had its classification removed, and downgraded refers to information that has been assigned a lower classification level but is still classified. Many documents are automatically downgraded and then declassified after some number of years. The U.S. government uses the terms Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU), Sensitive Security Information (SSI), Critical Program Information (CPI), For Official Use Only (FOUO), or Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES) to refer to information that is not Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret, but whose dissemination is still restricted. Reasons for such restrictions can include export controls, privacy regulations, court orders, and ongoing criminal investigations, as well as national security. Information that was never classified is sometimes referred to as "open source" by those who work in classified activities. Public Safety Sensitive (PSS) refers to information that is similar to Law Enforcement Sensitive but could be shared between the various public safety disciplines (Law Enforcement, Fire, and Emergency Medical Services). Peter Louis Galison, a historian and Director in the History of Science Dept. at Harvard University, claims that the U.S. Government produces more classified information than unclassified information.
What are the three levels of classification?
The three primary levels of classification (from least to greatest) are Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret.
What does each level of classification mean?
Each level of classification indicates an increasing degree of sensitivity. Thus, if one holds a Top Secret security clearance, one is allowed to handle information up to the level of Top Secret, including Secret and Confidential information.
Why do we classify state secrets?
Facilities and handling. One of the reasons for classifying state secrets into sensitivity levels is to tailor the risk to the level of protection. The U.S. government specifies in some detail the procedures for protecting classified information.
Which agency is responsible for safeguarding and declassifying its own documents?
Any agency designated by the President can originate classified information if it meets the content criteria; each agency is responsible for safeguarding and declassifying its own documents. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has custody of classified documents from defunct agencies, and also houses the National Declassification Center (since 2010) and Information Security Oversight Office. The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel has representatives from the Departments of State, Defense, and Justice; the National Archives, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; the National Security Advisor; the Central Intelligence Agency; and Information Security Oversight Office.
Overview
"Content-based" versus "request-based" classification
Content-based classification is classification in which the weight given to particular subjects in a document determines the class to which the document is assigned. It is, for example, a common rule for classification in libraries, that at least 20% of the content of a book should be about the class to which the book is assigned. In automatic classification it could be the number of times given words appears in a document.
Classification versus indexing
Sometimes a distinction is made between assigning documents to classes ("classification") versus assigning subjects to documents ("subject indexing") but as Frederick Wilfrid Lancaster has argued, this distinction is not fruitful. "These terminological distinctions,” he writes, “are quite meaningless and only serve to cause confusion” (Lancaster, 2003, p. 21 ). The view that this distinction is purely superficial is also supported by the fact that a classification system may be …
Automatic document classification (ADC)
Automatic document classification tasks can be divided into three sorts: supervised document classification where some external mechanism (such as human feedback) provides information on the correct classification for documents, unsupervised document classification (also known as document clustering), where the classification must be done entirely without reference to external information, and semi-supervised document classification, where parts of the documents are la…
Applications
Classification techniques have been applied to
• spam filtering, a process which tries to discern E-mail spam messages from legitimate emails
• email routing, sending an email sent to a general address to a specific address or mailbox depending on topic
See also
• Categorization
• Classification (disambiguation)
• Compound term processing
• Concept-based image indexing
Further reading
• Fabrizio Sebastiani. Machine learning in automated text categorization. ACM Computing Surveys, 34(1):1–47, 2002.
• Stefan Büttcher, Charles L. A. Clarke, and Gordon V. Cormack. Information Retrieval: Implementing and Evaluating Search Engines Archived 2020-10-05 at the Wayback Machine. MIT Press, 2010.
External links
• Introduction to document classification
• Bibliography on Automated Text Categorization
• Bibliography on Query Classification
• Text Classification analysis page