Information Assurance:
a. The contractor should present within their proposal how they would meet the requirements and intent of DoD Instruction 8582.01, dated June 6, 2012, “Security of Unclassified DoD Information on Non-DoD Systems.” Specifically, the contractor should address each element of DoD Instruction 8582.01, dated June 6, 2012, enclosure 3, paragraph 2, subparagraphs a through m regarding the handling requirements for unclassified but unreleased imagery within their facility and IT infrastructure.
b. The contractor shall acknowledge and provide access to the government to verify and validate that the contractor is meeting the requirements of DoD Instruction 8582.01 on a continuing basis throughout the period of performance of the contract.
Does this explicitly say they will need secret or top-secret clearances? No. Are they going to be screened somehow? Sure looks like it. Are ongoing security and screening measures going to be required? Sure looks like it. And even if security clearances and background checks are not involved, some sort of process to ensure ongoing confidentiality of unreleased materials seems certain.
I don’t know what you think “public domain” means. In the copyright sphere it simply means something isn’t subject to copyright, as I’ve made pretty clear in a prior post. Secret documents may be public domain, but they’re still secret. Things can be unclassified but still not be cleared for release. This doesn’t mean they’re not public domain, nor does it mean the government is going to show them to everybody. Here’s some language from the 8582.01 document I linked to earlier describing this situation:
Unclassified DoD information that has not been cleared for public release may be disseminated by the contractor, grantee, or awardee to the extent required to further the contract, grant, or agreement objectives, provided that the information is disseminated within the scope of assigned duties and with a clear expectation that confidentiality will be preserved.
It appears that DoD is committing to paying an average of $1 million/year for 5 years. This could, of course, increase.
Also, DoD’s answer to Question #28 is interesting:
“Question #28: Is there an option of extending the exclusive rights to the assets if ROI has not been recovered within the 10 years?
Answer: We would consider extending the period of exclusivity depending on the proposal and subject to conditions (i.e., you would not get exclusivity to current imagery as that is already in digits). The exclusivity period would only apply to the physical material that you digitize and return to the Government.”
No, my concern was the whole notion of declassified material, that was in the public domain, being harder to access legally because it’s behind a paywall. I wasn’t talking about classified material, because yes, that is a different discussion. I’m specifically talking about these materials that are already in the public domain. And no, I don’t think T3s paywall is stronger than the top secret.
Agreed. My concern is quite specific for scholarly access, since I’m a scholar, and these sorts of things might be something I would need for my own work. Given that we are given little $$ for actual research from my university (though I can apply for dissertation fellowships, which are often highly competitive), funding research trips is tough enough. If I need to get some of this stuff (and at this point, I’m not sure I do), I now would have to factor that into the cost of writing my dissertation.
But yes, the National Archives are helpful, and I’m sure I’ll hit them at some point. Given my topic, I might need to access DoD archives at some point as well (though to be fair, I’m not sure what I’ll need from them, and won’t really know until I start seriously working on my prospectus, probably in January).
You’re probably right it’s not an end run around declassification, but anything that makes access to these things more difficult I feel should be of concern to those of us who research and write about the government, in whatever capacity.
Anything not directly related to wrecking shit gets completely shafted in the DoD budget. I went to an Army-funded middle school, and I can’t recommend it.
Show me where they say anything about materials not in the public domain. Show me where they say anything about copyrighted materials. It’s already well established that the US government has no copyright in the things it produces, as has been pointed out many times above. All information they have is presumptively in the public domain. If they do have information not in the public domain, the copyright does not belong to the US. If the copyright does not belong to the US, the US could not unilaterally grant public access to those documents after 10 years. It thus makes no sense as attempting to read this document as applying only to documents not in the public domain, because the US would not have the ability to enter into contracts covering these documents.
Alright, I begin see it now. . . it’s an interesting intersection public domain and government security classification. . . even when documents are published and accessible as works in the public domain, they may remain classified, and government employees, contractors are directed to abide by clearance rules.
The question of what those with access to such documents without clearance are capable of doing with them seems quite open, however.
