The SLDF-in-Exile and 3rd League Security classification system
Early in the development of the New Model Army project, it became clear that the extant security classification system in use by the 2nd Star League Defence Force was inadequate to the needs and operational conditions endemic to the New Model army project.
The 2nd Star League used an intentionally simplistic Declassified-Classified-Secret-Top Secret system closely attendant on a web-like decision-matrix used as a conversion table to determine how the various member state security classification systems interacted with the 2nd SLDF and to a limited extent, each other. This had led to the 2nd Star League’s Star League Intelligence Command being both highly self-reliant, but also regarded unfairly as a kind of sieve for member state data, which created unwanted leaks to fellow Star League member states.
While this quickly created a highly-professional and capable intelligence service, almost overnight, it also meant that SLIC was not a trusted entity in most offices of the Member State security services and they had vast difficulty working together.
Matters were not helped that the relationships mandated in the constitution of SLIC ensured that any such relationships favoured the member state services in such a way that they benefitted greatly from SLIC collection, analysis and counter-intelligence activities, while giving little themselves in exchange. Nonetheless; the impression of SLIC as defacto institutionalized moles trained by ComStar ROM persisted to the end of this iteration of the organization and beyond.
The so-called “Jugglers” behind the creation of the New Model Army ensured that the force would include it’s own embryonic slice of SLIC from the outset and that information would flow from the parent organization to this new franchise through themselves as a one-way valve. In this way, the project retained a high-degree of basic security. SOG for their part, to the extent it persisted as it’s own entity, had never entirely abandoned their own six-level security classification system and maintained this in parallel with the official 2nd League system through a much simpler conversion table.
When presented with this new franchise as part of their operational support from the extant SLDF, SOG were quick to integrate “The Shop”, as it became known, into the New Model Army in a parody of a secure facility’s operational/security-zone interchange; with their own “Tame” SLIC acting as a point of traffic-control and translation between the New Model Army and the outside galaxy.
Division of labour was handled as follows; SLIC would be the sole, official source of outside intelligence and information on all non-military matters taking place beyond the Canton Worlds. SOG’s own intelligence function would continue through their own means collecting military data. One major advantage of SLIC, both as a parent and franchise was that they were legally permitted to collect on 2nd League Member States and their citizens. As an officially and legally mercenary organ; SOG’s intelligence service, operating through it’s own means recognized no binding limitations whatsoever and used the relationship as a means to shift their remaining share of explicitly non-military intelligence gathering and analysis off onto a separate body, one that benefitted from legal cover and brought with it a degree of both organizational concealment (for the SLIC franchise operated with no distinction from any other branch or organ of SLIC as a whole) and treaty-bound cooperation. Although the later faced both minor legal and significant bureaucratic limitations.
As the demands of the New Model Army program grew, so did the complexity of it’s security requirements. This led to the development of a new Security Classification System and it’s implementation with the commencement of active combat operations in the 5th Succession War.
*Note: This occurred concurrently with the redesignation of SLIC as the Star League Intelligence Centre and it’s new additional duties as a central intelligence clearing house and standards agency, led by the Intelligence Inspector General: the 3rd League’s senior intelligence officer with his own inspectorate. At the same time, the SLDFiE’s military intelligence apparatus became separately operational as an organ of that organization, consummate with SOG and it’s own intelligence functions ceasing to operate/exist as organizations separate from the SLDFiE. As a matter of historical fact, it is not publicly known exactly when the elements known as “Star League Intelligence” AKA: “3rd League Intelligence” began operations, nor precisely how this national intelligence organization inter-relates with the other intelligence services, such as SLPOLIC (Star League Police Intelligence Service), or the 3rd League’s foreign office. Pedantry or not, it isn’t technically known what the 3rd League’s National Intelligence Service actually calls itself, where they are based, or how they are organized, either.*
The new system retained the same security classifications as the old proprietary SOG system and replaced the SLIC system, then in use as the only extant system, with no conversion tables for foreign parties. These classifications were always written in full-caps, to differentiate native classifications as elements in documents from common words and foreign elements. All except TOP-SECRET could be abbreviated on second usage or as headers as a single capitalized letter, with TOP-SECRET given as TS. Any form of information in a document or product could be classified.
TRUSTED
SECRET
TOP-SECRET
COSMIC
ATOMAL
MAJESTIC
These had changed little in their meanings from their past usage and were defined as-such:
TRUSTED: The lowest level of classification. TRUSTED information is considered “useful”, but not particularly harmful if compromised. All SOG/SLDFiE and later 3rd League personnel are granted this basic level of classification, defined as above that of the common people. Most retain this level through their careers, even those undergoing punishment. It is considered and defined as a level of trust greater than that granted to a demobilized Citizen or Star League Civilian, with foreign actors considered below TRUSTED in a kind of reverse system of declining trust. Foreign actors can be designated as “trusted” in an official sense, without ever having been granted a security clearance. This is normally impossible, but could occur at this lowest level in select circumstances in the case of foreigners who had graduated from an indoctrination program or who had become Star League Citizens through service to the state. A small number of individuals at 3rd League Embassies could hold this classification while maintaining foreign citizenship as “trusted” employees of the League, assuming sufficient vetting. As an intelligence artefact, significant operational data can be found in TRUSTED-level intelligence consistent with the New Model Army’s “Forward Leadership” culture of high individual initiative where common soldiers are entrusted with extensive details of plans, operations and intent that it is thought should aid them in their own prosecution of the mission in the face of casualties to leadership or absent communication.
Many civil officials will retain their TRUSTED classification beyond their demobilization or re-acquire it as needed for certain roles and positions. Information below this level is considered to be literally “un-classified”, a non-classification applied to unmarked documents and declassified material. These still had to be reviewed by a releasability clerk prior to release. “Un-classified” documents and information are freely and widely available throughout the 3rd League and releasability clerks prefer to declassify as much as possible as soon as possible in a system that weighs strict security against the workloads of archival staff in the interests of an informed citizenry and transparency in governance. Such documents are designated as “NULL”; literally without a classification when officially produced or reviewed.
SECRET: This is information considered as not just useful for completion of a mission, but potentially hazardous to operations were it to be compromised. Most non-commissioned officers, many Specialists and Warrant Officers and all Officers are required to hold and maintain this clearance. These individuals would be passed this information on an as-needed basis and trusted to share it with their subordinates on a “need-to-know” basis in order to complete a given mission. Handling of SECRET information in this way is considered an inherent part of the TRUSTED classification; knowing the partial, limited truth of a situation. Whenever possible, SECRET information would be modified through a process called “Gelding” to reduce its classification for general distribution as-needed to ensure missions were completed.
The official policy of the 3rd League Intelligence Centre and thus; all intelligence-handling bodies (meaning the entire apparatus of the 3rd League) is that information is always to be classified at the lowest-possible level in light of it’s potential for impact if it were to be leaked.
*Note: In correct 3rd League Intelligence Centre parlance; “information” is “data”, which had been collected and given context. “Data” could not be classified and did not exist as an independent entity within the SLIC system, but is instead found as “information”, together with other “data”. It becomes “Intelligence” after analysis. Thus, to be an intelligence product; there has to be an “assessment” by trained intelligence personnel, those who have been through at least the Field Intelligence Course. However, this assessment might be classified at a higher level and redacted from a released document. Additional information can be added to an intelligence product to provide context as a “comment”. 3rd League Intelligence personnel would work to provide as much useful information as they could to a given product in order to place it in the proper context to become useful or “actionable” intelligence. A tiny bit of information, with an unreleased assessment, might be accompanied by hundreds or thousands of words of “comment” to keep it from appearing as disassociated “data” and instead present it as “information” that a given party could put to use and use to enhance their awareness of a given situation, even without the classified assessment.
In SLIC parlance; an intelligence product is theoretically releasable (and often is) without the assessment and still considered an “intelligence Product”, so long as the assessment existed at a higher level. Instead; it would can passed on with just the comments. Comments and assessments could be based off of each other. Competing assessments from different bodies remain common and are used as competing hypotheses to explain a given situation. These would in-turn be put through a process of competing hypothesis analysis, producing a third assessment and in the complete product, all three might be presented together.
“Assessment” means assigning meaning and possibly prediction to known collected information. Information, comments and assessments could all be classified differently, although comments were typically classified as releasable with their associated information, except in the most complex products and documents. Overall, even back to SOG days, 3rd League Intelligence culture shows a marked bias against predictive intelligence models in favour of currency reporting on extant situations and capabilities. *
TOP-SECRET: This is information considered as being beyond operational significance, with it’s disclosure being of greater potential for damage to Star League persons or operations than SECRET information.
The TOP-SECRET clearance and all further classifications are granted in stages, on a need-to-know basis given as a “bonafide operational requirement” for an individual’s work, or granted on a reviewed case-by-case basis for ad hoc (literally for these purposes only) reasons. You needed to hold a basic TOP-SECRET clearance to access information at any higher level, for instance. You also needed all the intervening levels.
TOP-SECRET and all further levels are compartmentalized; a further “lateral” classification aimed at preventing unintentional or espionage compromise. These are given as numbers (ex.: TS-3), each registered as official compartments by SLIC and can, in theory be retired or re-tasked to a different subject, in which case the retirement or re-tasking was dated and the information archived and appropriately limited. You couldn’t just create a new compartment in the field, officially, although doing so for humorous or personal reasons is part and parcel of SLDF culture. An officer said to be “Locked in his own compartment” is one who isn’t thought to share sufficient information with his troops. Pictures of a revealing nature of one’s spouse might be found in a noteputer folder labeled “TS-6969”, for instance.
*Note: Compartments are not normally sequential or cumulative. Having TS-10, does not give you access to information in compartments 01-09. Likewise; you do not need 01-03, in order to have 04. Individuals accidentally exposed to information outside their clearance or compartment are required to be debriefed by counter-intelligence personnel at the first opportunity. *
The most common compartment of TOP-SECRET is TS-01, held by all qualified unit clerks, unit commanders and Sergeants Major; this concerns member personal information such as addresses, next of kin, banking information and legal documents such as wills. Within administrative instructions, it was specified that all individuals were to be considered as having TS-01/1: access to their own TS-01 data, but no-one else’s. Fractional compartments were not otherwise used and members were briefed on the consequences and considerations of coming into possession of another member’s TS-01 data without authorization. Being found knowingly in possession of such data could be a serious offence.
TOP-SECRET information was rarely of concern to SLDF tactical or operational commanders, but often was at the strategic level. For instance; all deployment information for the Sleipnir; a bimodal amphibious hydrofoil truck was classified TS-63 from the time of it’s field trials through troop trials and operational deployment through 3102 and was then declassified fully. SLDF LAM operations were reduced to the TS-25 level from a higher classification in 3083.
*Note: In practice, TOP-SECRET information is endemic to Star League Government operations, but less common in the 3rd League’s SLDF in all it’s forms. In terms of what a member’s clearances might look like, basic education on the subject has always compared it to a military driver’s license, with individuals qualified on a number of platforms. So, a given SLDF member or 3rd League official might have a clearance that looked like this if they had TOP-SECRET compartments:
T
S
TS-03, 04, 18, 105*
COSMIC: This level of clearance is for information considered to be of national-significance and generally covered sensitive matters of politics between the member states and foreign powers. A great deal of higher-level intelligence data from the 3rd League’s Intelligence services or concerning matters of the foreign office is classified COSMIC.
COSMIC is the highest level of security clearance that can be normally be granted to School of the Galaxy graduates.
ATOMAL: This was originally specifically for information related to weapons of mass destruction, thus ATOMAL approximates “Atomic”, but was redefined to also cover various matters related to not just weapons considered as having strategic implications, but other matters of strategic or grand-strategic importance, as well as sensitive areas of scientific inquiry and certain highly-technical matters of a proprietary nature.
So, an SLDF unit’s NBC-defence and Special Weapons troops (if any) would have ATOMAL clearances, but so would 3rd League senior government officials, diplomats and foreign office advisors.
*Example: The location of a field artillery unit supplied with chemical shells would be ATOMAL information. These units go dark on their own location status reports when they are supplied these munitions for reasons of tactical security. This too is inherent to the nature of the TRUSTED clearance; few if any of the gun crews would have ATOMAL, but their ordnance Warrant Officer likely would. A Regimental Commander probably would not have ATOMAL of any compartment, either and even if they did should not demand this information. In this way, a given command would be required to operationally “lose track” of their supporting artillery once those units had been issued special ammunition and this would be grounds to deny a higher headquarters information on such a unit’s tactical disposition until any such ammunition was expended or returned to stocks. Likewise; a Special Weapons officer could be tasked to distribute such ordnance, so as to complete a given mission, but no-one without ATOMAL compartments could be informed as to the details. A commander could thus order an attack or operation their headquarters would then have no further information on until it was completed.
As a result of these measures, Word of Blake Forces were unable to effectively predict or protect against SLDFiE Special Weapons operations during the fighting on Terra near the end of the Jihad. Coalition forces operating with the intention of interdicting further SLDFiE strikes were largely unsuccessful, because their information-gathering and SIGINT efforts were unable to localize the firing units for attack by Coalition special forces units.
Today, SLDF Special Forces still regularly train against their own artillery units in operations designed to replicate these kinds of hunter-killer operations. *
By the same token, if projections indicated a major pinch in shipping capacity for a given power, over a given period of time, or another kind of supply-line snarl, this too would fall into an ATOMAL compartment.
HPG and KF-Drive research is all classified ATOMAL, as are technical details and maintenance procedure for certain equipment. ect.
*Note: Tear-lines. Intelligence propagation in the 3rd League lives and dies by a carefully curated system of “tear-line” reporting. All official documents, to include imagery receive an official classification or the NULL classification. Most often by the producer naming it so. Every piece of information or intelligence in every document is classified by paragraph. These are separated and no paragraph can contain two or more differently classified pieces of information. This includes document names and dates (replaced by sequential numbers by releasability clerks). This works with the 3rd League’s access to information system and allows dissemination of information to the lowest possible levels. Only a person with all required clearances and compartments will be allowed (by a releasability clerk) to view a given document in it’s entirety. The 3rd League’s archiving system allows specific items of information to be retrieved, even by cleared civilians, at need.
A given document adopts the classification of it’s highest remaining item of information. You cannot classify something to a level or compartment you do not possess. But a higher authority may do so later, after which you have no further access to it, unless they need you to have another look at it for some reason; at which time, a releasability clerk will grant an ad-hoc or permanent clearance and/or compartment.
The beauty of “Tear-Lines” is the capacity to physically or digitally redact information of a higher clearance or different compartment and release the remainder to parties in need. Such documents have open “Tear-Line” indicators, which are displayed as two parallel dotted lines. Rarely, the redacted data may instead be modified or described in a way which reduces sensitivity. But as this impact’s version-control, it is not preferred. *
MAJESTIC: This is the clearance for the most sensitive, valuable and/or damaging material in the 3rd League. It has 12 compartments: no-more and no-less; unlike TOP-SECRET, COSMIC and ATOMAL, which can have as many as necessary. Majestic compartments are also consecutive, unlike the others, so each higher compartment is considered to contain those proceeding it, like a series of doors in a long hallway.
This system culminates in the “MJ” or “Majestic-Joint” council, the 3rd League’s executive committee. Only one of the numbered MJs can designate an M-12 classification and compartment. That information is then reserves for their eyes only.
***
Beyond this, information is rated on the 3rd League’s “Confidence Scale”. A parallel rating system considering the source of a given piece of information, or it’s product as an assessment for both “Reliability”, here given as trust-worthiness and “Credibility” which may be understood in this instance as competence; the potential for information or it’s source to be mistaken.
SOG had previously used a simple and unitary colour system for the entire concept of confidence, rated worst to best as RED, YELLOW, GRAY, BLUE and GREEN. This was considered too ambiguous and replaced for a time with a system theoretically rated 0-100, shelved in 3078.
The new system, in place since early 3078 rates reliability at 0(low) to 9(high) and credibility on a scale from A(low) to J(high).
This produces a “Confidence Rating” expressed as number/letter, or 5/F for instance.
Some of these have particular legal definitions; such as a 9/J, called “Received Wisdom” and described as completely accurate and reliable to the best knowledge of anyone involved. Documents rated 9/J are required under 3rd League Law and vouchsafed by the Intelligence Inspectorate to be retained in the archives and updated as necessary, in perpetuity. They are illegal to falsify and reproduced as verigraphs.
Ratings from 0-3 and A-C are generally considered unreliable.
Confidence ratings are applied subjectively, based on the personal assessments of those dealing with the sources, as modified by their handlers and collators. So they are, in effect a product of institutional consensus, but are difficult to improve and easy to degrade in practice. Unlike the security classifications, confidence ratings are applied on an as-needed basis, often at the request of an end-user of the information. Once made, they remain attached to the document or information. Above a certain level; 3rd League intelligence professionals carry and maintain their own confidence ratings as a matter of professional confidence and these are recorded in their personnel files (a TS-01 document).
Normally, it is the entire document that will be rated, but more complex intelligence products may assign ratings to individual pieces of information, in which case the document as a whole is rated on a lowest-common denominator system. If an internal piece of information is rated, the whole document must be rated. Confidence ratings are not, themselves classified, as this is considered self-defeating. They are treated as a part of the document title, itself; found at the end and in the document itself, at the bottom or after a rated piece of information or reproduced assessment.
*Note. A full 3rd League document title format looks like this:
31001122-S-DOC_TITLE-DESCRIPTION-5F
30990506-TS-AFFS_42nd_AVALON_HUSSARS_READINESS-AS_PER_FY3098-99_6H
30810901-NULL-RCR_WAR_DIARY_3081AUG-PRIMARY_SOURCE-7I*
Lastly; both Information and Intelligence and the assessments derived from them are seen as having a variable “expiry date” in the 3rd League.
ICOD is “Information Current as Of this Date” and it’s the last time the information was known to have been current and correct. This is a subjective expiry date. The farther you get from the ICOD, the less likely the information is to be accurate. It might still be, but you don’t know.
LTOV is “Last Time information/intelligence of Value” for when there is a known date beyond which the information is of declining or limited worth. Sometimes an LTOV can be used as part of a declassification process.
