Half a million contractors with security clearences

[Cairenn]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/10/nsa-leak-contractors_n_3418876.html

NEW YORK -- The U.S. government monitors threats to national security with the help of nearly 500,000 people like Edward Snowden – employees of private firms who have access to the government's most sensitive secrets.
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Booz Allen, based in McLean, Va., provides consulting services, technology support and analysis to U.S. government agencies and departments. Last year, 98 percent of the company's $5.9 billion in revenue came from U.S. government contracts. Three-fourths of its 25,000 employees hold government security clearances. Half the employees have top secret clearances.

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Of the 4.9 million people with clearance to access "confidential and secret" government information, 1.1 million, or 21 percent, work for outside contractors, according to a report from Clapper's office. Of the 1.4 million who have the higher "top secret" access, 483,000, or 34 percent, work for contractors.

Content from External Source

What I would like to know are all of these working with IT or does it include other folks that must have security clearances. I have a friend that owns a middle size defense contractor. They install electronics on subs and Navy ships. His workers have to have security clearances (he prefers Navy vets).

The article is not clear on this.

Can anyone shed more light on it?

 

[Mick West]

If half a million people were doing unconstitutional things, then a lot more people would have talked.

 

[pseacraft]

One of your problems is using the term 'IT' in your opening question. My take on the 500k number is that they are persons working directly with or in relation within the scope of the term 'National Security' related material. All of which requires 'working with IT' to some degree but not being a proper IT worker as the field is commonly defined. There most likely are proper IT Specialists in this group but the vast majority of them are not.

The later figures define the number of people (contractors) who must have access to/need to know of classified information of various levels to perform their normal jobs. This includes those ~500k in the 'national security' arena as well as those who work on other sensitive programs, projects, equipments, etc in support of our national interests. These numbers would include the IT specialists as we know them.

 

[Mick West]

The article is about "people with clearance to access "confidential and secret" government information," This does not mean they can just call up the phone records of whoever they want, nor does it mean they have access to all the Top Secret documents in the Pentagon. It means that at some point in doing their job the need to be given access to SOME information that is classified confidential. The information is then still restricted on a need-to-know basis.

And it's not just IT, it's ALL the government contractors, anything from security guards to line workers, to computer programmers.