Electrospaces.net: What the NSA provides to its foreign partners, and vice versa
Hi, thank you very much for your great content and analysis. Can you explain why there are multiple, conflicting, classifications on the April 2013 NSA Information Paper on its relationship with CSEC? On the top of the first page the classification is TOP SECRET//SI//REL USA, FVEY but on the bottom of the same page is TOP SECRET//SI//NOFORN. That second marking might be an error, as there is no visible TS//SI//NF material (it could be contained in the redacted sections), but there are also portions marked S/REL TO USA, CAN and TS//SI//REL TO USA, CAN, which would rule out an overall classification of TOP SECRET//SI//REL USA, FVEY. At a minimum it should be TOP SECRET//SI//REL USA, CAN. Can we trust the providence of a document with so many basic errors?
Well spotted! I guess these conflicting classification markings are due to human errors, as the system is quite complex. I have seen other documents with small classification errors, sometimes those documents were drafts, and the errors were resolved in the final version. In other cases, documents appeared to be originally classified as NOFORN and later downgraded to REL [...], apparently to share (parts of) them with foreign partners. Note that most of the information papers about the Third Party partners are NOFORN.
