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(S//SI) New Release Caveat on the Way
FROM:
Chief, Reporting Policy & Guidance (S1212)
Run Date: 04/29/2005
RELIDO, or REL Information Disclosure Officer (U)
(S//SI) Recently, members of the Reporting Board and RPG had a chance to sit with Mr. Lou
Giles from the Office of Policy and Records (DC3) to discuss a new DCI Directive. This DCID will
establish a new release caveat called RELIDO, or Release Information Disclosure Officer, and
promises to have a profound impact on the way we share information with our customers. To
illustrate this I'll use our most common reporting classification as an example.
(S//SI) In the SIGINT community, if a product report is marked SECRET//SI, it is assumed to be
releasable to all our 2nd Party partners as well as any 3rd Party partners we have an exchange
agreement with. Where we get into trouble is with the tear-line portion that is just marked
SECRET. When developing the WTR (Write-to-Release) program, it was NSA's intent that the
releasability of the WTR portion be the same as the COMINT version, the only difference being
that it can be shared with non-SI indoctrinated personnel. However, the reality is once the WTR
portion has been removed from the SIGINT report it falls under the classification guidelines of
the Department of Defense, which treats all classified material as NOFORN, unless there is a
specific "REL to" caveat. Despite several attempts, however, we have never been able to find a
way to fully merge DoD's "REL to" requirement into our reporting, as doing so would call out our
various foreign relationships. Hopefully, that is, until now.
(S//SI) Currently, if a SIGINT report needs to be released to a foreign partner that did not
originally receive the report, it was brought to the attention of a Designated Intelligence
Disclosure Official (DIDO) who has the authority to allow further dissemination. However, this
authority did not transfer to Foreign Disclosure Officers (FDO) within DoD when the WTR
program was instituted. So, although this DCID and RELIDO does not effectively change the role
of an Intelligence Community (IC) DIDO, it will increase the authority of an FDO, as the RELIDO
caveat will be recognized by both the IC and DoD and applied to both the COMINT and WTR
portions of a report. What will this do for us? For starters, we hope that this DCID will:
1. Reduce the number of DoD Foreign Release (FORREL) requests.
2. Eliminate the need for SIGINT Exchange Designators such as SETTEE
3. Reduce (hopefully eliminate) the need for reports with multiple tear-lines
(S//SI) The optimum word, however, is "hope" since there is still a lot of work to do, and a lot of
"what if" questions to answer before this is implemented. Likewise, we will have to make sure
our systems, as well as those of our partners, will be able to recognize and accept the new
marking.
"(U//FOUO) SIDtoday articles may not be republished or reposted outside NSANet
without the consent of S0121 (DL sid_comms)."
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DERIVED FROM: NSA/CSSM 1-52, DATED 08 JAN 2007 DECLASSIFY ON: 20320108