Bill Evanina

The federal government is supposed to thoroughly check on security clearance holders every few years. But there are about five million people who hold clearances. Knowing the system is inadequate to catch people who might steal state secrets or turn violent, the government is moving towards a system in which it continuously evaluates clearance holders. One method is by looking up the person on the Internet. Bill Evanina is the national counterintelligence executive. He tells Emily Kopp how his office is experimenting with using social media to vet clearance holders.

For the past six months, the Director of National Intelligence has been trying to determine whether the government should do Google searches on people who hold security clearances.

Now that all of the people have been gathered at the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, the work begins on building the same mindset. The new center houses ODNI employees, detailees from 15 agencies and contractors. What are they doing? For answers, we turn to Bill Evanina, the National Counterintellgence Executive (NCIX) and director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. On the Federal Drive, he told Tom Temin how the Center is working to prevent bad actors from getting security clearances, and making sure cleared people don’t stay cleared if they no longer qualify.

Responding to cyber penetrations into federal IT systems at the Office of Personnel Management and elsewhere, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Wednesday that it was launching a “comprehensive” and governmentwide counterintelligence campaign.

In the latest video installment of the “Know the Risk — Raise Your Shield” campaign, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence makes clear that no job is too low-level for someone looking to target information.

Once your personal information has been purloined, you have to think twice about anyone who might try to befriend you. If you’re one of the more than 20 million federal employees affected by the great Office of Personnel Management data breach, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center has some information that might help. Bill Evanina, center director, brings more to Federal Drive with Tom Temin.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee questioned the administration on its new federal security clearance reform plan. Members of the committee wanted further details about the Office of Personnel Management’s role in the new process, as well as the timeline, funding, and the authorities that DoD would have under the National Background Investigations Bureau.

Current and former intelligence community officials say they’re not getting the buy-in they need from their top leadership — or the guidance they need to use begin using social media — in their insider threat and security clearance programs.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released much-anticipated guidance on using social media during background checks.Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center at ODNI, said the policy is a collaborative effort to “strike the right balance” between obtaining publicly available information but not stepping on civil liberties.

Agencies will know later this month how much more they will have to pay for security clearances to the National Background Investigations Bureau. The NBIB will meet initial operating capability on Oct. 1 and begin processing all security clearance cases.