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Comment by hchz | Hacker News Reader

This would never be used by USG. Confidential -> Classified

The classification scheme is broadly cut up into Confidential, Secret, Top Secret, and Codeword. There are many modifiers to that such as Five-Eyes, Cosmic (NATO), and Restricted-Data (Nuclear Weapon Design).

There are a menagerie of controls that don't rise to classification, like NOFORN, Law Enforcement Sensitive, For official use only, etc.

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Code word compartments cut horizontally across the Confidential/Secret/Top Secret hierarchy. I’ve seen stuff that was classified Confidential, but also in a code word protected compartment. I had a TS/SCI/SI/CT/NATO/ATOMAL clearance when I worked for the Defense Information Systems Agency in the Pentagon. Many times over the past 25+ years I have had to correct people who think the compartmented stuff is classified at a level “above Top Secret”, when in fact the compartments just cut horizontally across the hierarchy.

Below Confidential exist other “unclassified” states, like “For Official Use Only” and “No Foreign” (a.k.a., NOFORN). Then, regardless of the classification, you should also have to prove “Need to Know”.

I don't dispute that, I was trying to present a somewhat simplified view of this in a succinct comment.

To me, the most interesting aspects of classification were that the title, content, and classification level itself don't necessarily share levels.

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