Conference vaxuum::document_ft

724.0. "Security Classification Tag???" by KIRIN::T_HEANEY () Tue Jul 28 1987 19:10

Is anyone in the Document group working on a tag to facilitate
Security Classification of documents? 

Documents are classified at the paragraph, page and overall document
level with each successive level in the hierarchy reflecting the
highest classification of its component parts.  For example, each
paragraph on a page is classified and marked ( (U), (C), (S), (TS) ).
Each page is classified and marked by reflecting the classification
level of the most highly classified paragraph or part thereof on a
page.  So, if there were four and a half paragraphs on a page and they
were marked (U), (U), (U), (U), and (TS), the classification of the
page would be TOP SECRET.  The next page would also be TOP SECRET
because of the information in the half paragraph that started on the
previous page. Because at least one page in the document contains TOP
SECRET information the entire document would be classfied TOP SECRET. 

The classification of the paragraphs goes right in front of the
paragraph numbers.  The classification of the page is marked in bold,
3/4 to  1 inch letters at both top and bottom. (This is not accurate
for hard spec purposes; there is a specific regulation that describes
letter size and location precisely.) 

What we would like for our project, and we feel would be a SIGNIFICANT
enhancement in general, is a way to do this within Document.  Perhaps
a tag <classification>(level), where level = [U, C, S, TS].  During
processing Document would build a page, and specify the page and
overall document markings by keeping track of the classification tags.
Then Document would also print the title page with the appropriate
classification for the entire document.  There would also have  to be
a <page_classification> tag to overide the tag above. (I neglected to
mention that sometimes a group of individually unclassified
sentences/paragraphs are classified when grouped together) Also a
<document_classification> tag for similar reasons. 

This enhancement would be incredibly useful for us right now and would
become a VERY attractive, perhaps deciding feature for selling
Document to the same customers that are buying it for DoD-Std 2167 and
MILSPEC doctype support. 

Comments anyone?

    Given some of the features available in Postscript printers, this
    should become much easier to do.
    
    Should this be available as a global feature or just for milspec?
    How about the kind of ``local global'' stuff that we use by putting
    new features into a tag$local_tags file?

  Having had a word with the good old Miss Moneypenny, she too thinks
  this is a good idea. She even suggested that, depending on the class,
  part-documents could be generated, leaving out those parts which were
  too highly classified. Instead either a white space of the same
  size or a note stating the security level could be inserted.

  Perhaps a word with Q is in order?

Theo


P.S.
James wasn't interested: he'd get the originals anyway

    Maybe istead of whitespace, such pages should be (BBR) or (SBR).
    (burn before reading) (shred before reading... with apologies to
    Ollie).

I sortof like the idea of overprinting sections that are more classified
with whitespace.

'Reminds me of the guy in the CSC who went around all day looking for
a Black highlighter pen  :-)


In all seriousness, this might prove very useful to DIGITAL.  Consider
a document that is RESTRICTED DISTRIBUTION at one level, INTERNAL USE
ONLY for a broader audience, and has limited content so we can give it to
customers.

BobW

    We (PDS) have gotten similar feedback from customers for this ability.
    I was going to try to figure a hack around this for DOCUMENT output
    generated by PDS; I can guarantee that if DOCUMENT provided this
    feature directly, we would use it.
    
       Gary

    
    On the wishlist. Note that I have also put replies to #749 on
    the DEC Internal wish list (which has lower priority than the
    global wish list). Nonetheless, it's come up frequently enough
    and there is certainly more awareness in DEC about confidentiality
    these days that we need to do something....
    
    patti