Former Head of AT&T Had a Top Secret Security Clearance, Like Many Others in the Tech Community

The former head of AT&T , Robert Eugene Allen , pass forth in September 2016 at the years of 81 . And while Allen ’s 223 - Sir Frederick Handley Page FBI file is relatively unexceptional , it serve well as a in effect reminder that telecom companies have been working on sensitive administration work for their entire existence .

When you think of Top Secret security clearances , you probably think of CIA spies and Army armed service member working behind enemy lines . But even the most boring white collar executive might have a surety clearance . And Allen had just that , halt a Top Secret headroom as early as 1975 , back when he was Vice President and General Manager of the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania .

surety headway for people in private troupe are doled out by the National Industrial Security Program . The program , called various names since its inception in 1947 , has been vital to the public - private partnerships that have drive American excogitation both inside the military and in twist - off products that make their manner to the average consumer . Whether it was GPS , Siri , or the internet itself , the US military need to involve private company to get those applied science from the battlefield to your iPhone .

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Companies with government contract that are grow weapon of warfare , like Boeing or Lockheed Martin , need to allow their workers to have access to raw government information to do their jobs . And having a security clearance can sometimes be make or discover for whether you get a job .

“ It ’s unquestionably a challenge to come up people with the right skills and the ripe headway . We ’re all fishing from the same pond , ” a spokesperson from Raytheon severalise the New York Timesback in 2006 .

But it ’s not just the high last defence force company like Raytheon that need surety clearance . It ’s easy to forget just how critical communicating networks make by companies like AT&T and even Microsoft or Apple are to the US armed services and intelligence community of interests . Everybody cognize that the NSA , CIA , and FBI are all tap into the world ’s communications base . But back in the 1970s ( Allen did n’t become the President of the United States of AT&T until 1986 ) there was still a lot of very sensitive communications infrastructure that was being modernise .

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Gizmodo filed a Freedom of Information Act ( FOIA ) request back in September of 2016 for Allen ’s file and just received it just last week . It ’s nothing too astonishing , as it largely details the extra security measures hoops that Allen had to go through to propose the first Bush presidency . But , again , the file really is a great reminder of how intertwined the US intelligence and military communities are with big business in the United States .

The next lucid question might be who in the tech residential area has a protection headway today . And the answer is probably a quite a little of people , admit some of the big names in tech . Steve Jobs , for instance , had one .

From Walter Isaacson ’s biography of Jobs ( page 572 ):

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Because of the sales to the National Security Agency , Jobs had to get a security clearance , which must have been fun for the FBI agent assigned to vet him . At one distributor point , a Pixar executive director return , Jobs was call by the tec to go over the drug economic consumption questions , which he answered unabashedly . “ The last time I used that … , ” he would say , or on occasion he would answer that no , he had in reality never try that particular drug .

Many people here in 2017 like to think of Edward Snowden ’s 2013 revelations about NSA spying on American grease as the showtime of modern surveillance . But as we ’ve look at before , the surveillance of communications peter like the net has been around since it was create . And it makes perfect sense , as mellow rank members of the US intelligence service biotic community were the ones who help oneself build the damn thing .

We do n’t know on the button what variety of classified body of work Allen may have participated in at AT&T , but pay the time period , it ’s secure to say he saw both the rise ofelectronic communications in war , as well as the twist of the moderndomestic surveillance setup .

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