You cannot use a cell phone in a scif - that is the point of a scif. However, it is a prosecutable offense (I believe) to bring a cell phone, or any electronic device, into a scif. At the very least it is grounds for having your clearance revoked permanently.
If I had ever pulled a stunt like that the COS would have had me on the next plane back to the US - where I would have been detained, interrogated, poly’d, and fully investigated.
In other words, they can’t transmit because of the shielding.
But like I said up thread, the only memory allowed in a scif is what is between someone’s ears...
It is very prosecutable.
Yep.
They have a collection of nice cell phones and tablets that they confiscated and nailed to the wall right through the screen when people brought them into the TOC at one of the bases I worked at. They also pulled their clearances and if they were a contractor, they had them fired and put them on the first bird back to the US. The TOC was not even a SCIF.
Imagine what they (and we) can likely do today.
Yep. A SCIF or SAPF area should not have allowed a phone to even be brought in past the doors. An accidental entry even for a minute would be a hammer-to-the-phone minimum with someone’s clearance being pulled.
For someone to enter and conceal a phone and then use it, is the height of arrogant breach. Should be in the slammer. What does he think he is, Hillary’s bought-and-paid-for FBI loon?
A cell phone wouldn’t be allowed in the SCIF as most of them contain a camera. And broadcasting a phone out of one violates the need to know status of the classified material along with using frequencies that could be tapped.
Both OPSEC and COMSEC would have been violated. And because it was done intentionally, it could mean 20 years. And since the possibility the reciever on the phone call does not have the need to know and, most likely, not the clearance, he is illegally transferring sensitive info and if he/she is caught, it can mean possible espionage for both of them.
rwood
At some point around 2010, I noticed that most security folks monitoring SCIFs were buying up detection devices that would be placed at the front door and pick up on cellphone being brought in....giving off an alarm.
If this idiot had the phone in the vault, and it can be proven...you’d have to immediately terminate his security clearance. No exception. If the head of security for his organization won’t act...that guy needs to be fired ASAP.
Same for me. I never even took my cell phone to work, because I was certain one day I would forget and leave it in one of those silly mailboxes we had to use.
No electronics, nothing that can record or photograph. Mistakes all around and then, to use it and confess— this guy was a top counter espionage agent? We are all in trouble.
Hubby read this and said he puts Strzok up there with Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. He said he could’ve lost clearance and been prosecuted if he had taken even a calculator with volatile memory into a SCIF, much less a cell phone.
That’s what I thought. They are called SCIFs for a reason. No way eavesdrop, listen in, or transmit in/out of one, unless you’re on a secured line, which I believe has the latest and craziest encryption. Used primarily for the upper echelons, in DoS, CIA and DOD to communicate from around the world. Or, a place to house some of the most classified of materials/investigations.
If he brought a phone in there to take photos of transcripts or something like that, then he should already be sitting next to, Saucier, as I type this.
Actually, I was listening to Dan Bongino (former Secret Service) who said that there are ways around it. He sounds to me like he understands the concept...
I have to go back and re-listen to be sure...he may have said it ‘can probably’ be done, but I have to find the passage.
That said, according to a Daily Caller account I read, it may have been Jim Baker’s SCIF, and they say he was a big buddy of Comey.
I would not be in the least bit surprised to hear that monitoring capabilities are disabled or diminished and the standards are lower in the SCIFS that service the Big Cheeses. I mean, look at the Clintons and their disdain and penchant for just going around it, both Bill Clinton as POTUS and her as Secretary of State.