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"The U.S. government is studying whether it can scour social-media websites for clues about potential risks from workers such as Edward Snowden and the Washington Navy Yard shooter.\nSnowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who leaked government secrets, and Aaron Alexis, who shot and killed 12 people, had security clearances. The cases have exposed a flawed system of vetting such employees, some of whom are slipping through the cracks.\nThe pilot studies, which looked at the feasibility of using automated records checks as well as social-media websites, turned up \u201Cactionable information,\u201D Brian Prioletti, an assistant director in the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive, said in testimony prepared for a Senate hearing Thursday.\nThe tests also \u201Cindicate that retrieving, analyzing and processing the data is likely to be resource intensive,\u201D he said.Prioletti was among five government officials who appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee more than a month after the Navy Yard shootings.\nPrioletti was among five government officials who appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee more than a month after the Navy Yard shootings.\nLawmakers want to know how \u201Ca troubled, unstable individual possessed a security clearance from the U.S. government,\u201D Senator Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat who heads the committee, said as he opened the hearing.\n\u2018Quality\u2019 Checks\nThe Snowden case as well as documents released by U.S. Army Private Bradley Manning also have led members of Congress to question \u201Cthe quality of background checks,\u201D he said.\n\u201CMany national security experts have long argued that the security clearance process is antiquated and in need of modernization,\u201D Carper said. \u201CGiven recent events, I think we have to ask whether the system is fundamentally flawed.\u201D\nAlexis, a 34-year-old subcontractor employee who was shot dead by police on Sept. 16, obtained a secret-level clearance from the U.S. Navy in March 2008 and kept it even with three arrests and a history of mental illness.\nAn initial Navy review released Sept. 23 found the service didn\u2019t know about a 2004 incident in which Alexis shot out the tires of a car in Seattle because a 2007 background report said he was arrested for \u201Cdeflating the tires.\u201D\nSeattle Police\nA report on his 2004 arrest wasn\u2019t sought from the Seattle police because that city\u2019s authorities routinely refer investigators to a state database of court records, Elaine Kaplan, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management, said at the hearing. The state database lacked specific information about the arrest, she said.\nIf investigators aren\u2019t required to get police reports of people seeking security clearances, the government risks missing signs of mental illness, said Senator Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat.\n\u201CI think there\u2019s just a lot of checking boxes going on,\u201D McCaskill said.\nThe Navy Yard massacre should prompt a review of the security-clearance process, including whether it approves too many and classifies too much information, said Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the committee.\nEven with the review, \u201Cit\u2019s unlikely that a stricter clearance process would have prevented a deranged individual from committing murder,\u201D Coburn said.\nEdward Snowden\nSnowden, a former Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp. employee who leaked information on U.S. surveillance programs, had a top-secret clearance.\nAlmost 5 million federal and contract workers have clearances. Those with top-secret clearances get reinvestigated once every five years, with less frequent reviews at lower clearance levels.\n\u201CThe time interval between periodic reinvestigations leaves the U.S. government uninformed as to behavior that potentially poses a security or a counterintelligence risk,\u201D Prioletti told the panel.\nBoth Snowden and Alexis were vetted by USIS, a unit of Falls Church, Va.-based Altegrity Inc. that is under contract to handle many of the government\u2019s background checks. Such reviews are required for clearances.\nThe Justice Department Wednesday joined a whistle-blower lawsuit against the company. USIS is accused in the complaint in federal court in Montgomery, Ala., of failing to perform quality control reviews in connection with its background investigations for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.\n\u2018Damage Assessments\u2019\nThe Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working on a \u201Ccontinuous evaluation\u201D tool that would ensure timely sharing of information across agencies, Prioletti said.\n\u201CTimely knowledge of such information might have prompted a security review or increased monitoring of the individual,\u201D Prioletti said in his prepared testimony.\nGovernment employees and contractors holding security clearances would be subject to random background checks under a proposal from two Democratic and two Republican senators.\nThe draft measure would initiate a review of public records and other databases to identify any information that might affect individuals currently holding a security clearance, according to McCaskill\u2019s office.\nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\nImage: Wisconsin National Guard"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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