text: Classified information concerning or derived from sensitive intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes. All SCI must be handled within formal access control systems established by the Director of National Intelligence.


title: Classified information in the United States

text: Restricted Data (RD) and Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) are classification markings that concern nuclear information. These are the only two classifications that are established by federal law, being defined by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. Nuclear information is not automatically declassified after 25 years. Documents with nuclear information covered under the Atomic Energy Act will be marked with a classification level (confidential, secret or top secret) and a restricted data or formerly restricted data marking.


text: Nuclear information as specified in the act may inadvertently appear in unclassified documents and must be reclassified when discovered. Even documents created by private individuals have been seized for containing nuclear information and classified. Only the Department of Energy may declassify nuclear information.


text: Most RD and FRD (as well as most classified information in general) are classified at either the Confidential or Secret levels; however they require extra RD/FRD specific clearances in addition to the clearance level.


text: "Unclassified" is not technically a classification; this is the default and refers to information that can be released to individuals without a clearance. Information that is unclassified is sometimes restricted in its dissemination as Controlled Unclassified Information. For example, the law enforcement bulletins reported by the U.S. media when the United States Department of Homeland Security raised the U.S. terror threat level were usually classified as "<nowiki>U//LES</nowiki>", or "Unclassified – Law Enforcement Sensitive". This information is supposed to be released only to law enforcement agencies (sheriff, police, etc.), but, because the information is unclassified, it is sometimes released to the public as well.


text: Information that is unclassified but which the government does not believe should be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests is often classified as Controlled Unclassified Information. In addition to CUI information, information can be categorized according to its availability to be distributed, e.g., Distribution D may only be released to approved Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Defense contractor personnel.


text: The statement of NOFORN (meaning "no foreign nationals") is applied to any information that may not be released to any non-U.S. citizen. NOFORN and distribution statements are often used in conjunction with classified information or alone on SBU information. Documents subject to export controls have a specific warning to that effect. Information which is "personally identifiable" is governed by the Privacy Act of 1974 and is also subject to strict controls regardless of its level of classification.


text: Finally, information at one level of classification may be "upgraded by aggregation" to a higher level. For example, a specific technical capability of a weapons system might be classified Secret, but the aggregation of all technical capabilities of the system into a single document could be deemed Top Secret.


text: Use of information restrictions outside the classification system is growing in the U.S. government. In September 2005 J. William Leonard, director of the U.S. National Archives Information Security Oversight Office, was quoted in the press as saying, "No one individual in government can identify all the controlled, unclassified [categories], let alone describe their rules."


text: One of the 9/11 Commission findings was that "the government keeps too many secrets." To address this problem, the Commission recommended that '[t]he culture of agencies feeling they own the information they gathered at taxpayer expense must be replaced by a culture in which the agencies instead feel they have a duty ... to repay the taxpayers' investment by making that information available.'"


text: Due to over 100 designations in use by the U.S. government for unclassified information at the time, President George W. Bush issued a Presidential memorandum on May 9, 2008, in an attempt to consolidate the various designations in use into a new category known as Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). The CUI categories and subcategories were hoped to serve as the exclusive designations for identifying unclassified information throughout the executive branch not covered by Executive Order 12958 or the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (as amended, though there is CUI//SP-UCNI now) but still required safeguarding or dissemination controls, pursuant to and consistent with any applicable laws, regulations, and government-wide policies in place at the time. CUI would replace categories such as For Official Use Only (FOUO), Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) and Law Enforcement Sensitive (LES).


text: The Presidential memorandum also designated the National Archives as responsible for overseeing and managing the implementation of the new CUI framework.


text: This memorandum has since been rescinded by of November 4, 2010 and the guidelines previously outlined within the memo were expanded upon in a further attempt to improve the management of information across all federal agencies as well as establish a more standard, government-wide program regarding the controlled unclassification designation process itself.


text: The U.S. Congress has attempted to take steps to resolve this, but did not succeed. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Reducing Information Control Designations Act on March 17, 2009. The bill was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Because no action was taken in committee and bills expire at the end of every Congress, there is currently no bill to solve unclassified designations.


text: Among U.S. government information, FOUO was primarily used by the U.S. Department of Defense as a handling instruction for Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) which may be exempt from release under exemptions two to nine of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It is one of the various sub-categorizations for strictly unclassified information which, on 24 February 2012, was officially consolidated as CUI.


text: Other departments continuing the use of this designation include the Department of Homeland Security.


text: According to the Department of Defense, Public Trust is a type of position, not clearance level, though General Services Administration refers to it as clearance level. Certain positions which require access to sensitive information, but not information which is classified, must obtain this designation through a background check. Public Trust Positions can either be moderate-risk or high-risk.


text: To be properly classified, a classification authority (an individual charged by the U.S. government with the right and responsibility to properly determine the level of classification and the reason for classification) must determine the appropriate classification level, as well as the reason information is to be classified. A determination must be made as to how and when the document will be declassified, and the document marked accordingly. Executive Order 13526 describes the reasons and requirements for information to be classified and declassified (). Individual agencies within the government develop guidelines for what information is classified and at what level.


text: The former decision is original classification. A great majority of classified documents are created by derivative classification. For example, if one piece of information, taken from a secret document, is put into a document along with 100 pages of unclassified information, the document, as a whole, will be secret. Proper rules stipulate that every paragraph will bear a classification marking of (U) for Unclassified, (C) for Confidential, (S) for Secret, and (TS) for Top Secret. Therefore, in this example, only one paragraph will have the (S) marking. If the page containing that paragraph is double-sided, the page should be marked SECRET on top and bottom of both sides.


text: A review of classification policies by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence aimed at developing a uniform classification policy and a single classification guide that could be used by the entire U.S. intelligence community found significant interagency differences that impaired cooperation and performance. The initial ODNI review, completed in January 2008, said in part, "The definitions of 'national security' and what constitutes 'intelligence'—and thus what must be classified—are unclear. ... Many interpretations exist concerning what constitutes harm or the degree of harm that might result from improper disclosure of the information, often leading to inconsistent or contradictory guidelines from different agencies. ... There appears to be no common understanding of classification levels among the classification guides reviewed by the team, nor any consistent guidance as to what constitutes 'damage,' 'serious damage,' or 'exceptionally grave damage' to national security. ... There is wide variance in application of classification levels."


text: The review recommended that original classification authorities should specify clearly the basis for classifying information, for example, whether the sensitivity derives from the actual content of the information, the source, the method by which it was analyzed, or the date or location of its acquisition. Current policy requires that the classifier be "able" to describe the basis for classification but not that he or she in fact do so.


text: Step 3 in the classification process is to assign a reason for the classification. Classification categories are marked by the number "1.4" followed by one or more letters (a) to (h):


text: The Invention Secrecy Act of 1951 allows the suppression of patents (for a limited time) for inventions that threaten national security.


text: Whether information related to nuclear weapons can constitutionally be "born secret" as provided for by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 has not been tested in the courts.


text: Guantanamo Bay detention camp has used a "presumptive classification" system to describe the statements of Guantanamo Bay detainees as classified. When challenged by Ammar al-Baluchi in the Guantanamo military commission hearing the 9/11 case, the prosecution abandoned the practice. Presumptive classification continues in the cases involving the habeas corpus petitions of Guantanamo Bay detainees.


text: One of the reasons for classifying state secrets into sensitivity levels is to tailor the risk to the level of protection. The U.S. government specifies in some detail the procedures for protecting classified information. The rooms or buildings for holding and handling classified material must have a facility clearance at the same level as the most sensitive material to be handled. Good quality commercial physical security standards generally suffice for lower levels of classification. At the highest levels, people sometimes must work in rooms designed like bank vaults ("see" Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility – SCIF). The U.S. Congress has such facilities inside the Capitol Building, among other Congressional handling procedures for protecting confidentiality.


text: The U.S. General Services Administration sets standards for locks and containers used to store classified material. The most commonly-approved security containers resemble heavy-duty file cabinets with a combination lock in the middle of one drawer. In response to advances in methods to defeat mechanical combination locks, the U.S. government switched to electromechanical locks that limit the rate of attempts to unlock them. After a specific number of failed attempts, they will permanently lock, requiring a locksmith to reset them.


text: The most sensitive material requires two-person integrity, where two cleared individuals are responsible for the material at all times. Approved containers for such material have two separate combination locks, both of which must be opened to access the contents.


text: Classified U.S. government documents typically must be stamped with their classification on the cover and at the top and bottom of each page. Authors must mark each paragraph, title and caption in a document with the highest level of information it contains, usually by placing appropriate initials in parentheses at the beginning of the paragraph, title, or caption, for example (C), (S), (TS), (TS-SCI), etc., or (U) for unclassified.


text: Commonly, one must affix a brightly colored cover sheet to the cover of each classified document to prevent unauthorized observation of classified material (shoulder surfing) and to remind users to lock up unattended documents. The cover sheets warn viewers of the sensitive nature of the enclosed material, but are themselves are unclassified. Typical colors are blue for confidential, red for secret and orange for top secret.


text: Restrictions dictate shipment methods for classified documents. Top Secret material must go by special courier, Secret material within the U.S. via registered mail, and Confidential material by certified mail. Electronic transmission of classified information largely requires the use of National Security Agency approved/certified "Type 1" cryptosystems using NSA's unpublished and classified Suite A algorithms. The classification of the Suite A algorithms categorizes the hardware that store them as a Controlled Cryptographic Item (CCI) under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR.


text: CCI equipment and keying material must be controlled and stored with heightened physical security, even when the device is not processing classified information or contains no cryptographic key. NSA is currently implementing what it calls Suite B, a group of commercial algorithms such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA), Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) and Elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman (ECDH). Suite B provides protection for data up to Top Secret on non-CCI devices, which is especially useful in high-risk environments or operations needed to prevent Suite A compromise. These less stringent hardware requirements stem from the device not having to "protect" classified Suite A algorithms.


text: Specialized computer operating systems known as trusted operating systems are available for processing classified information. These systems enforce the classification and labeling rules described above in software. Since 2005 they are not considered secure enough to allow uncleared users to share computers with classified activities. Thus, if one creates an unclassified document on a secret device, the resultant data is classified secret until it can be manually reviewed. Computer networks for sharing classified information are segregated by the highest sensitivity level they are allowed to transmit, for example, SIPRNet (Secret) and JWICS (Top Secret-SCI).


text: The destruction of certain types of classified documents requires burning, shredding, pulping or pulverizing using approved procedures and must be witnessed and logged. Classified computer data presents special problems. "See" Data remanence.


text: When a cleared individual leaves the job or employer for which they were granted access to classified information, they are formally debriefed from the program. Debriefing is an administrative process that accomplishes two main goals: it creates a formal record that the individual no longer has access to the classified information for that program; and it reminds the individual of their lifetime commitment to protect that information.


text: Typically, the individual is asked to sign another non-disclosure agreement (NDA), similar to that which they signed when initially briefed, and this document serves as the formal record. The debriefed individual does not lose their security clearance; they have only surrendered the need to know for information related to that particular job.


text: In the past, clearances did not necessarily transfer between various U.S. government agencies. For example, an individual cleared for Department of Defense Top Secret had to undergo another investigation before being granted a Department of Energy Q clearance. Agencies are now supposed to honor background investigations by other agencies if they are still current.


text: Because most security clearances only apply inside the agency where the holder works, if one needs to meet with another agency to discuss classified matters, it is possible and necessary to pass one's clearance to the other agency. For example, officials visiting at the White House from other government agencies would pass their clearances to the Executive Office of the President (EOP).


text: The Department of Energy security clearance required to access Top Secret Restricted Data, Formerly Restricted Data, and National Security Information, as well as Secret Restricted Data, is a Q clearance. The lower-level L clearance is sufficient for access to Secret Formerly Restricted Data and National Security Information, as well as Confidential Restricted Data and Formerly Restricted Data. In practice, access to Restricted Data is granted, on a need-to-know basis, to personnel with appropriate clearances. At one time, a person might hold both a TS and a Q clearance, but that duplication and cost is no longer required. For all practical purposes, Q is equivalent to Top Secret, and L is equivalent to Secret.


text: Contrary to popular lore, the Yankee White clearance given to personnel who work directly with the President is not a classification. Individuals having Yankee White clearances undergo extensive background investigations. The criteria include U.S. citizenship, unquestionable loyalty, and an absolute absence of any foreign influence over the individual, their family, or "persons to whom the individual is closely linked".


text: Also, they must not have traveled (save while in government employ and at the instructions of the United States) to countries that are considered to be unfriendly to the United States. Yankee White cleared personnel are granted access to any information for which they have a need to know, regardless of which organization classified it or at what level.


text: See also the Single Scope Background Investigation below, along with explicit compartmented access indoctrination. Some compartments, especially intelligence-related, may require a polygraph examination, although the reliability of the polygraph is controversial. The NSA uses the polygraph early in the clearance process while the CIA uses it at the end, which may suggest divergent opinions on the proper use of the polygraph.


text: Standard Form 312 (SF 312) is a non-disclosure agreement required under Executive Order 13292 to be signed by employees of the U.S. Federal Government or one of its contractors when they are granted a security clearance for access to classified information. The form is issued by the Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives and Records Administration and its title is "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement." SF 312 prohibits confirming or repeating classified information to unauthorized individuals, even if that information is already leaked. The SF 312 replaces the earlier forms SF 189 or the SF 189-A. Enforcement of SF-312 is limited to civil actions to enjoin disclosure or seek monetary damages and administrative sanctions, "including reprimand, suspension, demotion or removal, in addition to the likely loss of the security clearance."


text: Compartments also exist, that employ code words pertaining to specific projects and are used to more easily manage individual access requirements. Code words are not levels of classification themselves, but a person working on a project may have the code word for that project added to their file, and then will be given access to the relevant documents. Code words may also label the sources of various documents; for example, code words are used to indicate that a document may break the cover of intelligence operatives if its content becomes known. The WWII code word "Ultra" identified information found by decrypting German ciphers, such as the Enigma machine, and which—regardless of its own significance—might inform the Germans that Enigma was broken if they became aware that it was known.


text: The terms "Sensitive Compartmented Information" (SCI) and "Special Access Program" (SAP) are widely misunderstood as classification levels or specific clearances.


text: In fact, the terms refer to methods of handling certain types of classified information that relate to specific national-security topics or programs (whose existence may not be publicly acknowledged) or the sensitive nature of which requires special handling, and thereby those accessing it require special approval to access it.


text: The paradigms for these two categories, SCI originating in the intelligence community and SAP in the Department of Defense, formalize 'Need to Know' and addresses two key logistical issues encountered in the day-to-day control of classified information:


text: To be clear, "collateral" (formerly referred to as General Service or GENSER) simply means one lacks special access (e.g. SCI, SAP, COMSEC, NATO, etc.). Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret are all, by themselves, collateral clearance levels.


text: SAP and SCI are usually found at the Top Secret classification, but there is no prohibition of applying such segregation to Confidential and Secret information.


text: SAP and SCI implementation are roughly equivalent, and it is reasonable to discuss their implementation as one topic. For example, SAP material needs to be stored and used in a facility much like the SCIF described below.


text: Department of Energy information, especially the more sensitive SIGMA categories, may be treated as SAP or SCI.


text: Access to classified information is not authorized based on clearance status. Access is only permitted to individuals after determining they have a need to know. Need-to-know is a determination that an individual requires access to specific classified information in the performance of (or assist in the performance of) lawful and authorized government functions and duties.


text: To achieve selective separation of program information while still allowing full access to those working on the program, a separate compartment, identified by a unique codeword, is created for the information. This entails establishing communication channels, data storage, and work locations (SCIF—Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), which are physically and logically separated not only from the unclassified world, but from general Department of Defense classified channels as well.


text: Thus established, all information generated within the compartment is classified according to the general rules above. However, to emphasize that the information is compartmented, all documents are marked with both the classification level and the codeword (and the caveat "Handle via <compartment name> Channels Only", or "Handle via <compartment names> Jointly" if the document contains material from multiple programs).


text: A person is granted access to a specific compartment after the individual has: (a) had a Single Scope Background Investigation similar to that required for a collateral Top Secret clearance; (b) been "read into" or briefed on the nature and sensitivity of the compartment; and (c) signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).


text: Access does not extend to any other compartment; i.e., there is no single "SCI clearance" analogous to DoD collateral Top Secret. The requirements for DCID 6/4 eligibility (a determination that an individual is eligible for access to SCI), subsumes the requirements for a TS collateral clearance. Being granted DCID 6/4 eligibility includes the simultaneous granting of a TS collateral clearance, as adjudicators are required to adjudicate to the highest level that the investigation (SSBI) supports.


text: There is no public reference to whether SCI is divided in the same manner, but news reports reflecting that only the Gang of Eight members of Congress are briefed on certain intelligence activities, it may be assumed that similar rules apply for SCI or for programs with overlapping SAP and SCI content.


text: Examples of SCI topics are human intelligence, communications intelligence, and intelligence collected by satellites. One or more compartments may be created for each area, and each of these compartments may contain multiple subcompartments (e.g., a specific HUMINT operation), themselves with their own code names.


text: Specific compartmented programs will have their own specific rules. For example, it is standard that no person is allowed unaccompanied access to a nuclear weapon or to command-and-control systems for nuclear weapons. Personnel with nuclear-weapons access are under the Personnel Reliability Program.


text: Some highly sensitive SAP or SCI programs may also use the "no lone zone" method (that is, a physical location into which no one is allowed to enter unaccompanied) described for nuclear weapons.


text: The United States also has a system of restrictive caveats that can be added to a document: these are constantly changing, but can include (in abbreviated form) a requirement that the document not be shared with a civilian contractor or not leave a specific room. These restrictions are not classifications in and of themselves; rather, they restrict the dissemination of information within those who have the appropriate clearance level and possibly the need to know the information. Remarks such as "EYES ONLY" and "DO NOT COPY" also limit the restriction. One violating these directives might be guilty of violating a lawful order or mishandling classified information.


text: For ease of use, caveats and abbreviations have been adopted that can be included in the summary classification marking (header/footer) to enable the restrictions to be identified at a glance. They are sometimes known as Dissemination Control Abbreviations.


text: Classification level and caveats are typically separated by "//" in the summary classification marking. For example, the final summary marking of a document might be:


text: The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 sets requirements for protection of information about nuclear weapons and special nuclear materials. Such information is "classified from birth", unlike all other sensitive information, which must be classified by some authorized individual. However, authorized classifiers still must determine whether documents or material are classified or restricted.


text: Documents containing such information must be marked "RESTRICTED DATA" (RD) or "FORMERLY RESTRICTED DATA" (FRD) in addition to any other classification marking. Restricted Data and Formerly Restricted Data are further categorized as Top Secret, Secret, or Confidential.


text: RESTRICTED DATA contains further compartments. The Department of Energy establishes a list of SIGMA Categories for more fine-grained control than RESTRICTED DATA.


text: Critical Nuclear Weapon Design Information (CNWDI, colloquially pronounced ""Sin-Widdy"") reveals the theory of operation or design of the components of a nuclear weapon. As such, it would be SIGMA 1 or SIGMA 2 material, assuming laser fusion is not involved in the information.


text: Access to CNWDI is supposed to be kept to the minimum number of individuals needed. In written documents, paragraphs containing the material, assuming it is Top Secret, would be marked (TS//RD-CNWDI). SIGMA information of special sensitivity may be handled much like SAP or SCI material (q.v.)


text: While most Naval Nuclear Propulsion Information is sensitive, it may or may not be classified. The desired power densities of naval reactors make their design peculiar to military use, specifically high-displacement, high-speed vessels. The proliferation of quieter- or higher-performance marine propulsion systems presents a national-security threat to the United States. Due to this fact, all but the most basic information concerning NNPI is classified. The United States Navy recognizes that the public has an interest in environmental, safety, and health information, and that the basic research the Navy carries out can be useful to industry.


text: In cases where the United States wishes to share classified information bilaterally (or multilaterally) with a country that has a sharing agreement, the information is marked with "REL TO USA", (release) and the three-letter country code. For example, if the U.S. wanted to release classified information to the government of Canada, it would mark the document "REL TO USA, CAN". There are also group releases, such as NATO, FVEY or UKUSA. Those countries would have to maintain the classification of the document at the level originally classified (Top Secret, Secret, etc.).


text: Every bureaucracy strives to increase the superiority of its position by keeping its knowledge and intentions secret. Bureaucratic administration always seeks to evade the light of the public as best it can, because in so doing it shields its knowledge and conduct from criticism ...


text: While the classification of information by the government is not supposed to be used to prevent information from being made public that would be simply embarrassing or reveal criminal acts, it has been alleged that the government routinely misuses the classification system to cover up criminal activity and potentially embarrassing discoveries.


text: Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists notes that


text: ... inquiring into classified government information and disclosing it is something that many national security reporters and policy analysts do, or try to do, every day. And with a few narrow exceptions—for particularly sensitive types of information—courts have determined that this is not a crime." Aftergood notes, "The universe of classified information includes not only genuine national security secrets, such as confidential intelligence sources or advanced military technologies, but an endless supply of mundane bureaucratic trivia, such as 50-year-old intelligence budget figures, as well as the occasional crime or cover-up.


text: As early as 1956, the U.S. Department of Defense estimated that 90% of its classified documents could be publicly disclosed with no harm to national security. The National Security Archive has collected a number of examples of overclassification and government censors blacking out documents that have already been released in full, or redacting entirely different parts of the same document at different times.


text: In The Pentagon Papers case, a classified study was published revealing that four administrations had misled the American public about their intentions in the Vietnam War, increasing the credibility gap. Tony Russo and Daniel Ellsberg were prosecuted under espionage law. The case prompted Harold Edgar & Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. to write a review of espionage law in the 1973 "Columbia Law Review". Their article was entitled "The Espionage Statutes and Publication of Defense Information". In it, they point out that espionage law does not criminalize classified information, only national defense information. They point out that Congress has repeatedly resisted or failed to make the disclosing of classified information illegal, in and of itself. Instead, Congress has strictly limited which sort of classified information is illegal, and under which specific circumstances it is illegal. i.e. in Congress specifically criminalized leaking cryptographic information that is classified, but when it passed the law it specifically stated the law didn't criminalize disclosing other types of classified information. Another article that discusses the issue is by Jennifer Elsea of the Congressional Research Service.


text: Various UFO conspiracies mention a level "Above Top Secret" used for UFO design information and related data. They suggest such a classification is intended to apply to information relating to things whose possible existence is to be denied, such as aliens, as opposed to things whose potential existence may be recognized, but for which access to information regarding specific programs would be denied as classified. The British government, for example, denied for several decades that they were either involved or interested in UFO sightings. However, in 2008, the government revealed they have monitored UFO activity for at least the past 30 years.


text: The existence of an "Above Top Secret" classification is considered by some as unnecessary to keep the existence of aliens a secret, as they say information at the Top Secret level, or any level for that matter, can be restricted on the basis of need to know. Thus, the U.S. government could conceal an alien project without having to resort to another level of clearance, as need to know would limit the ability to have access to the information. Some suggest that claims of the existence of such a classification level may be based on the unsubstantiated belief that the levels of classification are themselves classified. As such, they feel that books claiming to contain "Above Top Secret" information on UFOs or remote viewing should arguably be taken with a grain of salt.


text: Without making a judgment on if such classifications have been used for space aliens, it is a reality that even the names of some compartments were classified, and certainly the meaning of the code names. In the cited document, an (S) means the material it precedes is Secret and (TS) means Top Secret. According to the Department of Defense directive, "the fact of" the existence of NRO was at the secret level for many years, as well as the fact of and the actual phrase "National Reconnaissance Program" (see Paragraph II). Paragraph V(a) is largely redacted, but the introduction


text: to the documents clarifies (see Document 19) that it refers to the now-cancelled BYEMAN code word and control channel for NRO activities. BYEMAN, the main NRO compartment, was classified as a full word, although the special security offices could refer, in an unclassified way, to "B policy".


text: Any agency designated by the President can originate classified information if it meets the content criteria. Each agency is responsible for safeguarding and declassifying its own documents. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has custody of classified documents from defunct agencies, and also houses the National Declassification Center (since 2010) and Information Security Oversight Office. The Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel has representatives from the Departments of State, Defense, and Justice; the National Archives, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; the National Security Advisor; the Central Intelligence Agency; and Information Security Oversight Office.


text: Declassification is the process of removing the classification of a document and opening it for public inspection.


text: In accordance with Executive Order 13526, published January 5, 2010 (which superseded Executive Order 12958, as amended), an executive agency must declassify its documents after 25 years unless they fall under one of the nine narrow exemptions outlined by section 3.3 of the order. Classified documents 25 years or older must be reviewed by any and all agencies that possess an interest in the sensitive information found in the document. Documents classified for longer than 50 years must concern human intelligence sources or weapons of mass destruction, or get special permission. All documents older than 75 years must have special permission.


text: The Order also requires that agencies establish and conduct a program for systematic declassification review, based on the new and narrower criteria. This only applies to records that are of permanent historical value and less than 25 years old. Section 3.4 of Order 13526, directs agencies to prioritize the systematic review of records based upon the degree of researcher interest and the likelihood of declassification upon review.


text: A Mandatory Declassification Review, or MDR, is requested by an individual in an attempt to declassify a document for release to the public. These challenges are presented to the agency whose equity, or "ownership", is invested in the document. Once an MDR request has been submitted to an agency for the review of a particular document, the agency must respond either with an approval, a denial, or the inability to confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of the requested document.


text: After the initial request, an appeal can be filed with the agency by the requester. If the agency refuses to declassify that document, then a decision from a higher authority can be provided by the appellate panel, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP).


text: The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 4, 1966, took effect the following year, and was amended in 1974, 1976, 1986, 1996 and 2002 (in 1974 over President Ford's veto). This act allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the U.S. government. Any member of the public may ask for a classified document to be declassified and made available for any reason.


text: The requestor is required to specify with reasonable certainty the documents of interest. If the agency refuses to declassify, the decision can be taken to the courts for a review. The FOIA does not guarantee that requested documents will be released. Refusals usually fall under one of the nine of the declassification exemptions that protect highly sensitive information.


text: After declassification, the documents from many agencies are accessioned at the National Archives and Records Administration and put on the open shelves for the public. NARA also reviews documents for declassification.


text: NARA first established a formal declassification program for records in 1972, and between 1973 and 1996 reviewed nearly 650 million pages of historically valuable federal records related to World War II, the Korean War, and American foreign policy in the 1950s as part of its systematic declassification review program. From 1996 to 2006, NARA had processed and released close to 460 million pages of federal records, working in partnership with the agencies that originated the records. Over the years, NARA has processed more than 1.1 billion pages of national security classified federal records, resulting in the declassification and release of ninety-one percent of the records.


text: NARA has also provided significant support to several special projects to review and release federal records on topics of extraordinary public interest such as POW/MIAs or Nazi war crimes. Additionally, NARA works closely with reference archivists to ensure that the federal records most in demand by researchers receive priority for declassification review and performs review on demand for individuals who need records that do not fall into a priority category. NARA has improved or developed electronic systems to support declassification, automating some processes and thus ensuring a more complete record of declassification actions. With assistance from the Air Force, NARA established the Interagency Referral Center (IRC) in order to support agencies as they seek access to their equities in federal records at the National Archives at College Park and to ensure that high-demand records are processed first.


text: In 2009, Executive Order 13526 created the National Declassification Center at NARA, which also houses the Information Security Oversight Office.


text: Presidential libraries hold in excess of 30 million classified pages, including approximately 8 million pages from the administrations of Presidents Hoover through Carter, that were subject to automatic declassification on December 31, 2006. The foreign policy materials in Presidential collections are among the highest-level foreign policy documents in the Federal government and are of significant historical value.


text: From 1995 to 2006, the national presidential library system reviewed, declassified, and released 1,603,429 pages of presidential materials using systematic guidelines delegated to the Archivist of the United States. NARA has also hosted on-site agency review teams at the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Ford Presidential Libraries to manage classified equities and all presidential libraries have robust mandatory declassification review programs to support requests of individual researchers.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The 2022–23 season is the 128th season in the existence of Manchester City Football Club and their 21st consecutive season in the top flight of English football, where they are competing as two-time defending champions. In addition to the Premier League, Manchester City are also participating in this season's editions of the FA Cup, EFL Cup, Community Shield and UEFA Champions League, entering the latter for the 12th consecutive season. The season is unusual in that the fixture dates of domestic and European competitions were altered to accommodate the 2022 FIFA World Cup played in November and December 2022 in Qatar.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: Manchester City kicked off the season by losing the Community Shield to Liverpool 1–3. The season's early highlight were the goalscoring feats of City's new striker Erling Haaland in his debut season in English football.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: This is the first season since 2012–13 without former team captain Fernandinho, who left at the end of the previous season to return to Brazil, and the first since 2014–15 not to feature English forward Raheem Sterling, who moved to Chelsea in the summer.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: Manchester City had already resolved their most pressing squad issue before the end of the previous season: when they announced their agreement to recruit a world-class centre-forward in Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund. This transfer was confirmed on the 13 June with Haaland formally joining the first team on 1 July. Julián Álvarez would also join from River Plate, having been transferred in January 2022 and then temporarily loaned back.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City were expected to purchase a defensive midfielder to replace former captain Fernandinho. Kalvin Phillips was duly signed from Leeds United for a reported fee of £42 million plus add-ons on 4 July 2022 and took the number 4 shirt previously worn by Vincent Kompany. They were also reported to be in the market for a new specialist left-back, with rumours that Marc Cucurella at Brighton was their number one target.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City's first player sales of the season were the transfer out of Pedro Porro to Sporting Lisbon through a loan-to-buy deal for £7.2 million. and of Gavin Bazunu to Southampton for £12 million initially, up to £15 million after add-ons. Neither player had made a first-team appearance for City.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City began pre-season with several key first-team players entering the final years of their contract amidst rumours that they might leave the club for a fee rather than renew. Of these, it seemed the most speculation concerned Gabriel Jesus and his possible transfer to Arsenal, Tottenham or Real Madrid after 5 years at City; and Raheem Sterling who was also rumoured to be a Real Madrid target. Both players would, in theory, compete with the incoming Haaland and Alvarez for playing time if they remained. Jesus left City for Arsenal for a reported fee of £45 million on 4 July 2022. Sterling went on to join Chelsea on 13 July 2022 for a fee reported to be about £47.5 million with £2.5 million of add-ons. He had won 11 domestic titles in 7 seasons at the club, scoring 131 goals in 339 appearances, and was the club's 11th highest scorer of all time.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: Another significant transfer was the move of versatile Ukrainian left-back / midfielder Oleksandr Zinchenko to Arsenal for a fee of around £30 million after 6 seasons at City on 22 July 2022. This left Pep Guardiola with just two senior specialist full backs in his squad at the start of the new season. City had refused to offer the minimum £50 million fee demanded by Brighton for Cucurella and he was eventually transferred to Chelsea on 5 August for a reported fee in excess of £60 million.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City opted to start pre-season training a week later than most of their rivals and scheduled only two friendly warm up games as part of their tour of the United States in order to ensure their players would have sufficient rest. They would also begin the new season with a relatively small squad of just 20 senior players. Both of these were considered to be strong preferences by Guardiola.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City won both their pre-season tour games in the U.S. However, they tasted their first defeat of the season in the first match, losing 1–3 to a more prepared Liverpool side in the Community Shield held at Leicester City's King Power Stadium. Debutant Julián Álvarez scored the sole goal for the Blues. For their part, Liverpool were visibly more in-form, as they had a longer pre-season.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: In their first league game on 7 August, City beat West Ham 2–0 away, with Erling Haaland scoring his first two competitive goals on his league debut for the club. He became the first City player to do so since Sergio Agüero versus Swansea City in 2011. The following weekend, City announced that İlkay Gündoğan had been appointed club captain with Rodri and Kyle Walker joining the vice-captain leadership group, shortly after City won their first league game at home 4–0 against AFC Bournemouth.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City finally recruited a specialist left-back on 16 August, signing Spanish U-21 defender Sergio Gómez for £11 million plus add-ons from Anderlecht, where he had previously played under the management of former City defender and captain Vincent Kompany.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: On 21 August, City played Newcastle United in an entertaining match at St James' Park and fought out another two-goal comeback to snatch a 3–3 draw. With seven points after three games, City were second in the league standings, two points behind Arsenal.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: On 27 August, City fell behind by two goals for the fourth time in six league matches, this time against Crystal Palace at home; only to recover to a 4–2 victory in a second half comeback, with Erling Haaland scoring his first home goals and first hat-trick for the club.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: On 31 August, Haaland became the first City player in the Premier League era to score a hat-trick in consecutive league games, scoring a "perfect" one in a 6–0 home rout of newly promoted Nottingham Forest. He had scored 9 goals in his first five league games, another Premier League record.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City were estimated to have earnt a Premier League record of about £180 million from transfer sales during the single summer 2022 window, thus demonstrating the success of the team's academy programme (sales included several youth players sold for seven- or eight-figure fees), and the increasing market value for footballers (such as Zinchenko and Jesus) gained from playing under Guardiola and his coaching team for several seasons. City's overall net-spend in both 2022 transfer windows was estimated to be around +£100m, once again challenging their reputation for being a ostentatious buying club since the 2008 take-over.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: In their opening UEFA Champions League group game, Manchester City thrashed Sevilla 4–0 in Spain, with a Haaland brace, which brought his tally up to 12 goals in 8 games for City and 25 goals in just 20 Champions League appearances. This was Sevilla's largest ever defeat at home in the Champions League and their first defeat in an opening fixture since their debut season; this was also the sixth time in seven seasons that City have won their opening fixture in the competition.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City's home league fixture against Tottenham Hotspur, which originally was due to be played on 10 September, was postponed a day beforehand along with the entire weekend's English football league programme as a mark of respect following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The following week, the away league fixture against Arsenal, due to be played on 19 October, was also postponed indirectly due to events following the Queen's death.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: As of late September, and the first international break of the season, City were second in the league, one point behind Arsenal and ahead of Spurs on goal difference, after five wins and two draws. By that point, Haaland had already scored 14 goals in 10 games in all competitions and become the first player in Premier League history to score in all his first four away fixtures. City had also extended their unbeaten away run in the league to 22 games and well over a year since their last defeat.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: On 2 October, City beat Manchester United 6–3 in the first Manchester derby of the season at the Etihad, making it the highest scoring derby match of all-time. Both Haaland and Phil Foden scored the first City derby hat-tricks in 52 years and only the third and fourth of all-time. Haaland also became the first Premier League player to score a hat-trick in three consecutive home games, and City became the first team since Tottenham in 1965 to win 8 consecutive league home games while scoring three goals or more. With his performance, the Norwegian pushed his output to an incredible 17 goals in 11 appearances, as well as 14 Premier League goals in 8 appearances.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: A 4–0 home league victory against Southampton the following week included another goal from Haaland and meant he had now scored in ten consecutive fixtures overall and seven in the Premier League. The latter record matched a feat accomplished only once before by a City player in the Premier League, namely Sergio Agüero in 2019. Haaland had also reached the milestone of 20 goals for the season after playing only thirteen matches, another league record. Moreover, City matched the previous all-time English record set by Wolves in 1959 of nine consecutive home league wins while scoring three or more goals. In the league standings, the Blues maintained their second place with 23 points, just one behind surprise leaders Arsenal and already three ahead of third-placed Spurs.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League for their tenth consecutive season on 11 October. Although they could only draw 0–0 away to Copenhagen that night, a 1–1 draw between Dortmund and Sevilla ensured their progression. City's match included three first-half VAR decisions: a spectacular 25-yard Rodri strike ruled out because of an unintentional Riyad Mahrez handball in the build-up, a penalty awarded to City, also for handball, taken by Mahrez and saved, and a red-card shown to City's left back Sergio Gómez for a professional foul which left the Blues playing with 10 men for over an hour.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City suffered their first league defeat in a hard fought match against Liverpool at Anfield on 16 October. Mo Salah scored the winning breakaway goal after Phil Foden had seen his effort ruled out by VAR for a foul on Fabinho by Haaland in the build up.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: A second consecutive Champions League 0–0 away draw to Dortmund on 25 October was sufficient to ensure City would qualify for the last 16 as group winners with one game to spare.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: On 2 November, Rico Lewis scored his first senior goal in a 3–1 win against Sevilla; hence, he became the all-time youngest scorer on a first start in a Champions League match and City's youngest ever Champions League scorer, aged 17 years and 346 days.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: Three days later, City beat Fulham 2–1 in the league at the Etihad, having played for over an hour with ten men after João Cancelo had been sent-off when adjudged to have deliberately denied Harry Wilson a goal-scoring opportunity with a shoulder charge. City's winner was scored in the fifth minute of injury time by Haaland, netting a penalty after De Bruyne had been fouled. This led to ecstatic scenes afterwards with Guardiola encouraging his players to thank the crowd with a lap of honour.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The blues lost their final game before the mid-season break for the World Cup on 12 November, deservingly beaten 1–2 at home to Brentford with a brace, and 98th minute winner, from Ivan Toney, who had just learnt a couple of days beforehand he was not being called up to the England squad to play in Qatar.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City therefore ended the first part of the season in second place in the league, five points behind Arsenal, and two points ahead of Newcastle, but with a game in hand; having also safely qualified for the last 16 of the Champions League; and in the fourth round of the EFL Cup.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: Sixteen of City's players were called up in squads to play in the World Cup finals, second only to Barcelona (17) in world football, and the most in the club's history. This left just eight players remaining at home until the season resumed the week before Christmas with a home EFL Cup tie against Liverpool.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The club announced on 23 November that Pep Guardiola had signed a new contract to remain as manager for an additional two years until summer 2025.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: Only two of City's World Cup participants played for teams eliminated at the group stage of the competition. The other fourteen would remain for the knockout stages. However, only Julián Álvarez reached the final week of the competition in the Argentina squad, while the others were eliminated either in the round of 16 or quarter-finals. Álvarez went on to become the fifth player to participate on the pitch in a World Cup final while playing at City (after Nigel de Jong in 2010, and Sergio Agüero, Pablo Zabaleta and Martin Demichelis in 2014); and only the second to become a World Cup winner as a City player.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: On 25 April, City announced they would travel to the United States for two pre-season friendlies in preparation for the new season, starting with a fixture against Club América on 20 July. The second fixture against Bayern Munich on 23 July was announced a few days later. City announced they would play a friendly game against fellow CFG team Girona on 17 December at their Academy Stadium as a warm up to the resumption of the post-World Cup season.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: City entered the competition in the third round. The draw was held on 24 August 2022 after the second round fixtures were completed, and they were drawn at home to the previous season's runners-up Chelsea as one of seven all-Premier League ties. The draw for the fourth round was held after the final match of the third round between Manchester United and Aston Villa on 10 November by Peter Schmeichel and Dion Dublin. City were drawn at home to the current cup holders Liverpool. The tie would be helld immediately after the World Cup final, before the resumption of league fixtures.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The traditional season curtain raiser was played between Manchester City and Liverpool, the previous season's league champions and FA Cup winners respectively. Normally held at Wembley Stadium, this season's edition was played at Leicester City's King Power Stadium to avoid clashes with UEFA Women's Euro 2022.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The 2022–23 UEFA Champions League group stage draw took place in Istanbul, Turkey, on 25 August. The first group matches were played on 6 September 2022, and they wrapped up earlier than usual, at the start of November, to accommodate the mid-season 2022 FIFA World Cup.


title: 2022–23 Manchester City F.C. season

text: The draw for the round of 16 was held on 7 November 2022 at UEFA's headquarters in Nyon, with Manchester City being drawn against RB Leipzig.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Barbara Sue Boxer (née Levy; born November 11, 1940) is an American politician and lobbyist who served in the United States Senate, representing California from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the U.S. representative for California's 6th congressional district from 1983 until 1993.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Born in Brooklyn, New York City, Boxer graduated from George W. Wingate High School and Brooklyn College. She worked as a stockbroker for several years before moving to California with her husband. During the 1970s, she worked as a journalist for the "Pacific Sun" and as an aide to U.S. Representative John L. Burton. She served on the Marin County Board of Supervisors for six years and became the board's first female president. With the slogan "Barbara Boxer Gives a Damn", she was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1982, representing California's 6th district.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer won the 1992 election for the U.S. Senate. Running for a third term in 2004, she received 6.96 million votes, becoming the first person to ever get more than 6 million votes in a Senate election and set a record for the most votes in any U.S. Senate election in history, until her colleague, Dianne Feinstein, the senior senator from California, surpassed that number in her 2012 re-election. Boxer and Feinstein were the first female pair of U.S. Senators representing any state at the same time. Boxer was the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and the vice chair of the Select Committee on Ethics. She was also the Democratic Chief Deputy Whip.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: On January 6, 2005, Boxer joined Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) in filing a U.S. Congressional objection to the certification of Ohio's Electoral College votes in the 2004 U.S. presidential election.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer did not seek re-election in 2016. She was succeeded by former California Attorney General and current Vice President Kamala Harris. In January 2020, Boxer joined Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs as co-chairwoman. In January 2021, it was reported that Boxer was working as registered foreign agent for Hikvision, a Chinese state-sponsored surveillance company implicated in human rights abuses, which prompted the Biden inaugural committee to return a donation she had made. After initially defending her work for Hikvision, she reversed course and publicly announced she had deregistered as a foreign agent. In October, 2021, Boxer, along with former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former California State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, led a high-profile mass exodus of employees from Mercury's California office to form their own public affairs and consulting company.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Barbara Sue Levy was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Jewish immigrants Sophie (née Silvershein; born in Austria) and Ira Levy. She attended public schools, and graduated from George W. Wingate High School in 1958.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In 1962, she married Stewart Boxer and graduated from Brooklyn College with a bachelor's degree in economics. While in college she was a member of Delta Phi Epsilon sorority and was a cheerleader for the Brooklyn College basketball team.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer worked as a stockbroker for the following three years while her husband went to law school. Later, the couple moved to Greenbrae, in Marin County, California, and had two children, Doug and Nicole. In 1968, she worked on the presidential primary campaign of antiwar challenger Eugene McCarthy who was running against President Lyndon B. Johnson. In 1970, she co-founded the anti-Vietnam War Marin Alliance.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer first ran for political office in 1972, when she challenged incumbent Republican Peter Arrigoni, a member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors, but lost a close election. Later in the 1970s, Boxer worked as a reporter and editor for the "Pacific Sun" and then managed the Marin campaign of John Burton, the brother of Phillip Burton, who then was the Congressman representing southern San Francisco, California. John intended to run against incumbent Republican District 6 Congressman William S. Mailliard from Belvedere, California. The district would be renumbered as the 5th District in January 1975. However Mailliard resigned on March 5, 1974, so John also ran in the special election to fill the remainder of the incumbent's 6th District term. Burton narrowly won both crowded races and was sworn into office in 1974, gaining seniority on those new members being seated in 1975, and Boxer became his staff aide.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In 1976, Boxer was elected to the Marin County Board of Supervisors, serving for six years. She was the Board's first female president.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: On May 28, 1994, her daughter Nicole married , the younger brother of Hillary Clinton, in a ceremony at the White House attended by 250 guests. (This was the first White House wedding since Tricia Nixon married Edward Cox in 1971.) Before divorcing, they had a child Zachary, born in 1995. Between January 2001 and January 2009, Zachary held a unique distinction of being both the grandson and nephew of sitting U.S. senators.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In 2006, the Boxers sold their house in Greenbrae, where they had lived for many years, and moved to Rancho Mirage. Boxer's first novel, "A Time to Run", was published in 2005 by San Francisco-based Chronicle Books. Her second novel, "Blind Trust", was released in July 2009 by Chronicle Books.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: At 4'11" (150 cm), Boxer was one of the shortest members of the Congress. When addressing the chamber, she would sometimes stand on a portable platform, dubbed the "Boxer Box", which was carried by an aide.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer, then a Marin County supervisor, was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1982, succeeding John Burton. Her slogan was "Barbara Boxer Gives a Damn". In the House, she represented (Marin and Sonoma Counties) for five terms. She narrowly won her first election with 52 percent of the vote, but easily won reelection four times, never dropping below 67 percent of the vote.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer was a member of the original Select Committee on Children, Youth, and Families that was established in 1983.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In 1992, Boxer was implicated in the House banking scandal, which revealed that more than 450 congressional representatives and aides, herself included, wrote overdraft checks covered by overdraft protection by the House Bank. In response, she issued a statement saying "in painful retrospect, I clearly should have paid more attention to my account" and wrote a $15 check to the Deficit Reduction Fund for each of her 87 overdrafts.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In 1991, during the Anita Hill Senate hearings, where Hill accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, Boxer led a group of women House members to the Senate Judiciary Committee – demanding that the all-white, all-male Committee of Senators take Hill's charges seriously.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Four-term incumbent Democratic Senator Alan Cranston retired in 1992, creating an open seat contest. In what was billed as the "Year of the Woman", Boxer beat fellow Rep. Mel Levine and Lieutenant Governor Leo McCarthy in the Democratic primary, winning 44% of the vote. In the general election Boxer defeated Republican Bruce Herschensohn, a conservative television political commentator from Los Angeles, by 4.9%. A last-minute revelation that Herschensohn had attended a strip club at least partially affected the outcome. In 1998, she won a second term, beating sitting California State Treasurer Matt Fong by 10.1% of the vote. After facing no primary opposition in the 2004 election, Boxer defeated GOP candidate Bill Jones, the former California Secretary of State, by 20%. In 2010, Boxer defeated Republican candidate Carly Fiorina, former chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard, by 10%.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: A member of the Senate Democratic Leadership, Boxer served as the Democratic Chief Deputy Whip, which gives her the job of lining up votes on key legislation.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: On January 6, 2005, Boxer joined Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-Ohio) in filing a U.S. Congressional objection to the certification of Ohio's Electoral College votes in the 2004 U.S. presidential election. She called the objection her "opening shot to be able to focus the light of truth on these terrible problems in the electoral system". The Senate voted the objection down 74–1; the House voted the objection down 267–31. It was only the second Congressional objection to an entire State's electoral delegation in U.S. history; the first instance was in 1877.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: As a superdelegate, Boxer had declared that she would support the winner of the California primary, which was won by Hillary Clinton. However, she reneged on that pledge and remained neutral, only officially backing Barack Obama's candidacy the day after the last primaries, once he had garnered enough delegate votes to clinch the nomination.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Prior to Hillary Clinton's announcement, on October 20, 2013, Senator Boxer was one of sixteen Democratic female senators to sign a letter endorsing Clinton as the Democratic nominee in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Since leaving the U.S. Senate, Boxer has notably given paid speeches; raised money for her political action committee (PAC for Change); hosted a weekly podcast with her daughter, Nicole Boxer; and worked as a lobbyist and foreign agent. In 2021, an assault and robbery against her also made news.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In April 2017, Boxer served as the keynote speaker for the Environmental Student Assembly's Earth Month at the University of Southern California.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In January 2020, it was reported that Boxer had become co-chair of Mercury Public Affairs, a prominent lobbying and public affairs firm, whose corporate clients have included Airbnb and AT&T, along foreign governments such as Qatar and Turkey.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Prior to joining Mercury Public Affairs, Boxer had worked as a paid advisor to Lyft, during which time she advocated against the passage of AB-5, a California law that Lyft opposed which reclassified as "employees" many workers, including Lyft drivers, who had previously been classified as "independent contractors" under state labor law.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer also has worked as a paid consultant on behalf of Poseidon Water as part of that company's effort to install a desalination plant in Huntington Beach, California, and also for CityLift Parking, a company in Oakland, California, that designs automated parking lifts.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In October 2021, Boxer, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and former California State Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez led a high-profile mass exodus of employees from the California office of Mercury Public Affairs to set up their own public affairs and consulting firm. At the time of their departure, the press reported Mercury's California based clients included Clorox, Lyft, the California Charter Schools Association, and the Westlands Water District, the utility that oversees the heart of the state's agricultural lands in the Central Valley.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: On January 12, 2021, it was reported that the inaugural committee of president-elect Joe Biden returned a $500 donation from Boxer after Boxer registered as a foreign agent on behalf of Hikvision, a Chinese state owned manufacturer of surveillance equipment. The company has been accused of involvement in the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang region.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In an emailed statement to the press regarding the returned donation, Boxer defended her work as a registered foreign agent by saying, "When I am asked to provide strategic advice to help a company operate in a more responsible and humane manner consistent with U.S. law in spirit and letter, it is an opportunity to make things better while helping protect and create American jobs.”


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Later that same day, Boxer reversed course and publicly announced on Twitter that she would deregister as a foreign agent for Hikvision, writing, "Due to the intense response to my registration I have determined that my continued work has become a negative distraction from my effort to preserve American jobs and make the company better. Therefore I have deregistered."


title: Barbara Boxer

text: On July 26, 2021, Boxer was assaulted and robbed of her mobile phone in the Jack London Square section of Oakland, California. A $2,000 reward is being offered for information that leads to an arrest. Boxer was not seriously injured in the attack.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Senator Boxer was, along with Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, one of only two Senate Democrats to support Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's resolution to censure President George W. Bush.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: During the confirmation hearings for the United States Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice in January 2005, Boxer challenged her to admit to alleged mistakes and false statements made by the Bush Administration in leading the United States into the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and ultimately voted against confirmation, along with twelve other senators. The dissent was the highest vote against a Secretary of State nominee since 1825 when Henry Clay was so named.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer voted against John Bolton's nomination for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and filibustered him on the Senate floor. Because of the strong Democratic opposition, Bolton could not obtain Senate approval. However, President Bush bypassed the Senate by employing the constitutional right of recess appointment, only the second time such an appointment has been used for a United States ambassador to the United Nations since the UN's founding in 1945. Recess appointments themselves have been used numerous times by various presidents.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice of the United States nominee John Roberts, and against the confirmation of Associate Justice nominee Samuel Alito.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Senators Boxer and John Ensign (R-NV) are the authors of the Invest in the USA Act. This legislation, which was signed into law in October 2004 as a small part of the more comprehensive American Jobs Creation Act, is intended to encourage American companies to bring overseas profits back to the United States, to create jobs in the U.S., and stimulate domestic economic growth.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In March 2004, Boxer offered an amendment to the Federal budget to create a $24 billion jobs reserve fund. The amendment would set aside funds for a variety of investments to improve the economy and create jobs by establishing a manufacturing jobs tax credit for companies that create jobs in the United States, expanding investment in science research and development, providing a tax credit to small businesses to pay for health insurance for their employees, and expanding trade adjustment assistance to help those who lose their jobs because of foreign trade. The Boxer amendment would also end the tax break that companies receive after moving plants overseas.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Senator Boxer was one of only eight members of the Senate to vote against the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 before the Financial Crises.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: On August 26, 2013, Boxer told "The Ed Show" on MSNBC that the federal minimum wage should be raised to $10.00 an hour.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer established the Excellence in Education award to recognize teachers, parents, businesses and organizations working to make positive changes in education. Since 1997 Senator Boxer has presented the Excellence in Education Award to 38 recipients.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer voted for the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which mandated the use of voting machines across the country, among other provisions. On February 18, 2005, Senator Boxer and colleagues introduced the Count Every Vote Act of 2005, which would provide a voter-verified paper ballot for every vote cast in electronic voting machines and ensure access to voter verification for all citizens. The bill mandates that this ballot be the official ballot for purposes of a recount. The bill sets a uniform standard for provisional ballots and requires the Federal Election Assistance Commission to issue standards that ensure uniform access to voting machines and trained election personnel in every community. The bill also mandated improved security measures for electronic voting machines. The bill did not pass.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer also introduced a bill on November 15, 2016, calling for a constitutional amendment to abolish the Electoral College and to select future presidents by a simple national vote only. This was done six days after Donald Trump won the 2016 election despite losing the national popular vote to Hillary Clinton.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer opposed the nuclear energy deal between the United States and India. She believes India should not receive aid from the U.S. in the civilian nuclear energy sector until it breaks its relationship with Iran.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer successfully led the 2003 Senate floor battle to block oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. In 2005, Boxer voted again to block oil drilling at ANWR.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer introduced the National Oceans Protection Act (NOPA) of 2005. Some of the provisions of this act are: strengthen ocean governance; protect and restore marine wildlife and habitats; address ocean pollution; improve fisheries management. The bill also addresses needs regarding marine science, research and technology, marine mammals, coastal development, and invasive species.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer is an original cosponsor of Senator Jim Jeffords' (I-VT) Clean Power Act. This legislation would reduce emissions of three pollutants coming from power plants; sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury, and also reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Senator Boxer was the Senate sponsor of the Northern California Coastal Wild Heritage Wilderness Act, which was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 17, 2006. The bill protected of federal land as wilderness and of stream as a wild and scenic river, including such popular areas as the King Range and Cache Creek. Senator Boxer worked with Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Mike Thompson (the bill's House sponsor) in a five-year effort to pass the legislation.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer along with her colleague Dianne Feinstein voted in favor of subsidy payments to conventional commodity farm producers at the cost of subsidies for conservation-oriented farming.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In 1997, the Senate passed a Boxer resolution calling on the United States not to recognize the Taliban as the official government of Afghanistan because of its human rights abuses against women.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In 2002, Senator Boxer voted against the proposed US invasion of Iraq. She has subsequently referred to that vote as the best vote of her career. She also voted against the first Gulf War while a member of the House in 1991 and was a very vocal protester against the Vietnam War in the 1970s.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer was a cosponsor of S. 495, or the Darfur Accountability Act of 2005, which would impose sanctions against perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Darfur.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In 2012 she and a bipartisan group of six senators introduced a resolution condemning Russia for aiding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government as the country faced civil war.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In October 2002, Boxer voted against the joint resolution passed by the US Congress to authorize the use of military force by the Bush Administration against Iraq.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In June 2005, Senators Boxer and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, cosponsored Senate Resolution 171 calling for a timeframe for US troop withdrawal from Iraq.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer was sharply critical of US Army General David Petraeus' testimony regarding the political and military situation of Iraq in 2007, charging him with reporting while wearing "rosy glasses".


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Senator Boxer joined colleagues to pass a federal ban on various semi-automatic firearms and established the COPS program.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In the wake of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, Boxer posted on Facebook that it was an "unspeakable tragedy" and she encouraged others to support "common-sense gun safety laws to protect our communities from these weapons of war."


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer co-sponsored the Matthew Shepard Act, which expanded the federal definition of hate crimes to include crimes based on the victim's sexual orientation and gender identity.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer was part of a coalition to increase medical research to find cures for diseases. In 2007, she authored successful bipartisan legislation with Senator Gordon Smith to combat HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis globally. In 1997, she authored a Patients' Bill of Rights. She has written a bill to make health insurance tax-deductible and one to let any American buy into the same health insurance program that members of Congress have. She supports comprehensive prescription drug coverage through Medicare and the right of all consumers to purchase lower-cost prescription drugs re-imported from Canada.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In October 2002, Boxer urged the Bush Administration to take specific steps to address the causes of the steep increase in autism cases in California. She wrote Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy Thompson to establish a common national standard for the diagnosis of autism; instruct the CDC and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry to convene a task force to review the current literature on autism and conduct its own study if necessary; and direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to work with the states to create a national chronic disease database.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer is an advocate for embryonic stem-cell research, which has the potential to help those with diabetes, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease, spinal cord injuries, and other diseases.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: The Human Rights Campaign gave Boxer ratings of 100%, 88% and 100% for the 107th, 108th, and 109th sessions of Congress, indicating support for the HRC's slate of pro-gay rights legislative issues. In 1996, she was one of fourteen Senators to vote against the Defense of Marriage Act and also voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004 and 2006, although when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a directive to the city-county clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples she stated that she supported California's domestic partnership law but agreed with its definition that marriage was between a man and a woman. However, her 2010 re-election campaign website states that "Senator Boxer supports marriage equality." She opposed Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that prohibited same-sex marriage in California, and supported the Uniting American Families Act.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer has come out against reforming marijuana policy and is opposed to the California Ballot measure to legalize and tax marijuana for those 21 and older in the state.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: After the September 11 attacks, Boxer authored a bill to protect commercial airliners against attacks by shoulder-fired missiles, and wrote the law allowing airline pilots with special training to carry guns in the cockpit.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer wrote the High-Tech Port Security Act, and sponsored the Chemical Security Act to address terrorist threats against chemical plants. Senator Boxer also cosponsored comprehensive rail security legislation.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer maintains a strong stance in support of reproductive rights and the pro-abortion movement. Boxer authored the Freedom of Choice Act of 2004 and participated in the floor fight for passage of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer is an original cosponsor of the Title X Family Planning Services Act of 2005, S.844, by Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). This legislation aims to improve access to women's health care. It authorizes funding for family planning services grants; allows states to provide such services to individuals who may not be eligible for Medicaid; prohibits health insurance providers from excluding contraceptive services, drugs or devices from benefits; establishes a program to disseminate information on emergency contraception; requires hospitals receiving federal funding to offer emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault; provides grants to public and private entities to establish or expand teen pregnancy prevention programs; and requires that federally funded education programs about contraception be medically accurate and include information about health benefits and failure rates.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: She was strongly critical of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment, which would prevent taxpayer-funded abortions possibly resulting in women not being able to pay with their own funds for abortion coverage Affordable Health Care for America Act.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer supports the current system of Social Security, and opposed President George W. Bush's plan for partial privatization of Social Security.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In June 2008 Boxer spoke in the Senate in opposition to the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, a pending bill in the United States Congress to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and later broke with her counterpart Sen. Dianne Feinstein and voted against it.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer had a very progressive voting record. Project Vote Smart provides the following results from congressional scorecards.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer criticized Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's judgment in relation to the war in Iraq: "I personally believe – this is my personal view – that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell the war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth."


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In January 2007, Boxer was in the news for comments she made when responding to Bush's plans to send an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq. "Who pays the price?" Boxer asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a personal price with an immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families... not me, not you." When Rice interjected, Boxer responded by saying, "Madam Secretary, please. I know you feel terrible about it. That's not the point. I was making the case as to who pays the price for your decisions. And the fact that this administration would move forward with this escalation with no clue as to the further price that we're going to pay militarily... I find really appalling."


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer has made cameo appearances as herself in several television shows, including "Murphy Brown" (1994), "Gilmore Girls" (2002) and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (2007), as well as a cameo (as herself) in the 2000 film "Traffic". On November 2, 2005, she made an appearance on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" to discuss her new novel "A Time To Run".


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In September 2012, it was reported that Boxer and Republican Senator Olympia Snowe would appear together in an NBC sitcom. On September 20, 2012, she and Senator Snowe appeared in the fifth season premiere of "Parks and Recreation". Boxer later returned to "Parks and Recreation" alongside several other U.S. senators in early 2015 in the seventh season episode "Ms. Ludgate-Dwyer Goes to Washington."


title: Barbara Boxer

text: In November 2016, Boxer appeared in an episode of "Chelsea", presented by Chelsea Handler, entitled "Do Not Despair About Our Country", filmed shortly after the result of the 2016 US presidential election was known, during which Handler wept about the result.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer has been awarded two Doctor of Laws honorary degrees, one from Mills College and the other from Dominican University of California.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: The Foundation for Ethics in Public Service has accused Boxer of failing to disclose real property on her Personal Financial Disclosure Reports between 2002 and 2010. Boxer failed to disclose a million dollar home she owns.


title: Barbara Boxer

text: Boxer was first elected to the Senate by a 4.9% margin in 1992. She was reelected in 1998, in 2004, and in 2010.


title: Yuji Naka

text: , credited in some games as YU2, is a Japanese video game programmer, designer and producer. He is the former head of the Sega studio Sonic Team, where he was the lead programmer of the original "Sonic the Hedgehog" series on the Sega Mega Drive. Naka also led development on games including "Nights into Dreams" (1996), "Burning Rangers" (1998), "Sonic Adventure" (1998) and three games in the "Phantasy Star" franchise (1987–2000).


title: Yuji Naka

text: In 2006, Naka left Sega to found Prope, an independent game company. He joined Square Enix to direct the platform game "Balan Wonderworld" (2021), which reunited him with the "Sonic" co-creator Naoto Ohshima. After the game underperformed critically and commercially, Naka announced he had left Square Enix. In 2022, he said he had been removed from "Balan Wonderworld" before it was released and sued Square Enix. In late 2022, Naka was arrested twice on suspicions of insider trading while at Square Enix.


title: Yuji Naka

text: Naka learned how to program by replicating and debugging video game code printed in magazines. The experience prompted him to study assemblers and practice writing code during his school classes. After graduating, Naka decided not to enroll in university and stayed in his home town.


title: Yuji Naka

text: Around 1983, Naka saw that the video game company Sega was looking for programming assistants and applied. Following a brief interview, he began working for Sega in April 1984. His first task was designing maps and checking floppy disks for "Road Runner" for the SG-1000, he could not recall if the game was released. His first major project was "Girl's Garden" (1985), which he and the composer Hiroshi Kawaguchi created as part of their training process. Their boss was impressed and decided to publish the game, and it earned them notice among their peers and Japanese gamers. However Naka felt embarrassed about his code, and did not want to release the game. He developed games going with the flow, and did not do task management at all. The pace of game development was 1 game every 1 or 2 months, and he was essentially living at the company; he recalled bragging with Yu Suzuki on who worked more overtime.


title: Yuji Naka

text: During the Master System era, Naka wanted to develop games that were not possible on Nintendo's Famicom. Examples of this include the 3D Dungeons of "Phantasy Star" and doing ports of "Space Harrier" and "OutRun," which ran on powerful arcade hardware"." The Mega Drive was introduced suddenly, much like the Master System, it was only around the 32X released in 1994 that Sega gave him information about hardware beforehand. "Super Thunder Blade" was the first game he programmed for the Mega Drive, he requested that sprite-scaling must be implemented in future models of the console, however he was told that it was not possible right now. He also requested a 6Mbit cartridge for "Phantasy Star II", which got through. The Mega Drive was Naka's favourite hardware, and he said that he could've kept working on it forever just by making the clock speed faster.


title: Yuji Naka

text: During a visit to the 1988 Amusement Machines Show, Naka was impressed by the ability to move diagonally on slopes in a demonstration of Capcom's game "Ghouls 'n Ghosts." Hoping to recreate it, he asked his supervisors at Sega to allow him to port the game to the Mega Drive. Capcom provided him with the source code and ROM data. As he was developing the port, he experimented with aspects such as the speed of the main character to understand how they interacted with the environment. He also altered the slopes and was able to create a functioning 360-degree loop. Sprite-scaling was still a technique that Naka wanted to improve his skill on with a game called "Metal Lancer", but it was cancelled halfway through development.


title: Yuji Naka

text: Sega's president Hayao Nakayama decided that Sega needed a flagship series and mascot to compete with Nintendo's "Mario" franchise. Of Naka's numerous development plans, "a game to beat Super Mario", caught a superiors attention. Naka created a prototype platform game that involved a fast-moving character rolling in a ball through a long winding tube. The idea for a hedgehog that could roll into a ball by jumping and attacking enemies came from his high school notebook, and was unsure to use it. This concept was expanded out with character design by Naoto Oshima and levels conceived by Hirokazu Yasuhara. Naka hoped to showcase the Mega Drive's processing speed through fast and exhilarating gameplay. Part of his approach was based on his experience playing through the original "Super Mario Bros" (1985); he wondered why he could not complete each level faster the better he got at playing the game. The development took longer than any game Naka worked on before, approximately working only on this game for a year and a half.


title: Yuji Naka

text: "Sonic the Hedgehog" was released in 1991 and received acclaim; it greatly increased the popularity of the Sega Genesis in North America, and is credited with helping Sega gain 65% of the market share against Nintendo. Naka was dissatisfied with his treatment at Sega and felt he received little credit for his involvement in the success. He quit but was hired by Mark Cerny to work at the American Sega Technical Institute (STI), with a higher salary and more creative freedom.


title: Yuji Naka

text: At STI, Naka led development on "Sonic the Hedgehog 2," under the condition that it has to have a 2 player multiplayer, much to the dismay of the designer. He went to do long research and how to properly display the splitscreen two-player mode. It was another major success, but its development suffered from the language barrier and cultural differences between the Japanese and American developers. The artist Craig Stitt described Naka as "an arrogant pain in the ass" who was not interested in working with Americans; another artist, Tim Skelly, said that Naka would have been happier working with an all-Japanese team because of the language barrier and cultural differences.


title: Yuji Naka

text: After "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" was released in 1992, Naka refused to develop another "Sonic" game with the American development staff; a Japanese-only development team was formed and led by Naka and worked closely with the American Marketing Manager, Pamela Kelly, and together developed and marketed "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" (1994) and "Sonic & Knuckles" (1994). Originally he wanted to make "Sonic 3" a 3D game, with the SVP chip that was also used to port "Virtua Racing" to the Genesis. However it took too long, and a McDonalds Happy Meal promotion was put in place, and to complete the game in time, it was decided that it to make a 2D game again. Once again, Naka had a very specific hardware request with the lock-on cartridge technology of "Sonic & Knuckles", which when combined would form the complete experience, as "Sonic 3" was rushed to meet a deadline.


title: Yuji Naka

text: Following the release of "Sonic & Knuckles" in 1994, Naka returned to Japan, having been offered a role as a producer. As managing director Hisashi Suzuki brought in videotapes of "Virtua Racing" and "Virtua Fighter," Naka was so impressed that it partly contributed to him going back to Japan"." With Naka's return, Sonic Team was officially formed as a brand, and began work on a new intellectual property, "Nights into Dreams" (1996), for Sega's 32-bit Saturn console. Naka did not have any desire to develop for the 32X, and was disappointed that the Saturn was not true 3D. Observing the development environment he did not want to make a Sonic game right away, and instead created "Nights". He persuaded his superiors that "Nights" would only take one year and that would work on a 3D Sonic in 1997, however the development on "Nights" took longer than expected. Naka regretted that he was not able to deliver a "Sonic" game for the Saturn, as this was often cited as a reason for the console's failure.


title: Yuji Naka

text: Meanwhile, in America, STI worked on "Sonic X-treme", a 3D "Sonic" game; among other problems, development was hindered by Naka's refusal to let STI use the "Nights" game engine, threatening to quit. The "X-treme" developer Chris Senn said he understood Naka's interest in maintaining control over the Sonic Team technology and the "Sonic" franchise, and that "he must have felt very strongly about it he was willing to even threaten to quit". Sonic Team was developing its own 3D "Sonic" game using the "Nights" engine, which may have motivated Naka's threat. "X-treme" was canceled. In July 2022, Naka denied that he had anything to do with "X-treme" use of the "Nights" engine and said it would have been useless because "Nights" was coded in assembly and "X-treme" was in C.


title: Yuji Naka

text: While "Sonic Adventure" was in development for the Saturn, Naka was part of the "Dream Team Meetings" which involved talking about plans of what eventually became the Dreamcast as early as 1996. Sonic Team proposed the name "G-Cube". Naka also proposed a multimedia concept that involved taking to a built in microphone to switch TV channels. This method of communication was then used in "Seaman".


title: Yuji Naka

text: In 1998, prior to the launch of Dreamcast, Naka and his team visited Sega of America to tour their development offices and observe their work on the game "Geist Force", a rail shooter for Dreamcast. According to the producer Mark Subotnick, Naka told his team in Japanese which parts they would take to incorporate in "Sonic" games and suggested firing all but one of the engineers. Unbeknownst to Naka, several of the "Geist Force" developers understood Japanese and quit, contributing to the project's cancellation.


title: Yuji Naka

text: Shortly after the Japanese launch of the Dreamcast and "Sonic Adventure", Naka was contacted by Sega Chairman Isao Okawa to develop a flagship online game for the Dreamcast. Originally, he was unenthusiastic about the idea given his team's inexperience with creating online games. However, the other Sega development studios were preoccupied with their own demanding projects such as "Sakura Wars" series and "Jet Set Radio" (2000). This left Naka's Sonic Team as the only other alternative that Okawa could rely on. In addition to their inexperience, Naka and his team saw the creation of an online game for Japan, a nation of console gamers, as a serious challenge, akin to creating a new genre. This was further complicated by the perception of online games in the late 1990s having boring visuals and the per-minute fee for dial-up internet in Japan.


title: Yuji Naka

text: To combat these challenges, Naka split his team into three groups, all serving different purposes before rejoining to develop what would become "Phantasy Star Online" (2001). The first and second groups were focused on discovering the limits of the Dreamcast's capabilities, specifically in terms of graphical fidelity and the possibilities of online play on the system. The third group would work on various projects under Naka's supervision that would lead them closer to their goal. This would culminate with the release of Sonic Team's "Chu Chu Rocket" (1999), an action-puzzle game and the first game for the system to support online console gaming. Additionally, it was the only game directed by Naka at Sega as he would move on to become a producer, overseeing output from Sonic Team. Following "Chu Chu Rocket"'s release, all three teams collaborated on the development of "Phantasy Star Online". It is reported that after Okawa became ill in 2000, Naka would send reports to the hospital, updating him on the team's progress.


title: Yuji Naka

text: In 2000, Sega began to restructure its development operations as part of the dissolution of Sega Enterprises, transforming its arcade and console studios into semi-autonomous subsidiary companies. While each studio was given an unprecedented amount of creative freedom, Naka felt it important to preserve the Sonic Team brand name, and therefore the legal name of the company was SONICTEAM, Ltd. Naka was installed as the CEO of the new company.