Security Levels and Accreditations

# Introduction

## Preface

The Class and security clearance of a Foundation personnel member determines what information they have access to. However, benefiting from an accreditation level does not automatically give access to all the information of the corresponding level: the staff has access to the documents concerning an anomaly according to the principle of the "need for information", each person taking note of the data which concern him in view of his position and his department.

### Level 0 (Official Only)

Level 0 clearance is given to non-essential personnel who do not need access to information about anomalous objects in Foundation containment. Level 0 access is typically assigned to administrative, logistics, and maintenance personnel working in conditions that do not require access to sensitive information.

### Level 1 (Confidential)

Level 1 accreditation is given to personnel working near anomalies, but without requiring direct access to information about them. It is generally granted to administrative, logistics and maintenance staff working under conditions that involve controlled access to certain sensitive data.

### Level 2 (Restricted)

Level 2 clearance is given to security and research personnel who need direct access to information on some of the contained anomalies. Most search teams, field workers and containment specialists have Level 2 accreditation.

### Level 3 (Secret)

Level 3 clearance is given to senior security and research personnel who require in-depth information about such things as the circumstances of anomaly recovery or long-term planning for containment of an anomaly. object. Most search team supervisors, project managers, security officers and members of intervention teams or Mobile Intervention Forces (FIM) operate with Level 3 accreditation.

### Level 4 (Top Secret)

Level 4 accreditation is given to senior government personnel who need access to almost all information in the database, such as strategic and sensitive data about research operations and projects. of the Foundation. Level 4 accreditation is usually only granted to MTF Site Directors, Security Directors and Commanders.

### Level 5 (Thaumiel)

Level 5 accreditation is given to the highest administrative staff of the Foundation and grants unrestricted access to all strategic and sensitive data, regardless of its nature. Level 5 accreditation is normally only available to members of the O5 Council.

## Classification of Personnel

Classes are assigned to personnel based on their proximity to potentially dangerous phenomena, entities, or objects.

### Class A

Class A is assigned to personnel deemed vital to Foundation operations worldwide and who should not, under any circumstances, approach anomalies. When circumstances lead Class A personnel to be in the direct vicinity of these anomalies (if they are located in a facility that also includes containment units, for example), they are not authorized to access areas containing abnormalities and must remain in secure areas at all times. In the event of an emergency, Class A personnel must be immediately evacuated to a secure location provided for this purpose. Members of the O5 Council are automatically considered Class A personnel.

### Class B

Class B is assigned to personnel deemed essential to local Foundation operations who are only granted access to anomalous objects after a period of quarantine and neutralization of any potentially harmful effects on them. . In the event of an emergency, Class B personnel must be immediately evacuated to a safe area provided for this purpose.

### Class C

Class C is assigned to the majority of standard personnel, having direct access to most anomalies that are not deemed to be overly sensitive or dangerous. Class C personnel who have come into contact with objects with potential memetic or infohazard properties should be quarantined and subjected to psychological evaluation if deemed necessary by security personnel. In the event of an emergency, Class C personnel who are not security personnel must be barricaded in designated areas or evacuated, at the discretion of facility security officials.

### Class D

Class D is assigned to revolving personnel used to handle dangerous anomalies, and are not permitted to come into direct contact with Class A or B personnel. Class D personnel are generally recruited worldwide from the ranks prisoners sentenced for serious or violent crimes. In extreme circumstances, Protocol 12 can be engaged, allowing for a broadening of sources of recruitment—allowing recruitment from political prisoners, refugee populations, and various other civilian sources. Class D personnel must undergo regular psychological examinations and be administered Class B amnestics at a minimum or be terminated at the end of the month at the discretion of security or medical personnel. In the event of a site-wide disaster,

### E-Class

Class E is an interim classification assigned to field workers and containment personnel who have been exposed to potentially hazardous effects during securing and establishing initial containment of an object, entity or of a phenomenon newly designated as abnormal. A Class E personnel must be placed in quarantine as soon as possible and then followed and monitored to observe any potential changes that may occur in their habits, personality or physiology and may only return to the field after being declared healthy and non-abnormal by the medical and psychiatric teams.

## Staff Titles

These are the professional titles generally used within the Foundation.

### Site Staff

#### Containment Specialist

Containment Specialists have two main roles in Foundation facilities: establishing effective containment and optimizing it.

Initially, containment teams are called upon in the event of anomalous activity to secure and establish initial containment for anomalous objects, entities, or phenomena to eliminate potential hazards and transport them to the Foundation facility on closer.

Next, containment engineers and technicians are tasked with designing, improving, and maintaining anomaly containment units and procedures once in Foundation custody.

#### Searcher

The researchers constitute the scientific part of the Foundation, chosen among the most intelligent and qualified scientists of the globe. With specialists in all imaginable fields of expertise, from chemistry to botany, passing through more esoteric subjects such as theoretical physics or xenobiology, the aim of the Foundation's research projects is to be able to better understand unexplained anomalies and their operation.

#### Security Agent

Security guards—often referred to simply as "guards"—at Foundation facilities maintain the physical and informational security of Foundation projects, operations, and personnel.

Primarily recruited from the military, police and detention sectors, security guards are trained in the handling of all types of conventional weapons, as well as a wide variety of emergency procedures covering most incidents that could lead to containment breaches, such as hostile actions against the Foundation.

*These personnel are also responsible for information* security , ensuring that sensitive documents are not placed in inappropriate places and that facility computers are protected from outside intrusion. They are also often the first line of defense against outside forces hostile to Foundation facilities.

#### Tactical Intervention Agent

Response teams — or tactical teams — are highly trained and heavily armed combat teams whose purpose is to escort containment teams when dangerous anomalous entities or hostile Groups of Interest are involved and to defend facilities. of the Foundation against hostile actions. Strike teams are mostly military units stationed at major Foundation installations, ready to deploy at a moment's notice.

### Field Staff

#### Fieldworker

Field Agents are the eyes and ears of the Foundation: they are personnel trained to seek out and investigate signs of abnormal activity, often under the cover of local or regional police forces, or embedded in local services such as medical emergencies and regulatory agencies. As undercover units, field agents are generally not equipped to deal with confirmed cases of abnormal activity; when the presence of an anomaly has been noticed and confirmed, field workers immediately contact the nearest containment team to secure and safely contain it.

#### Mobile Intervention Forces Operater

Mobile Task Forces are specialized units made up of experienced Foundation field personnel. The MTFs are mobilized to deal with threats of a particular nature, the management of which requires training that would be useless for normal field agents.

The composition of an MTF can vary wildly, from researchers specializing in the containment of anomalous memes to heavily armed combat units tasked with securing certain types of hostile entities. See the " Mobile Intervention Forces " page for more detailed information.

### Administration

#### Site Director

Foundation Facility Directors are the most senior Foundation staff and are responsible for coordinating site operations and all anomalies and projects under their care. Department Directors report directly to Site Directors who in turn report to the O5 Council.

#### Member of the O5 Council

The O5 Council is a committee made up of the Foundation's thirteen most senior members. With full access to all Foundation information and documents, the O5 Council oversees all Foundation projects worldwide and directs its long-term strategic operations. Given the crucial importance of their position, members of the O5 Council should never come into direct contact with any anomaly. In addition, the identity of all Council members is classified: each member is uniquely identified by their numerical designation (O5-1 through O5-13).

# Writing Guide

## How Security Levels Work

For a very long time, many authors used accreditation levels as if they had the same meaning as classes. Although some still use this model, it is illogical for several reasons. The main one is security: not everyone outside of your senior staff should know everything, but the people working on an anomaly should have access to all the information they need to work effectively (and to safe way). To make an analogy with the army:

> A soldier (lowest rank) is handling radio communications for a very sensitive cover operation that will be carried out by special forces. In terms of rank, he is at the bottom of the scale, but he needs access to highly secret information such as call signs (transmission codes) and the composition of the intervention team which performs the operation. He therefore has a "Top Secret" security clearance (Level 4) and has been briefed on the basic reasons for the mission in order to be able to do his job.
>
>

> A colonel (high ranking officer) in the same army has returned home, and is in charge of a base where new recruits are trained. His rank exposes him to a large number of state secrets, but he does not need to know the specifics of a cover operation taking place on the other side of the world, since he is not included. in this mission. Therefore, despite his rank, he knows nothing of this operation.
>
>

This is called "distribution of information", an essential principle and a mainstay of the Foundation that should be respected in all of its operations.
To clarify :

> You cannot be *authorized* for a specific project unless you have the required *level of security* clearance to access the information you will need in it, but having the required *level of security* clearance does not mean that you are automatically *authorized* for this same project (otherwise each staff member of each level of accreditation would participate in several hundred or even thousands of operations at a time).
>
>

## Class D Personnel

Originally named D for " Disposable " in French, Class D personnel are one of the oldest and often controversial traditions. When it was first mentioned in an article, it was suggested that D-Class personnel should be eliminated at the end of each month, but this is highly unlikely in practice as given the number of D-Classes used by the Foundation, there wouldn't be enough death row inmates around the world to compensate for such a waste of human lives.

From then on, many people began to consider that the policy of mandatory monthly execution had no place and was in fact a bogus procedure with a psychological purpose aimed at reducing any kind of emotional attachment between the personnel. research and Class-D; many people also believe that Class D personnel are simply brainwashed at the end of each month and transferred elsewhere, to avoid the risk of rebellion. Another canon goes even further, suggesting that, as long as amnestics are regularly used, Class D personnel are eliminated only if they are no longer fit to continue working (or if they have been contaminated by a dangerous abnormality). Some authors have found fantastic explanations, using cloning or other anomalous means for the purpose of maintaining a Class-D population. It is entirely up to you, as the author, to choose which explanation you prefer in your writing (thus it will be part of your "headcanon", your view of the SCP universe).

Protocol 12 is a rarely mentioned Foundation rule that states that in case of absolute necessity individuals normally ineligible may be picked up as D-Classes. It goes without saying that excessive use of Protocol 12 is very detrimental to the original spirit of the Foundation; the organization is capable of making extreme decisions to protect humanity, but is not going to waste human lives if it is not necessary — even more so if those lives are innocent. On the French branch, the best context to write about Protocol 12 is probably the Human Resources canon .

## Positions and Ranks

A common mistake in the conception that we can have of the Foundation is that it would only be composed of Agents and Researchers. Behind each contained SCP is actually a whole battalion of personnel with a wide variety of roles and therefore positions, each contributing in their area to securing the object in question.

* Researchers are scientists, easily **imagined** as the stereotypical scientist in a lab coat. They have very varied specialties ranging from medicine to psychology via geology or physics; it is the personnel who conduct the experiments and work to understand how SCP objects work. There are several ranks of researchers:
	+ A *Senior Researcher* is a senior scientist who has decades of experience and typically leads entire teams. Senior Researchers are those who usually organize and coordinate research on one or more SCP objects. They are few.
	+ An ordinary *Researcher* has many years of experience and is often assigned to research a specific aspect of an SCP object; one Researcher could be responsible for studies of SCP-173 's organic excretions while another could attempt to establish what material the object is composed of and whether any of these materials are unknown, and a third could look into its property to only move when no one is watching and the exact "rules" that govern it.
	+ An *Assistant Researcher* or *Junior Researcher* is a researcher with a low rank who has recently joined the ranks of the Foundation or does not yet have the capacity to provide perfectly reliable expertise. They are generally members of teams working under the supervision of a higher-level researcher.
* **Agents** and *Field Agents* are one of two types of personnel who operate outside of Foundation facilities:
	+ The first type of Field Agent is essentially made up of undercover or undercover agents, working in police stations, hospitals and other places with privileged access to environments where the manifestation of an anomaly is quickly noticed, allowing them identify them and inform their superiors in the Foundation. These personnel are rarely armed and generally not equipped to deal with anomalies; their job is to report anomalies as quickly as possible as soon as they surface.
	+ The second type of Field Agent is closer to investigators or detectives, a person in discreet attire whose job it is to snoop around areas where strange things might happen, and determine whether or not the Foundation should to take care of. Although they may carry some basic weapons, they are not soldiers; their mission is also to call for reinforcements when the existence of an anomaly is confirmed.
* **Containment Specialists** are akin to engineers and technicians: their job at Foundation sites is to construct and maintain the cells, chambers, and cages that are used to contain various objects and entities discovered by the Foundation. They are not considered combat personnel; although some of them may have been trained to carry handguns for their own defense, the vast majority of containment specialists usually carry nothing more dangerous on their person than a pipe wrench.
* **Security Officers** (Guards), **Intervention Teams** , and **Mobile Intervention Forces**
	+ Guards are like police officers patrolling the streets: they deal with all day-to-day issues that don't involve firing shots or arresting people, like taking over traffic *near* a car accident. The average street cop is not necessarily trained or equipped to deal with serious situations like an armed bank robbery or a shooting in a public building. Similarly, the average security guard probably has only basic equipment on him and is not suited to deal with a breach created by a hostile SCP or an outside attack.
	+ The *Intervention* Teams or *Tactical Teams* are the equivalent of a GIGN officer; they are equipped with more sophisticated armor, a wide variety of weapons and tools designed to handle serious incidents. Similarly, it is a site's Response Teams who have the heavy weapons and go to the front line during a breach of an entity like SCP-682 : the job of the Guards in such a case is to call in reinforcements and help evacuate non-combat personnel, not go after the murderous lizard.
	+ Mobile *Task Forces* are the equivalent of your body's specific immune defenses: each is trained and equipped to handle only one type of anomaly, but they are the best of all in their field. An MTF is not necessarily linked to a specific site and can be called anywhere when a specific situation calls for their talents. For more information, see the Mobile Intervention Forces page .
* The **O5 Council Members** are the highest-ranking members of the Foundation, a 13-person council that determines the long-term goals, plans, and strategies of the entire Foundation. A common mistake in writing a report is to mention an O5 in a situation where they are logically not needed. The O5s are not there to approve experiments or reflect on day-to-day decisions about the containment of a certain entity: it's like asking permission from the CEO of a large corporation to fetch a simple file of archive or validate the cafeteria's accounting balance sheet.