Illustraton: ahhh /flickr The number of U.S. government employees and contractors holding security clearances jumped to 4.86 million last year from 4.7 million the year prior, according to the 2011 Report on Security Clearance Determinations, which the Director of National Intelligence has forwarded to Congress. That’s about a 3 percent gain over the year prior, the first year statistics became available. In other words, another 160,000 people were removed from the category of: “If we told you we’d have to kill you.” The figures, obtained by Secrecy News , are required to be published to Congress as a result of the Intelligence Reauthorization Act of 2010. The data count those cleared for confidential, secret and top secret records.

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Nearly 5 Million People Have Government Security Clearances