For Official Use Only
For Official Use Only (FOUO) is an information security designation used by governments throughout the world.
United States
Among U.S. government information, FOUO is 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 through nine of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).[1] It is one of the various sub-categorizations for strictly unclassified information which, on 24 February 2012, was officially consolidated as CUI. The Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) categorization is obsolete.<ref name="USDoD_Issuances" /[2]
U.S. Department of Defense
On 24 February 2012, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence published the publicly available DoDM 5200.01, a four-volume manual consolidating all marking of information used by the U.S. Department of Defense.[2] There is a lot more information on the marking, access, and protection of "For Official Use Only" information. Most of the information is in the fourth volume, but the second volume also contains guidelines on FOUO information.
Australia
For Official Use Only (FOUO) is one of five categories of the Dissemination Limiting Marker (DLM) defined by the Australian Government Information Security Management Guidelines.[3] The guidelines state that FOUO should only be used on unclassified information, when its compromise may cause limited damage to national security, Australian Government agencies, commercial entities or members of the public. However unlike the United States usage, the presence or absence of an FOUO marker expressly does not provide any information about the document's status under the Freedom of Information Act.
See also
- Classified information
- Classified information in the United States
- Freedom of information laws by country
- Sensitive but unclassified