UAP Disclosure Act in Congressional Record, 2023

Brief

Senate Majority Leader Schumer and five co-sponsors, Rounds, Rubio, Gillibrand, Young, and Heinrich, submitted S.Amdt.797 on July 13, 2023, to create the 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2023.' The amendment would establish a UAP Records Collection at the National Archives, require all government offices to identify and transmit UAP records within 300 days, and attach a presumption of immediate public disclosure to every such record. It introduces statutory definitions for 'non-human intelligence,' 'technologies of unknown origin,' 'legacy program' (encompassing reverse-engineering efforts), and a 'Controlled Disclosure Campaign Plan,' while enumerating six physical observables that formally distinguish UAP from mundane or temporarily non-attributed objects. FOIA is explicitly declared inadequate to the task, and no UAP record may be destroyed, altered, or mutilated.

Metadata

Agency

U.S. Senate

Release

2023-07-13

Type

PDF • .pdf

Length

7 pages

Classification

UNCLASSIFIED

Programs

UAP Disclosure Act of 2023, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection, Controlled Disclosure Campaign Plan, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Review Board

Tags

UAP legislation, Senate amendment, NDAA FY2024, S.Amdt.797, non-human intelligence, technologies of unknown origin, transmedium, hypersonic, USO, 2023, National Archives, legacy program, reverse engineering

Key points

• Six senators from both parties co-sponsored the amendment: Schumer, Rounds, Rubio, Gillibrand, Young, and Heinrich.p.1
• Congress formally declares that FOIA has 'proven inadequate in achieving the timely public disclosure of Government unidentified anomalous phenomena records.'p.1
• 'Non-human intelligence' is statutorily defined as 'any sentient intelligent non-human lifeform regardless of nature or ultimate origin that may be presumed responsible for unidentified anomalous phenomena or of which the Federal Government has become aware.'p.1
• 'Legacy program' is defined to cover all federal, state, commercial, academic, and private-sector efforts to 'collect, exploit, or reverse engineer technologies of unknown origin or examine biological evidence of living or deceased non-human intelligence' predating the act.p.1
• 'Controlling authority' explicitly includes private sector entities and commercial companies 'in physical possession of technologies of unknown origin or biological evidence of non-human intelligence,' bringing them under the act's reach.p.1
• A 'Controlled Disclosure Campaign Plan', defined as a required deliverable under section ll 09(c)(3), signals the drafters anticipated a staged rather than instantaneous release of UAP information.p.1
• UAP is formally differentiated from ordinary objects by six observables: instantaneous acceleration without apparent inertia; hypersonic velocity without thermal signature or sonic shockwave; transmedium travel; positive lift contrary to aerodynamic principles; multispectral signature control; and physical or biological effects on close observers.p.2
• UAP explicitly includes 'unidentified submerged objects (USOs)' in its statutory definition, extending the disclosure mandate to undersea phenomena.p.2
• The Archivist must commence the UAP Records Collection within 60 days of enactment; records must be publicly accessible at NARA within 30 days of transmission and digitally online within 180 days.p.2
• No UAP record may be 'destroyed, altered, or mutilated in any way,' and no previously public record may be reclassified, redacted, or re-withheld.p.2

Most interesting

• The act coined the legal term 'prosaic attribution', having a human origin and operating under known scientific principles, as the operative dividing line between UAP and everything else. The term has no prior statutory history.
• The definition of 'record' explicitly includes 'intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and target acquisition sensor data,' indicating the drafters knew classified sensor records existed and intended them to be covered.
• Private companies holding crashed materials or biological evidence are brought under the act's mandatory-disclosure reach via the 'controlling authority' definition, a departure from the government-records scope of typical declassification law.
• The act identifies two specific legal loopholes shielding UAP records from existing declassification requirements: exemptions in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, and an over-broad interpretation of 'transclassified foreign nuclear information.'
• The six enumerated UAP observables, including transmedium travel, absent inertia under acceleration, and hypersonic speed without thermal signature, represent the first codification of these engineering-level anomalies as legally operative criteria in proposed federal law.
• The Archivist is required to preserve not just the records but 'the physical integrity and original provenance (or if indeterminate, the earliest historical owner)' of every item, applying an archival chain-of-custody standard rarely seen in national-security legislation.
• Congressional oversight jurisdiction is split by default. Senate Homeland Security and House Oversight committees hold it unless the respective intelligence committees affirmatively claim it, a design choice that keeps UAP oversight visible to non-intelligence legislators.