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US Secrecy Efforts Hurting Scientific Research
EnlightenmentFan writes "The new, ultra-vague category "sensitive but unclassified" is being used to stop publication of research, according to this
NY Times article (Registration required, but it's free). Bruce Alberts (President, National Academy of Sciences), William A. Wulf (President, National Academy of Engineering), and Harvey V. Fineberg (President, Institute of Medicine) made a joint statement after bureaucrats declared a major NAS report on bioterrorism unpublishable."
I can see why the government might want to keep some of that research limited to the US. The government is doing what it believes to be in its (and in ours to some extent) interest. However, our responsibility is to demonstrate that it is not through whatever means are most appropriate. Im thinking something like civil disobedience or "leaks" would be the most appropriate in cases like this.
--Kevin
There always will be information that is too sensitive for 'general' consumption, either because the posession of this information can cause harm in the wrong hands or because there is a choice between two 'bad' alternatives, where one of the two alternatives is worse and benefits from the suppression of the information.
Case in point, during WWII the British had knowledge ahead of time of the Germans plans for the bombing of certain towns in southern England. If they would have warned the locals of the impending attack they would have given away the fact that they had in fact breached the code that protected the high command's communications. So, they allowed the bombardments to continue without any kind of 'early' response in order not to tip their hands.
This knowledge has been kept secret until very recently...
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"Sensitive but unclassified" information is not all that new. When I received my initial security briefing in technical school for the U.S. Air Force in 1998, one of the first things we discussed was the nature of sensitive unclassified information. Basically, the category covers things that are not in and of themselves "Secret" or above, but could cause damage to U.S. and allied mission objectives if widely disseminated.
For example, the fact that a particular unit is being deployed to a particular overseas base is not classified. However, if combined with other information, it may enable a hostile nation or group to discover operational intentions, which is why we were "strongly encouraged" not to use open phone lines to discuss troop movement orders.
In some instances, treating certain pieces of unclassified data as sensitive actually helps to protect an individual's personal data. Information gathered by the U.S. Department of Defense on its personnel is covered by the Privacy Act of 1974, which does not inherently make it classified. However, because the data is sensitive, handling and transmitting it with increased care is beneficial for military personnel.
Although I am as upset as the next person (well, the next clueful person) about the gradual erosion of my rights as a citizen -- as a a matter of fact, I had to explain to my father just yesterday about the dangers of the DMCA, Senator Hollings, and the CBPTDA or CDBTPA or CATBAD or whatever the hell it's called -- I really do feel that this article was a bit of unfounded hysteria. The U.S. government, by dint of its mandate to defend the citizenry through its Executive Branch, is always going to have information that could potentially compromise its intelligence-gathering or war-fighting capabilities. Sometimes, the only thing you can do is acknowledge that fact and search for a story elsewhere.
They that would sacrifice their
The USA should be a free country. Just because we experience a terrorist attack, or any other attack we shouldn't have to give up our freedoms.
It sickens me when I heard politicians talking about how they would like to pass this bill or that bill to keep so and so crime from happening again. It is like they use the victim to get more support for laws... laws that don't need to exist. The exiting public agencies should take care of the problem by enforcing existing laws.
Case in point is when I heard a democrat saying we need to pass the bill that will make each gun get "fingerprinted". That would be a total waste of taxpayer money. Once you fire the gun a few times the print changes! They use recent cases like the shooter in Maryland to put more and more restrictions on us.
This article displays how it's used to keep information from getting out. There is a point where lawmakers should stop and think about what they are doing.
This is not new and it didn't appear yesterday. The sensitive but unclassified data has been around since the end of WWII. Well, it was here before that, but the mood turned crazy after this time. There have been lots of incidents where certain organisations or people used and abused the tactics of information control. In certain cases the incident ended in brutal assassinations of journalists, experts and other people. Such incidents could be frequently seen in Asia, Africa and Latin America during the 60's, 70's and 80's. No I am not talking about wars and coups, but about the secret experiments in certain countries, the secret american base in ex-Zaire, the defoliation in Vietnam, certain aspects of CIA activities in Central America during the Contra's War. We can even note the victims of a few nuclear incidents in ex-USSR, most of them, results of experiments. While a good part of these activities had a top-secret level, other details could not be covered by secrecy (unless you consider people like the Agent Orange victims top secret items). However, agencies tried hard to cover its tracks. Sometimes, in a very harsh manner.
But even Europe was not exempt of such situation. There is a mistery story about some major soviet expert on nuclear war that suddenly vanished in South Europe after a major scientific congress on the effects of Nuclear Winter. For years, no one and nobody could guess where this guy went to. He vaporised in such way, that both soviet and westerners constantly blamed each other for his vanishment. Some may think this was another Cold War incident. However, this guy seems to had worked on a more perfect model to represent the consequences of a major nuclear war. This work was not secret nor confidential and it seems that he was about to show it to everyone in that congress. However someone made him disappear before he could do it.
I wonder what will happen if the vague term "sensitive" becomes an official member of the secrecy levels. We could see such thing like: "Well we could tell you the number of victims of unsuccessful nuclear experiment but that's highly sensitive information."
In the early 1980s, when I worked for an aerospace contractor, I got a memo from DoD vaguely recommending that something be considered "sensitive but unclassified". I wrote back, asking whether this was the Government acting as contracting agent, or was this a statutory requirement? If it was the government acting as contracting agent, we'd be glad to comply, but a formal change order and an additional fee to be negotiated through our contract office would be required. If it was a statutory requirement, we needed to know the legal authority under which it was made, and that should be communicated to our legal department.
Never heard from those people again.
Classification is expensive. When bidding, we would estimate that running a project at SECRET instead of UNCLASSIFIED multiplied the cost by roughly 2. You had to get everybody cleared, which takes time and costs. Documents had to be signed in and out and tracked, which costs and slows the project down. You can't outsource much. It's a big pain.
At TOP SECRET, the costs go through the roof. You work in windowless RF-tight metal-walled rooms with RF-tight airlocks, or you're located at some site in Outer Nowhere. You're always unlocking or locking something. It takes months to get people cleared, and sometimes you have people sitting around doing busywork for months while waiting for their clearances to be processed. Worse, the people working on TS projects get out of date technically because they can't talk to anybody. That's the biggest cost of all. Except in very specialized areas, the highly-classified projects aren't ahead of the state of the art. They're behind.