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."

Comments

Wow

[jmv]

Time to change the name to "People's Republic of the United States"...

Cliff Stoll

[jonman_d]

Anyone read the Cookoo's Egg (by Clifford Stoll) lately? He briefly talks about "Sensitive but unclassified" and how it was a problem back then (read the book) when they LACKED such a definition, and the need for one.

So I guess there's another side to the arguement...who would've thought?

Googlefied

[Blackneto]

Googlefied NYT article for the No reg types

Sensitive but unclassified come on

[bl968]

Any time you limit speech by placing restrictions on access to information you thus are classifying it. It does not matter that you do not stamp it TOP SECRET if you do not make the information available for public comment and use. This would also be a easy way to hide fraud and abuse from the public eye by making it a breech of ethics to release the information on frivolous but sensitive research.

Re:Sensitive but unclassified come on

[Raiford]

You have hit upon a point that begs some further analysis. You are absolutely right in your statement that the "sensitive but unclassified" caveat (that's what those things are called by classification authorites) is indeed a defacto means of classifying information. The problem is more insidious than you might think. Under regular classified information (confidential, secret and top secret) and their associated caveats, a prescribed level of protection and rules must be applied to the information. This translates to security containers, custodial inventories and legal bounds about what can and cannot be classified (meaning you can't just classify something to avoid FOIA requests). Additionally the handling procedures and custodial involvement gets pretty expensive.

Now the "sensitive but unclassified" caveat has none of those requirement and hence none of the traditional restrictions which prevent abuse on the side of classification authorities. Now information can be withheld with impunity without any real accountability.

Re:Sensitive but unclassified come on

[Animats]

That's right.

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.

We dont burn books...

[Anonymous Coward]

we just remove them! :)

Its understandable.

[kpansky]

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.

The One thing the "war" on terror has taught us:

[Valar]

The most terrifying terrorist act is the threat of a terrorist act.

Hmm...

[Cyno01]

Bioterrorism Articles? i'm sure you could find some textfiles about it, not to knock textfiles.com or nuthin, but yeah, you could do a lotta damage with a little money and various internet resources /flame> Stop The Terrorists!, Shut Down The Internet!, Think of the Children! /flame>

this is a very old dilemma

[jacquesm]

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...

Re:this is a very old dilemma

[mentin]

The problem is not existance of sensitive information, the problem is who and how defines what is sensitive. Everybody (well, most) are OK with existance of classified information (created by military or intelligence, as in your case). But when not classified information (i.e. one that was obtained without access to any military secrets or other classified info) becomes "sensitive" and prohibited from publishing, this is an issue.

News at 11.

[BrookHarty]

This is Action 5 reporter Mike Manlee, we are in front of the Metropolis Water Power Generation complex. In these times of terrorism, we want to inform the public of the possible target the power complex. We are informed that the Security guard takes his stroll around the complex at 5-7pm nightly, while the front desk would be un-supervised. This would be the perfect time for a terrorist to attack the power complex.

Back to you Dan.
-
Facts are stupid things. - Ronald Reagan

Default assumption...

[alizard]

There are very few places where "security by obscurity" works to protect anyone but the bad guys. If I were a farmer, I might find that report of great personal interest. If I know of a security problem, I might be able to do something about it. Or at least knowing what's on my farm and its surroundings, to know exactly what kind of help to buy or ask for from the Feds. Some answers might be as close as one's county agricultural agent, if one knows what questions to ask.

Let's put it this way, how would you feel as a netadmin if BugTraq suddenly became "unclassified but sensitive"?

Should the "War on Terrorism" ever become more serious than "The War on Some Drugs", i.e. more than inconveniece for the average American and an excuse to peck away at more civil liberties of the sort that the terrorist also want to see disappear, the front line of the war starts where we are sitting, we're going to have to protect ourselves, and the most important defense in this kind of war is accurate information.

Information, i.e. the stuff that Big Brother has decided is none of the public business.

The knees are still jerking

[clemfoley]

It is quite obvious that the US government is trying to keep America on terrorist alert for as long as they can. By having the "terrorists" disrupting the American way of life in every area possible, ensures public support for the Bush war effort.

This is overkill!

Not a new classification

[nurightshu]

"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.

Science?

[jeramybsmith]

Here are the facts for those who don't want to read all the spin.
There is a _federally financed_ report on bio-terror.
The government doesn't want it published because some someone decided the data may be sensitive/dangerous. (for good reason? for bad reason? we don't know obviously).

There is your dilemma in a nutshell. Is this really a science story? This is a politics story and the person who submitted it had a very misleading lead-in for it. Here is one for you that doesn't imply censorship of private research. "Federal government halts publishing of federally financed report".

Re:Science?

[Ryu2]

Unfortuantely, for many academic institutions, even private ones, federal funding provides a significant chunk of operating revenue (at my school, a major private research university, it's 25% or so).

If the feds didn't like what you were publishing, maybe it couldn't censor it directly without going to great legal lengths, but what it could do and probably would do is withhold federal funding. That would mean financial disaster for any institution. It's almost virtual financial blackmail.

Misleading summary

[Ryu2]

According to the NYT article, the report in question WAS eventually published for the public, just without some specific examples of weakensses cited in the agricultural distribution system (that was in a non-public version).

Hrm

[Crasoum]

The tensions began early this year as the Bush administration began taking wide measures to tighten scientific secrecy in hopes of keeping terrorists from obtaining weapons of mass destruction. In January, the administration quietly began withdrawing from public release more than 6,600 technical documents that dealt mainly with the production of germ and chemical weapons.

Haven't we learned by now, that the terrorists already -have- the weapons of mass destruction they need? Faith in their government, ambition, and follow through.

So how much faith in your government, ambition, and follow through do you have?

I don't think you get it ...

[Tensor]

The WHOLE point of terrorist attacks is to make ppl live in fear, terrified.

The attack/act/threat per-se is not the important thing.

That is why the attack on 09-11 (and the post anthrax threat) was SO effective, it shook ppl out of the safety they lived in into a world of terror. It "made" media blow things up out of proportion to feed that fear. More than 1000 times the deaths of the so called "anthrax threat" are killed every month in violent crimes in the US, so which one is a greater threat, and which one got more publicity, and which one made ppl afraid ?

Do you see it ?

Use a stupid fake reg. Stop copying & postin

[fortinbras47]

Qouting the NY Times copyright notice:

All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of The New York Times Company. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.

However, you may download material from The New York Times on the Web (one machine readable copy and one print copy per page) for your personal, noncommercial use only.

C'mon people. It's not that hard to use a stupid free registration. The Wall Street Journal has a subscription cost, the Economist has a subscription for some articles... NY Times doesn't HAVE to provide free media content, so don't blatantly disregard the law when it's so incredibly easy to follow.

We shouldn't have to give up freedom...

[apocalypse76]

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.

sensitive but unclassified flame

[Ektanoor]

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."

Re:Paging Mr. Kettle...

[Zeinfeld]

You know the US has gotten pretty bad when the joke gets modded up.

I think that the underlying problem is that many people are now as cynical of government motives as during the Watergate crisis.

There is absolutely nothing an administration can do that is more harmful to national security than to use security classifications for political ends. Unfortunately it is very hard to believe this government when it says 'trust me'.

They said 'trust me' over the tax cut which would not break the budget, guess what it did. Then again it still claims that the names of the energy companies that paid to take part in Dick Cheney's 'energy taskforce' are privilleged.

Federal government research that is inconvenient to the administration simply disappears.

I am less worried by this report than the fact that the director of the CIA is unable to support the claims made by the administration concerning Iraq.

I am less concerned about the actions of the administration than the fact that the 'liberal-press' appear determined not to ask the obvious questions.