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Date: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 08:59:10 -0700
From: Steven Aftergood
To: eugen@leitl.org
Subject: Secrecy News -- 10/08/13
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SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2013, Issue No. 87
October 8, 2013
Secrecy News Blog: http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/
** CIA HALTS PUBLIC ACCESS TO OPEN SOURCE SERVICE
CIA HALTS PUBLIC ACCESS TO OPEN SOURCE SERVICE
For more than half a century, the public has been able to access a wealth
of information collected by U.S. intelligence from unclassified, open
sources around the world. At the end of this year, the Central
Intelligence Agency will terminate that access.
The U.S. intelligence community's Open Source Center (OSC), which is
managed by the CIA, will cease to provide its information feed to the
publicly accessible World News Connection as of December 31, 2013,
according to an announcement from the National Technical Information
Service (NTIS), which operates the World News Connection (WNC).
The WNC "is an online news service, only accessible via the World Wide
Web, that offers an extensive array of translated and English-language news
and information," an NTIS brochure explains. "Particularly effective in its
coverage of local media sources, WNC provides you with the power to
identify what really is happening in a specific country or region. Compiled
from thousands of non-U.S. media sources, the information in WNC covers
significant socioeconomic, political, scientific, technical, and
environmental issues and events."
"The information is obtained from full text and summaries of newspaper
articles, conference proceedings, television and radio broadcasts,
periodicals, and non-classified technical reports. New information is
entered into WNC every government business day. Generally, new information
is available within 48-72 hours from the time of original publication or
broadcast."
"For over 60 years, analysts from OSC's domestic and overseas bureaus have
monitored timely and pertinent open-source materials, including grey
literature. Uniquely, WNC allows you to take advantage of the intelligence
gathering experience of OSC," the NTIS brochure says. Soon, that will no
longer be true.
http://www.ntis.gov/products/wnc.aspx
The WNC public feed from the Open Source Center is a highly attenuated
version of what is available to official government users. Within
government, copyright considerations are ignored, but for public
distribution they must be respected, and so (with some exceptions) only
information products whose creators have signed a royalty agreement with
NTIS are publicly released.
Even with that significant limitation and the attendant public
subscription fees, the NTIS World News Connection has remained a highly
prized resource for news reporters, foreign policy analysts, students and
interested members of the public.
I check it almost every day. Recently, for example, I have been following
official statements from Russian officials who allege that the U.S. is
covertly developing biological weapons for use against Russia in a military
laboratory in the Republic of Georgia. The claim seems bizarre, but may
nevertheless be politically significant. Detailed English-language
coverage of the matter, or of many other stories of regional interest and
importance, is not readily available elsewhere. (Moreso than in the past,
however, portions of the material that is publicly accessible through WNC
can be obtained elsewhere, through other news services or foreign
websites.)
The reasons for the decision to terminate the World News Connection are a
bit obscure. Producing it is not a drain on U.S. intelligence-- the
marginal costs of providing the additional feed to NTIS are close to
zero. (The total budget for open source intelligence was about $384
million in
FY2012, according to classified budget records obtained by the Washington
Post from Edward Snowden.) However, the program is a headache for NTIS to
manage, particularly since NTIS officials had to negotiate numerous
contracts with media source providers to offer their products to the
public. But the large majority of that work has already been accomplished,
and now it will be rendered useless.
Mary Webster of the Open Source Center had initially proposed to cancel
the public information feed as of September 30, according to an NTIS
official. Then she was persuaded to grant a six month reprieve. But in
the end, a cut-off date of December 31, 2013 was set.
If that comes to pass, it will be a blow to researchers and proponents of
public intelligence. The Federation of American Scientists had previously
argued that the U.S. government should actually expand public access to
open source intelligence by publishing all unclassified, uncopyrighted Open
Source Center products. ("Open Up Open Source Intelligence," Secrecy News,
August 24, 2011.) Instead, even the current range of publications will no
longer be systematically released. (Only a small fraction of publicly
unreleased OSC records ever seem to leak.)
http://blogs.fas.org/secrecy/2011/08/open_up_osint/
Although the Open Source Center is managed by the Central Intelligence
Agency, it is formally a component of the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence. Yet the move the terminate public access to OSC
products seemed to catch the ODNI unawares.
"Obviously our attention is on a possible lapse in appropriations, but we
are looking into this," said an ODNI spokesman on September 30, just before
the government shutdown.
"The information provided through NTIS makes an irreplaceable contribution
to U.S. national security," wrote Prof. Gary G. Sick of Columbia University
in an October 1999 letter, in response to a previous proposal to curtail
coverage in the World News Connection.
The World News Connection "informs us about other countries in ways that
otherwise would be nearly impossible," Dr. Sick wrote. "It costs virtually
nothing in comparison with almost any other national security system. It is
not as sexy as a bomber or a missile, but its contributions to national
security can be attested to by generations of policy-makers. I was in the
White House during the Iranian revolution and the hostage crisis, and my
respect for the power of this information was born at that time. I often
found it more helpful than the reams of classified material that came
across my desk at the NSC."
http://www.fas.org/irp/fbis/sicklet.html
_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.
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_______________________
Steven Aftergood
Project on Government Secrecy
Federation of American Scientists
web: www.fas.org/sgp/index.html
email: saftergood@fas.org
voice: (202) 454-4691
twitter: @saftergood
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