Secrecy News -- 01/17/13

[Steven Aftergood]

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SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2013, Issue No. 6
January 17, 2013

Secrecy News Blog:  http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/


**     SANDIA SCIENTISTS MODEL DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL PROTEST
**     STRATEGY LACKING FOR DISPOSAL OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS COMPONENTS


SANDIA SCIENTISTS MODEL DYNAMICS OF SOCIAL PROTEST

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have been studying the ways
that information, ideas and behaviors propagate through social networks in
order to gain advance warning of cyber attacks or other threatening
behavior.

The initial problem is how to explain the disparate consequences of
seemingly similar triggering events.  Thus, in 2005, the Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten published cartoons featuring the Muslim Prophet Muhammad,
prompting widespread protests.  In 2006, by contrast, the Pope gave a
lecture in which he made comments about Islam that were considered
derogatory by some, but the ensuing controversy quickly faded away.

"While each event appeared at the outset to have the potential to trigger
significant protests, the 'Danish cartoons' incident ultimately led to
substantial Muslim mobilization, including massive protests and
considerable violence, while outrage triggered by the pope lecture quickly
subsided with essentially no violence," wrote Sandia authors Richard
Colbaugh and Kristin Glass.  "It would obviously be very useful to have the
capability to distinguish these two types of reaction as early in the event
lifecycle as possible."

What accounts for the difference in these outcomes? The intrinsic
qualities of the events are not sufficient to explain why one had
disruptive consequences and the other did not. Rather, the authors say, one
must factor in the mechanisms of influence by which individual responses
are shaped and spread.

By way of analogy, it has been shown that "it is likely to be impossible
to predict movie revenues, even very roughly, based on the intrinsic
information available concerning the movie" such as cast or genre, but that
"it *is* possible to identify early indicators of movie success, such as
temporal patterns in pre-release 'buzz', and to use these indicators to
accurately predict ultimate box office revenues."

The Sandia authors developed a methodology that reflects the "topological
properties" of social and information networks -- including the density and
hierarchy of connections among network members -- and modeled the dynamics
of "social diffusion events" in which individuals exercise influence on one
another.

They report that their model lends itself, among other things, to
"distinguishing successful mobilization and protest events, that is,
mobilizations that become large and self-sustaining, from unsuccessful ones
early in their lifecycle."

They tested the model to predict the spread of textual memes, to
distinguish between events that generated significant protest (a May 2005
Quran desecration) and those that did not (the knighting of Salman Rushdie
in 2007), and to provide early warning of cyber attacks.

The authors' research was sponsored by the Department of Defense and the
Department of Homeland Security, among others.  See "Early warning analysis
for social diffusion events" by Richard Colbaugh and Kristin Glass,
originally published in Security Informatics, Vol. 1, 2012, SAND
2010-5334C.

	http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/diffusion.pdf


STRATEGY LACKING FOR DISPOSAL OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS COMPONENTS

There is a "large inventory" of classified nuclear weapons components
"scattered across" the nation's nuclear weapons complex and awaiting
disposal, according to an internal Department of Energy contractor report
last year.

But "there is no complex-wide cost-effective classified weapon disposition
strategy." And as a result, "Only a small portion of the inventory has been
dispositioned and it has not always been in a cost-effective manner."

See "Acceptance of Classified Excess Components for Disposal at Area 5,"
presented at the Spring 2012 Waste Generator Workshop, April 24, 2012.

	http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/excess.pdf


_______________________________________________
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 at fas.org
voice:  (202) 454-4691
twitter: @saftergood



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