[iwar] [fc:Science.and.Secrets]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-06-21 06:27:00
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<a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_leo062002.asp">http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_leo062002.asp>

Science and Secrets

                                   Technology Review, 
June 20, 2002


By Alan Leo



Lawmakers and universities seek a balance between academic freedom and
security in the war on terror. 

Since September 11, the scientific and political communities have sought
to strike a new balance between openness and national security, a
balance that could include restricting access to university research
potentially useful to enemies of the United States.  Last week, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology weighed in with a report
recommending that the faculty conduct all classified research off-campus
and reject restrictions on non-classified research, such as agreements
that limit foreigners' access to "sensitive" information-a stance that
puts MIT at odds with the anti-terrorism U.S.A.  Patriot Act. 

MIT's is the first such report issued by a major research university
since the beginning of the war on terror, and will likely serve as a
model to institutions seeking their own answers to difficult questions
of academic freedom and social responsibility.  "We wanted to make a
very clear statement about the value of openness in scientific research
and education, and then have a clarity of policy that flowed from those
values," says Sheila Widnall, professor of aeronautics and astronautics
at MIT and chair of the committee that authored the report. 

Widnall, secretary of the Air Force from 1993 to 1997, says her
colleagues at MIT watched with concern after last fall's terrorist
attacks as lawmakers and federal agencies responded with a growing
number of restrictions regarding access to and disclosure of scientific
information.  In February, the university appointed a select committee
to examine the issue and to report back on how faculty could best
advance its core values of education, research and service to the nation
and humanity.  Their result is the report, titled "In the Public
Interest"; MIT's entire faculty will vote on their recommendations next
fall. 

Like many universities, MIT has long had a de facto ban on on-campus
classified research.  The university, located in Cambridge, MA, operates
a second campus in nearby Lincoln for classified research.  The Lincoln
Lab, founded in 1951, has long served as a center for aerospace defense
research, including radar and ballistic missile defense.  The MIT report
recommends that the university formalize this arrangement, and separate
classified research from its education mission. 

Widnall says the committee was careful to frame its recommendations in
the broad context of the school's philosophy and not as a response to
specific government policies.  Nevertheless, the report cites sections
of the U.S.A.  Patriot Act, the broad anti-terror law passed last
October and since expanded, as specifically problematic.  Among other
restrictions, the law forbids citizens of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North
Korea, Sudan or Syria from working with certain biological materials. 
The report calls such requirements "not consistent with MIT's values and
principles," and suggests that the faculty may respond by abandoning any
on-campus research affected by these restrictions. 

That is precisely the kind of "gray area" that has long troubled
scientists, says Rob Wulf, president of the National Academy of
Engineering.  "'Sensitive but unclassified' is so incredibly ill-defined
that we need to stay away from it with a ten-foot pole," he says.  "The
concept is so squishy and fraught with danger that the only sensible
thing for the research community to do demand [classification]."

Uncertainty hurts not only academic freedom but also national security,
says Jack Gibbons, President Clinton's chief science advisor from 1993
to 1998, because it creates hard-to-police gray areas and lowers
people's sensitivity to classification.  "You build high fences where
you need 'em, but none where you don't, or you won't have anybody to
guard the fence."

Cold War Redux

The last time academic freedom and national security stirred such
controversy was in the early 1980s, when cold war fears of Soviet
infiltration led the federal government to implement severe restrictions
on foreign researchers, and even limit what basic research U.S. 
scientists could publish.  "The rationale was that that the Soviet Union
had intelligence operatives in this country, they were stealing us blind
through informants, and the Reagan administration was determined to
close down their operation," recalls Dale Corson, president emeritus of
Cornell University. 

In 1982, Corson chaired a National Academy of Science committee
published a report that convinced President Reagan to lift most controls
on basic research.  The Corson Report stood for two decades as the
scientific community's authoritative statement on academic freedom and
national security.  Next week, the Academy will publish a new report,
addressing many of the same questions for science but in a new century,
and a new reality where low-tech enemies could turn their access into
immediate threats. 

The two reports crystallize the concerned murmurs throughout the
research community since last fall.  How can there be open debate
without open communication? Can a diverse academic community exclude
certain members? Neal Lane, the president's science advisor from 1998 to
2001, says he expects many universities to tackle these questions in the
coming months.  "After September 11, we've all thought about our role in
society and our responsibility," he says.  "I've had scientists-and
people in other fields-come up to me and say 'I want to do something;
what can I do?'"

Corson says the answer 20 years ago holds true today: the best security
lies in the pursuit of new knowledge, in-as he says-keeping ahead of our
enemies by running faster.  As the war on terror unfolds, Corson and
other scientific leaders say their community stands ready to
contribute-not their silence, but their strengths: innovation, hard work
and open debate. 


Alan Leo is a Web editor at Technology Review. 


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