SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2016, Issue No. 68
August 18, 2016

Secrecy News Blog: http://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/

SECURITY FOR DOMESTIC INTELLIGENCE FACILITIES REVISED

On June 13, a mentally ill man rammed his car into the gate at CIA headquarters, causing some damage and disruption (See "CIA Gate Crasher Gets 30-day Sentence" by Rachel Weiner, Washington Post, August 16).

Three days later, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper issued a new directive on Security Standards For Protecting Domestic IC Facilities. A copy of the unclassified Intelligence Community Directive 706, dated June 16, 2016, was recently made available by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The new intelligence directive sets security standards for "planning and designing new facilities and renovation of existing facilities."

"The protection of facilities is a preeminent concern for the IC. Applying baseline physical security standards to manage risks and mitigate threats enables the IC to effectively protect facilities and reduce vulnerabilities."

However, while facility security is "a" preeminent concern, it is not "the" preeminent concern. Security remains subordinate to the intelligence mission:

"IC facilities shall comply with the appropriate physical security standards... except where that compliance would jeopardize intelligence sources and methods," the directive states.

BOOK REVIEW: THE ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION

My review of the new book The Ethics of Invention: Technology and the Human Future by Sheila Jasanoff appeared in this week's Nature magazine. It begins:

"Technological innovation in fields from genetic engineering to cyberwarfare is accelerating at a breakneck pace, but ethical deliberation over its implications has lagged behind. Thus argues Sheila Jasanoff -- who works at the nexus of science, law and policy -- in The Ethics of Invention, her fresh investigation. Not only are our deliberative institutions inadequate to the task of oversight, she contends, but we fail to recognize the full ethical dimensions of technology policy. She prescribes a fundamental reboot."

"Ethics in innovation has been given short shrift, Jasanoff says, owing in part to technological determinism, a semi-conscious belief that innovation is intrinsically good and that the frontiers of technology should be pushed as far as possible...."

"The author argues for an entirely new body of ethical discourse, going beyond technical risk assessment to give due weight to economic, cultural, social and religious perspectives."

The rest can be read at Nature.com.

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Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

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