SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2019, Issue No. 43
December 2, 2019

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

IMPROVED ACCESS TO OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE URGED

Congress should require the Director of National Intelligence to make open source intelligence more widely available, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission recommended in its latest annual report.

Open source intelligence refers to information of intelligence value that is openly published and can be freely gathered without resort to clandestine methods. Such material, and the analysis based on it, can usually be produced on an unclassified basis.

But in practice, it is often tightly held. The U.S.-China Commission, which was created by statute in 2000, noted that the U.S. intelligence community had recently curtailed access to open source intelligence reporting even within the government.

Last June, the former OpenSource.gov web portal was "decommissioned." Its contents were transferred to classified or restricted networks that are mostly inaccessible to those outside the intelligence community.

Congress should therefore direct the DNI to "restore the unclassified Open Source Enterprise website to all of its original functions for U.S. government employees," the China Commission report said.

Even before the recent decommissioning of OpenSource.gov, most open source intelligence products that were produced by the intelligence community's Open Source Enterprise were denied to researchers, scholars, and other members of the public who were not government employees or contractors.

That too is a mistake that should be corrected, the Commission said.

"Access to the Open Source Enterprise should also be expanded by making appropriate materials available to U.S. academic and research institutions," the Commission report said.

Larry M. Wortzel, a China specialist and Commission member, said the growing limitations on open source intelligence are impeding China-related research.

"To work on China using Chinese open source documents, if you are not on [the classified network] JWICS, you need to read Chinese," Mr. Wortzel told Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, who first reported on the Commission recommendation. See "DNI restricts open source intel," November 27 (second item).

Government officials say that wider sharing of open source intelligence is not quite as simple or straightforward as it might seem, even aside from legal issues of copyright that may limit publication of foreign materials.

Like other forms of intelligence, open source material is subject to error and can be used for deception. In some cases it may be highly sensitive, as when the underlying information is published unwittingly, or when it offers US policymakers some transient "decision advantage" that could be squandered by wider publication.

But those are exceptional cases, not ordinary ones. More typically, open source intelligence products serve a humble but enormously valuable contextual function. Sometimes, they may offer genuine insight into pressing issues of national security and foreign policy. But even in their most pedestrian form -- like the highly popular CIA World Factbook -- they can help to inform and enrich policy research and public discourse. So the Commission's recommendation to Congress seems well-founded.

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A newly updated US Army glossary of military terminology defines open source intelligence as "Relevant information derived from the systematic collection, processing, and analysis of publicly available information in response to known or anticipated intelligence requirements." See Field Manual (FM) 1-02.1, Operational Terms, November 21, 2019:

AI AND NATIONAL SECURITY, AND MORE FROM CRS

The 2019 defense authorization act directed the Secretary of Defense to produce a definition of artificial intelligence (AI) by August 13, 2019 to help guide law and policy. But that was not done.

Therefore "no official U.S. government definition of AI yet exists," the Congressional Research Service observed in a newly updated report on the subject.

But plenty of other unofficial and sometimes inconsistent definitions do exist. And in any case, CRS noted, "AI research is underway in the fields of intelligence collection and analysis, logistics, cyber operations, information operations, command and control, and in a variety of semiautonomous and autonomous vehicles. Already, AI has been incorporated into military operations in Iraq and Syria."

"The Central Intelligence Agency alone has around 140 projects in development that leverage AI in some capacity to accomplish tasks such as image recognition and predictive analytics."

CRS surveys the field in Artificial Intelligence and National Security, updated November 21, 2019:

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The 2018 financial audit of the Department of Defense, which was the first such audit ever, cost a stunning $413 million to perform. Its findings were assessed by CRS in another new report. See Department of Defense First Agency-wide Financial Audit (FY2018): Background and Issues for Congress, November 27, 2019:

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The Arctic region is increasingly important as a focus of security, environmental and economic concern. So it is counterintuitive -- and likely counterproductive -- that the position of U.S. Special Representative for the Arctic has been left vacant since January 2017. In practice it has been effectively eliminated by the Trump Administration. See Changes in the Arctic: Background and Issues for Congress, updated November 27, 2019:

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Other noteworthy new and updated CRS reports include the following (which are also available through the CRS public website at crsreports.congress.gov).

Resolutions to Censure the President: Procedure and History, updated November 20, 2019:

Immigration: Recent Apprehension Trends at the U.S. Southwest Border, November 19, 2019:

Air Force B-21 Raider Long Range Strike Bomber, updated November 13, 2019:

Precision-Guided Munitions: Background and Issues for Congress, November 6, 2019:

Space Weather: An Overview of Policy and Select U.S. Government Roles and Responsibilities, November 20, 2019:

Intelligence Community Spending: Trends and Issues, updated November 6, 2019:

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

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