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Government Policy Hindering Science, Advisers Say
The Bush administration's policy on public access to scientific information threatens the progress of research, according to the presidents of the National Academies of Science, the bodies created by the federal government to advise it on scientific and technical matters. The presidents, in a statement released on October 18, acknowledged the responsibility of the scientific community to safeguard data potentially useful to terrorists in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Still, the presidents argued, the government has yet to achieve an appropriate balance between the need for scientific openness and the need to protect national security.
In early 2002 the government began withdrawing from public access documents on federal-agency Web sites because of their potential interest to terrorists. Later, in March 2002, Andrew Card, the president's chief of staff, issued a memorandum to the heads of government agencies advising them not to disseminate unclassified but "sensitive" data. The guidelines accompanying the memo noted that "departments and agencies maintain and control sensitive information related to America's homeland security that might not meet one or more of the standards for classification. . . . The need to protect such sensitive information from inappropriate disclosure should be carefully considered, on a case-by-case basis, together with the benefits that result from the open and efficient exchange of scientific, technical, and like information."
The National Academies presidents objected to what they call "poorly defined categories of 'sensitive but unclassified' information that does not provide precise guidance on what information should be restricted from public access." The inevitable result of such vague criteria, they wrote, is the stifling of scientific creativity, which in the past has helped to counter terrorism and other national security threats.
To achieve greater clarity in the criteria for holding back data, the scientific and health research community should work with the federal government to determine what research may be related to possible new security threats, the presidents stated. After developing principles for making such determinations for each field, researchers and federal agencies should build "high fences around narrow areas" to protect critical and well-defined information and yet permit the essential flow of scientific and technical knowledge.
The presidents advised the scientific community to monitor the need for research security as science progresses and potential threats change over time. In turn, they called on the government to respect a national security directive issued in 1985, which determined that "no restrictions may be placed upon the conduct or reporting of federally funded fundamental research that has not received national security classification, except as provided in applicable U.S. statutes."
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