[ISN] Secrecy News -- 12/03/04

[InfoSec News]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2004 08:46:03 -0500
From: "Aftergood, Steven" <saftergood at fas.org>
To: secrecy_news at lists.fas.org
Subject: Secrecy News -- 12/03/04

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2004, Issue No. 107
December 3, 2004


**	HOMELAND SECRECY
**	FLYING BLIND: THE DECLINE OF SCIENCE POLICY ADVICE
**	WHITE HOUSE PANEL CRITICIZES CYBERSECURITY OVERCLASSIFICATION
**	SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE 108TH CONGRESS (CRS)
**	THE CLASSIFIED SILEX URANIUM ENRICHMENT PROJECT
**	CIA YIELDS TO SOUTH KOREA IN SPELLING DISPUTE

[...]

WHITE HOUSE PANEL CRITICIZES CYBERSECURITY OVERCLASSIFICATION

Sometimes the act of classifying scientific or technical information
can diminish national security instead of enhancing it.

Last month, a White House panel concluded that the growing
classification of government research on computer security is not
serving the nation well because it renders such research
inaccessible outside of narrow military and intelligence channels.

"Classified cybersecurity R&D is, of course, needed for numerous
purposes," observed F. Thomson Leighton, chair of the cybersecurity
subcommittee of the President's Information Technology Advisory
Committee.

"However, classified work tends not to benefit generic cybersecurity
products--which are used throughout society (including the military
and intelligence communities)," he said at a meeting last month.

In the future, he said, the government should "favor unclassified
basic research" in cybersecurity.

Leighton's speech was first reported in the newsletter Inside the
Pentagon on November 25.

See "White House Panel Blasts Pentagon's Cybersecurity R&D
Policies" by John T. Bennett, Inside the Pentagon, reposted with
permission and with a link to the underlying presentation here:

     http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2004/11/itp112504.html


[...]


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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
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