A recent National Research Council report [Science and Security in a Post 9/11 World, National Academies Press, 2007] recognizes that the 9/11 attacks provoked counter-productive security measures that stifle access to fruitful scientific research....
Science Progress: The National Research Council is concerned that the federal government has categorized too many scientific research results after 9/11 as “sensitive but unclassified.” Can you explain what this term means and why this is a problem?
Bruce Schneier: It’s kind of a weasel term in the U.S. government and military....“Sensitive but unclassified” is a halfway house between public information and classified information. It’s not really a secret, but someone somewhere doesn’t want someone else to know, so it becomes a gray area. The rules are a lot sloppier, there’s a lot more leeway, and more and more–not only in science, but everywhere–information that used to be given to the public as a matter of course becomes “sensitive but unclassified.” It could be phone directories; it could be hours of operation for buildings; it could be locations of polling places. And a lot of scientific data, information, and knowledge --stuff that is used by the scientific community, used by businesses, used by everybody-- gets stuck in this halfway house between secret and open. It’s a form of secrecy, and it’s a form of stifling information sharing. And where it affects scientists is that science thrives on information sharing. Science works because one person’s research becomes another person’s footnotes....
SP: The NRC is now recommending the full implementation of NSDD-189, Ronald Reagan’s 1985 order to keep unclassified research results open and available to the maximum possible extent. Do you have any concerns about referring, in the world of post 9/11 policymaking, to Cold War-era policies?
Schneier: Well, the devil is in the details. That is a good document if it really does say that we should make research open and available. I don’t care when it was written....
SP: You have argued before that the value of secrecy should be judged on a case-by-case basis. However, the federal government also needs broad principles and guidelines for regulating scientific publishing. What can the government do?
Schneier: The first principle is that openness should be assumed, and that we should strive for openness wherever possible....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
