In an interview with the Associated Press, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency warned that under certain circumstances the government might seek to restrict the dissemination of commercial satellite imagery. See “Curbs on satellite photos may be needed” by Katherine Shrader, Associated Press, May 8.

A 2005 satellite image shows what appear to be launchers for the Shaheen 2 medium-range ballistic missile at Pakistan’s National Defense Complex near Islamabad. The image is analyzed by Hans Kristensen on the FAS Strategic Security Blog.

A new publication from the Joint Chiefs of Staff presents military doctrine on joint interdiction operations (pdf).

“Interdiction operations are actions to divert, disrupt, delay, or destroy an enemy’s surface capabilities before they can be used effectively against friendly forces, or to otherwise achieve objectives.”

“In support of law enforcement, interdiction includes activities conducted to divert, disrupt, delay, intercept, board, detain, or destroy, as appropriate, vessels, vehicles, aircraft, people and cargo. Interdiction also can be used to prevent an enemy from achieving a variety of objectives affecting the US populace, economy, or national interests.”

See “Joint Interdiction,” Joint Publication 3-03, 3 May 2007.

Some recently updated reports from the Congressional Research Service now available on the Federation of American Scientists web site include the following (all pdf).

“Stem Cell Research: Federal Research Funding and Oversight,” updated April 18, 2007.

“Israeli-Arab Negotiations: Background, Conflicts, and U.S. Policy,” updated April 10, 2007.

“Nuclear Weapons: Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty,” updated April 4, 2007.

“U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces: Background, Developments, and Issues,” updated April 3, 2007.

U.S. Army intelligence has published a new field manual (pdf) on how to structure an opposing force (OPFOR) for U.S. military training purposes.

“As a training tool, the OPFOR must be a challenging, uncooperative sparring partner capable of stressing any or all warfighting functions and mission-essential tasks of the U.S. force,” the manual states. See “Opposing Force Organization Guide,” FM 7-100.4, May 2007.

“Put Steven Aftergood in the Brig” is the eye-catching title of what is actually a rather sympathetic blog entry from Commentary Magazine’s Gabriel Schoenfeld on the recent dust-up between the Army and the Federation of American Scientists over our practice of publishing certain Army documents.

Army Threatens Critic Over Blog Policy was Justin Rood’s take at ABC News’ The Blotter.

A U.S. Army official told the Federation of American Scientists that Army documents on the FAS web site had been published by FAS “illegally” and must be removed.

“There are only 5 Official Army Publications Sites,” wrote Cheryl Clark of the U.S. Army Publications Directorate in a May 4 email message. “You are not one of them.”

“You can link to our publications, but you cannot host them,” she wrote.

Furthermore, she indicated, a recent Army Regulation on “Operations Security” (first published by Wired News and mirrored on the FAS site) was “not intended for Public release.”

“Please remove this publication immediately or further action will be taken,” Ms. Clark warned.

“I have considered your request that we remove Army publications from the Federation of American Scientists web site,” I responded today. “I have decided not to comply.”

By law the Army cannot copyright its publications, the response explained. Nor is FAS, a non-governmental organization, subject to internal Army regulations on information policy.

“Accordingly, our publications are not illegal nor in violation of any applicable regulation.”

To eliminate potential confusion, we added a disclaimer to our Army doctrine web page indicating that the FAS collection of Army records is not an official Army source, and directing readers to several such official sites.

The recent evolution of Army operations security (OPSEC) policy can be traced from the 1995 regulation (pdf) on the subject to the 2005 revision (pdf) to the latest iteration of April 2007 (pdf).

In response to reporting by Noah Shachtman of Wired News and the Danger Room blog, the Army issued a Fact Sheet (pdf) on May 2 asserting that Army OPSEC policy on military blogging was unchanged.

The U.S. Army issued an updated regulation (pdf) governing its conduct of intelligence activities, including domestic surveillance policy and practice. The new regulation makes several technical changes and rescinds the “For Official Use Only” status of the prior edition.

See “U.S. Army Intelligence Activities,” Army Regulation 381-10, May 3, 2007.

For comparison, the prior edition, dated 22 November 2005, may be found here (pdf).

Some noteworthy new (or newly updated) publications of the Congressional Research Service that have not otherwise been made available to the public online include the following (all pdf).

“FY2007 Supplemental Appropriations for Defense, Foreign Affairs, and Other Purposes,” updated May 2, 2007.

“Congressional Authority To Limit U.S. Military Operations in Iraq,” updated April 24, 2007.

“Presidential Signing Statements: Constitutional and Institutional Implications,” updated April 13, 2007.

“Clinical Trials Reporting and Publication,” updated April 27, 2007.

“Nuclear Warheads: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program and the Life Extension Program,” updated April 4, 2007.

Updated Below

Los Alamos National Laboratory will no longer permit historians and other researchers to have access to its archival records because Los Alamos National Security (LANS), the private contractor that now operates the Lab, says it has “no policy in place” that would allow such access.

“Policies that had previously applied to the University of California relating to the disclosure of information directly to you are no longer applicable,” wrote Judy Archuleta of the Los Alamos Information Practices Office to Alex Wellerstein, a graduate student at Harvard.

Mr. Wellerstein had sought copies of Lab records on the history of nuclear secrecy policy and he had been led to believe that access to such material would be granted, in accordance with past practice.

“Because LANS is a private company, the policies that applied [previously] are no longer in place,” she said.

“No policy is presently in place that authorizes the direct disclosure of the information you seek,” she wrote.

Instead, Mr. Wellerstein was told that he should pursue his research through the Freedom of Information Act.

“The FOIA process, however cumbersome, currently provides the only means of accessing our records,” wrote Roger A. Meade, the Los Alamos Archivist/Historian on April 17.

But FOIA requests are poorly suited to archival research since they can easily take years to process and must specify in advance the records that are sought.

In effect, when it comes to historical or other public research, the Los Alamos archives are closed for business.

It’s “terrible news” for scholars, said Hugh Gusterson, an anthropologist who has studied the culture of the nuclear weapons labs.

Update (5/24/07): See Los Alamos Says Lab Archives Now Available to Researchers.

A major new report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) describes government secrecy and public access policies in dozens of countries from Albania to Uzbekistan.

The report surveyed freedom of information (FOI) laws, national security classification policies, penalties for unauthorized disclosures of information, and provisions for protecting journalists’ sources.

There is good news and bad news, the report says.

“The FOI trend in the OSCE participating States is positive. Out of 56 OSCE participating States, 45 started their ‘Copernican revolution’ in favour of the public’s right to know, by adopting national laws on access to information.”

“Unfortunately, many countries retained the right to classify a too wide array of information as ‘state secrets’. In fact, the majority of the OSCE participating States have not yet adjusted their rules of classification to the FOI principles, that is, they disregard the primacy of the public’s right to know.”

The report offers some comparative analysis and proposes a series of “best practices” in promoting public access to government information.

“There should be sanctions for those who deliberately and improperly designate information as secret or maintain excessive secrecy,” the report advises.

See the summary report, entitled “Access to information by the media in the OSCE region: trends and recommendations,” Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 30 April 2007.

The underlying country reports (423 pages) are available here.

A Bush Administration plan to require a standardized identification system for federal employees poses “severe threats to the privacy rights of scientists and others,” employees at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) wrote to Congress last week (pdf).

In August 2004, President Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) 12, “Policy for a Common Identification Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors,” which was intended to enhance security by establishing a mandatory, verifiable, and standardized identification system for government personnel.

But the implementation of the Directive is doing more than that, the JPL scientists told Congress.

“We and our colleagues have found that this order, which is merely intended to establish a common standard of identification for access to federal facilities, is being used to gather extensive personal information about employees, including fingerprints, racial, ethnic, financial and medical information.”

“Rigorous proof [of identification] does not require intrusion into the personal lives of federal employees,” they wrote on April 26.

Aside from civil liberties concerns, they added, the collection of personal data under HSPD-12 has “a very negative impact on our ability to recruit the very best scientific and engineering talent to address our nation’s complex technical needs.”

“In the face of such intrusions talented researchers are inclined to take positions elsewhere, where the employers have a modicum of respect for the Constitution.”

The four JPL scientists addressed their request for relief to Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers (R-Mich.) since “the four of us, like the two of you, hold doctorates in the physical sciences.”

When the government asserts the state secrets privilege in the course of litigation, the judiciary must independently evaluate the purported secret that is at issue and should not simply defer to the executive branch, several public interest groups argued in an amicus curiae brief (pdf) this week.

The brief, to which the FAS Project on Government Secrecy signed on, was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in a state secrets case involving alleged domestic intelligence surveillance (Hepting v. USA, and related cases).

“The government’s extreme reading of the [state secrets] privilege would thwart government accountability, denying a forum for legitimate claims of government wrongdoing and undermining independent judicial review of executive action,” the brief stated.