New DNI Directive on Technical Surveillance Countermeasures
Last month the Director of National Intelligence issued a new Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) on “Technical Surveillance Countermeasures” (pdf) (TSCM).
TSCM “represents the convergence of two distinct disciplines — counterintelligence and security countermeasures,” the directive explained. Its purpose is “to detect and nullify a wide variety of technologies used to gain unauthorized access to classified national security information, restricted data, or otherwise sensitive information.”
The directive was released (in a fuzzy, not very well scanned copy) by the ODNI Freedom of Information Act office.
See “Technical Surveillance Countermeasures,” ICD 702, February 18, 2008.
In a year when management issues like human capital, IT modernization, and improper payments have received greater attention from the public, examining this PMA tells us a lot about where the Administration’s policy is going to be focused through its last three years.
Congress must enact a Digital Public Infrastructure Act, a recognition that the government’s most fundamental responsibility in the digital era is to provide a solid, trustworthy foundation upon which people, businesses, and communities can build.
To increase the real and perceived benefit of research funding, funding agencies should develop challenge goals for their extramural research programs focused on the impact portion of their mission.
Without trusted mechanisms to ensure privacy while enabling secure data access, essential R&D stalls, educational innovation stalls, and U.S. global competitiveness suffers.