Social Scientists Work Being Involuntarily Classified

[Abu Suleyman]

Recently I have run into a fear among social scientists that I think is a little paranoid and perhaps driven by ignorance, however, I may well be the ignorant one.

Several people I have talked to in the Academic community regarding working with the government have given as a reason for not doing so that they are afraid that the government will classify their work. I have heard that such things occuring in the physical sciences such as the young man who's PhD dissertation was on how to make a nuclear bomb. I also have heard that someone wrote a paper (possibly a dissertation) on the vulnerabilities of US civil projects to terrorist attacks.

However, I am talking to Social Scientists. My understanding is that unless they are using classified information to begin with (which they are not), the study should not be classified. Moreover, there should be no reason to classify that information. After all, most social science comes down to postulation, experimentation and theory, not exploitable hard fact. The fact that Dr. Foo of Bar University thinks that one thing is more likely than another is no more exploitable than the contrary argument that will doubtless arise in the journals.

I suppose what I am asking is: Does anyone out there know of a case where a Social Scientist has had their work involuntarily classified? If so, what was that person working on, and why was it classified? If not, is there anyone who has enough authority and breadth of knowledge that not having heard of such a thing is significant? (i.e. you have been in the business for X years and have never heard of such a thing)

[Tom Odom]

I suppose what I am asking is: Does anyone out there know of a case where a Social Scientist has had their work involuntarily classified? If so, what was that person working on, and why was it classified? If not, is there anyone who has enough authority and breadth of knowledge that not having heard of such a thing is significant? (i.e. you have been in the business for X years and have never heard of such a thing)

Anything regardless of original source material can be classified if its conclusions or analysis is deemed detrimental to national security. That is a very wide description.

My Leavenworth Paper was held up by a certain agency for nearly a year before an assistant secretary of defense got involved and it was released. We were talking about a history written 24 years after the fact.

best

Tom

[marct]

I know of several cases where this has happened, although it is usually the original reports rather than the final versions. If you want an example of some of the areas where it can happen quite easily, the most common ones I've seen are in analyses of target vulnerabilities and analyses of politically sensitive policy decisions. One of my students had a class paper classified .

[selil]

I have had some of my work "classified" but not in the normal sense. I don't know of any social scientists that have had that laid upon them. I would think that most of it would be the yapping of tiny dogs. If they have federal/state grants then they know there work can be restricted by a variety of means. They got paid to do it and the customer is not giving them a "gift" but an expectation of performance.


ETA: As a clarification, I am NOT a social scientist, I am a technologist the most disrespected breed of researcher in the academe. As such I don't care what you think I just read your email.

[John T. Fishel]

a political scientist, to be exact. I have worked at state universities (currently), private universities, DOD educational institutions (AWC/SSI, NDU, and CGSC), served on active duty and in the reserves. When I worked for the federal government (both as a soldier and as a civilian) I was subject to classification and clearance rules. If I was working with classified stuff, my stuff was classified derivatively. If I was not using classified materials my stuff was reviewed both to make sure nothing was classified and that policy was stated correctly. As an aside, it could not be legally censored for disagreeing with policy as long as the policy was stated correctly. (BTW I am not saying that improper censorship does not take place only that it is not lawful.) Technically, my research in those circumstances could have been classified (as Tom says) if it fell under the appropriate categories even if it was based on wholly unclassified material. That never happened to me.

As a faculty member at a university, unless I am working on a grant that requires a security review, my research is not subject to government review of any kind and I am free to publish it anywhere I can get it accepted. If, by some chance, I have illegally used classified material I would be subject to prosecution but that is very unlikely. The real bottom line for a civilian social scientist not working for the USG is that it would be practically impossible for the USG to classify his research before it was well esconsed in the public domain and available literature. This was true even before the internet and is even more true today.

Cheers

JohnT

[John T. Fishel]

I assume you are talking about students and faculty in Canada. The US does not have an Official Secrets Act that would permit the kind of censorship you are talking about. If you are, by chance, talking about US cases, I would be very interested in knowing how the USG got hold of non-government research before it was published (ie all over the internet) in time to shut it down.

Cheers

JohnT

[Schmedlap]

I'm not going to say the name of the publication, but I am aware of one that is classified as Top Secret, yet every single line of text has a (U) next to it. I was told that the collection of a bunch of unclassified material into something that gives us a competitive advantage over our adversaries is fair game to be classified. And that makes sense, to me.

[marct]

Hi John,

I assume you are talking about students and faculty in Canada. The US does not have an Official Secrets Act that would permit the kind of censorship you are talking about. If you are, by chance, talking about US cases, I would be very interested in knowing how the USG got hold of non-government research before it was published (ie all over the internet) in time to shut it down.

Yes, the instances I'm thinking of were in Canada. The case of the student paper was a real outlier as well - she worked in a classified area, but used unclassified material and basic theoretical works to develop models that were then classified (and I can't give any more details ).

In the vast, 99.99999% of cases, there is no classification even when policy critical material is published. I am also aware of a very few cases of" voluntary classification", for want of a better term, where a paper is submitted to an organization rather than for publication due to some security consideration - red team scenario planning in all the cases I'm aware of.

Marc