US spy agency¹s patents under security scrutiny
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8223
* 17:45 27 October 2005
The hyper-secretive US National Security Agency the government¹s
eavesdropping arm - appears to be having its patent applications
increasingly blocked by the Pentagon. And the grounds for this are for
reasons of national security, reveals information obtained under a freedom
of information request.
Most Western governments can prevent the granting (and therefore publishing)
of patents on inventions deemed to contain sensitive information of use to
an enemy or terrorists. They do so by issuing a secrecy order barring
publication and even discussion of certain inventions.
Experts at the US Patent and Trademark Office perform an initial security
screening of all patent applications and then army, air force and navy staff
at the Pentagon¹s Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) makes
the final decision on what is classified and what is not.
Now figures obtained from the USPTO under a freedom of information request
by the Federation of American Scientists show that the NSA had nine of its
patent applications blocked in the financial year to March 2005 against five
in 2004, and none in each of the three years up to 2003.
Keeping secrets
This creeping secrecy is all the more surprising because as the US
government's eavesdropping and code-breaking arm - which is thought to
harness some of the world¹s most powerful supercomputers to decode
intercepted communications - the NSA will have detailed knowledge of what
should be kept secret and what should not. So it is unlikely to file patents
that give away secrets.
Bruce Schneier, a cryptographer and computer security expert with
Counterpane Internet Security in California, finds the development
³fascinating².
³It's surprising that the Pentagon is becoming more secretive than the NSA.
While I am generally in favour of openness in all branches of government,
the NSA has had decades of experience with secrecy at the highest levels,²
Schneier told New Scientist. ³The fact that the Pentagon is classifying
things that the NSA believes should be public is an indication of how much
secrecy has crept into government over the past few years.²
However, at another level, the Pentagon appears to be relaxing slightly: it
seems to be loosening its post 9/11 grip on the ideas of private inventors,
with the number having patents barred on the grounds of national security
halving in the last year.
In the financial year to 2004, DTSA imposed 61 secrecy orders on private
inventors, a number that had been climbing inexorably since 9/11. But up to
the end of financial 2005, only 32 inventors had ³secrecy orders² imposed on
their inventions.
Overall, the figures obtained by the FAS reveal 106 new secrecy orders were
imposed on US inventions to March 2005, while 76 others were rescinded. So
there are now 4915 secrecy orders in effect - some of which have been in
effect since the 1930s.
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