CLPO discusses how to balance national security, privacy in an increasingly transparent world
At a recent presentation to University of Texas students and faculty, the Civil Liberties Protection Officer for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Alexander Joel, discussed the intelligence community’s efforts to balance the protection of national security with the protection of privacy and civil liberties in an open and transparent democracy. The speaking event was hosted by the Intelligence Studies Project, a two-year-old University of Texas project that aims to increase the study of the intelligence community’s vital role in safeguarding national security.
“One of the biggest challenges is that the intelligence community operates in secret,” Joel said at the Oct. 22 discussion. The very existence of the intelligence community (IC) necessitates that a large portion of the work be done without the general public knowing the details, he said. “A fully transparent intelligence service is a fully ineffective one,” he said.
At the same time, the need has never been more apparent for enhanced transparency for public trust and accountability, he said. Citing common phrases such as “trust but verify” and “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Joel acknowledged the importance of providing the public with more information about the IC. He discussed the challenges of doing so in the context of protecting sensitive national security secrets. It is sometimes necessary to draw a “broad circle” around a secret to reduce the risk that adversaries will infer the nature of the secret, Joel said.
To meet the growing demand for transparency, the ODNI is taking steps in several areas to increase its interaction with the public and make more documentation publicly available, Joel said. One of those efforts includes the Tumblr site IC on the Record, which has released more than 5,000 pages of documentation.
A larger, more encompassing effort is embodied in the Principles of Intelligence Transparency, published last February.
Joel explained that the document provides general guidance on what the IC is going to be transparent about, how to provide that transparency while still protecting national security secrets, and aligning resources and processes to make transparency a sustainable part of the IC. Joel acknowledged that significant challenges exist, including resistance to cultural change and risks that need to be mitigated.
Joel said that the IC has completed work on a plan implementing the Principles of Intelligence Transparency, and that the ODNI will also continue releasing documents on the IC on the Record Tumblr site as they are available.
Note: The Implementation Plan has been released and is available here.