PETER SWIRE THE DECLINING HALF- LIFE OF SECRETS And the Future of Signals and Intelligence JULY 2015 About the Author About New America Peter Swire is currently the Huang Professor of Law New America is committed to renewing American and Ethics in the Scheller College of Business at politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age. the Georgia Institute of Technology. He also serves We generate big ideas, bridge the gap between as a Senior Counsel to the law firm of Alston & Bird, technology and policy, and curate broad public LLP. Swire has been a leading privacy and Internet conversation. We combine the best of a policy scholar since the rise of the Internet in the 1990s. research institute, technology laboratory, public In 2013, Peter served as one of the five members forum, media platform, and a venture capital fund of President Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence for ideas. We are a distinctive community of thinkers, and Communications Technology. He was also the writers, researchers, technologists, and community Special Assistant to the President for Economic activists who believe deeply in the possibility of Policy from 2009 to 2010. Previously, under President American renewal. Clinton, Swire was the Chief Counselor for Privacy in the Office of Management and Budget. He has Find out more at newamerica.org/our-story. lectured extensively on privacy and security issues and is the author of six books, numerous scholarly papers, and op-eds in various national news outlets. About the Cybersecurity Initiative Swire graduated from Princeton University and earned a J.D. from Yale Law School where he was an The Internet has connected us. Yet the policies and editor of the Yale Law Journal. debates that surround the security of our networks are too often disconnected, disjointed, and stuck Acknowledgements in an unsuccessful status quo. This is what New America’s Cybersecurity Initiative is designed to Many thanks to Ross Anderson, Ashkan Soltani address. Working across our International Security and Lee Tien for assistance with this draft, and to Program and the Open Technology Institute, we the fellow members and staff of the President’s believe that it takes a wider network to face the Review Group on Intelligence and Communication multitude of diverse security issues. We engage Technology, where many of these ideas were across organizations, issue areas, professional developed. This paper represents the author’s views, fields, and business sectors. And through events, and not the views of other members of the Review writing and research, our aim is to help improve Group. cybersecurity in ways that work—for the countries, for companies and for individuals. Find out more at newamerica.org/cybersecurity- initiative. Contents Introduction 2 The Declining Half-Life of Secrets 3 The Continuing Effects of Moore’s Law Reduce Secrecy 4 The Sociological Challenge to NSA Secrecy 5 The Changing Sources and Methods for Signals Intelligence 6 The Front-Page Test 8 Conclusion 9 Notes 11 INTRODUCTION Executive Summary information technology, including the continuing effects of Moore’s Law, the sociology of the The nature of secrets is changing. Secrets that would information technology community, and changed once have survived the 25 or 50 year test of time are sources and methods for signals intelligence. This more and more prone to leaks. The declining half- article is about those risks of discovery and how the life of secrets has implications for the intelligence intelligence community must respond. community and other secretive agencies, as they must now wrestle with new challenges posed by My views on this subject were formed during my the transformative power of information technology experience as one of five members of President innovation as well as the changing methods and Obama’s Review Group on Intelligence and targets of intelligence collection. Communications Technology in 2013. There is a crucial difference between learning about a wiretap The Changing Nature Of Secrets on the German Chancellor from three decades ago and learning that a wiretap has targeted the Current The nature of secrets is changing. The “half-life German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, while she is still of secrets” is declining sharply for many signals in office and able to object effectively. In government intelligence and other intelligence activities as circles, this alertness to negative consequences secrets that may have been kept successfully for 25 is sometimes called “the front-page test,” which years or more are exposed well before.1 describes how our actions will look if they appear on the front page of the newspaper. The front-page For evidence, one need look no further than the test becomes far more important to decision makers 2015 breach at the Office of Personnel Management when secrets become known sooner. Even if the (OPM), of personnel records for 22 million U.S. secret operation is initially successful, the expected government employees and family members. For costs of disclosure become higher as the average spy agencies, theft of the security clearance records time to disclosure decreases. is uniquely painful—whoever gains access to the breached files will have an unparalleled ability to The greater relevance of the front-page test has profile individuals in the intelligence community direct and important implications for governance and subject them to identity theft. of secret intelligence operations. For good security reasons, intelligence agencies have historically OPM is just one instance in a long string of high- been insular, relying on heavily vetted employees, profile breaches, where hackers gain access to with proven loyalty and discretion, and working in personal information, trade secrets, or classified Secure Classified Facilities surrounded by physical government material. The focus of the discussion and electronic barriers. This insularity, however, here, though, is on complementary trends in makes it harder for intelligence agencies to predict 2 CYBERSECURITY INITIATIVE how diverse outside actors will view revelation series of measures, consistent with the Review of a secret program. As this article contends, Group’s recommendations, in that direction.2 the declining half-life of secrets is an important These changes, however, were difficult to accept factual reason to bring greater transparency and within the intelligence community; understanding more perspectives into the governance of sensitive the declining half-life of secrets will help the signals intelligence activities. As of June 2015, community better assess what is possible and the Obama administration had already taken a optimal for the less-secret future. THE DECLINING HALF-LIFE OF SECRETS The term “half-life” in physics indicates the time documents stay classified for 50 years or longer. needed for a quantity to fall to half of its value as These time frames are significant, showing a basic compared to its initial quantity. The term is most mind set of keeping secrets for a time measured in notably used for radioactive decay of atoms—how decades. long it takes for half of the plutonium atoms, for instance, to decay into different elements or isotopes. For those trying to keep a secret, a For those trying to keep a leak is analogous to radioactive decay—there is a potentially toxic effect when the secret leaves its secret, a leak is analogous to previous location. radioactive decay—there is a For our purposes, an important feature of the term potentially toxic effect when “half-life” is that it the release is (at least largely) the secret leaves its previous random. No one can predict in advance precisely which atom will decay, but the statistical average is location. nonetheless quite meaningful. Similarly for secrets, there may be no good way to estimate which secrets will get leaked at what time. An average leak within Nonetheless, three factors drive the decline in the a few months, however, is more radioactive for the half-life of secrets: the continuing effects of Moore’s secret-holding agency than an average leak that Law—or the idea that computing power doubles takes much longer. every two years, the sociology of information technologists, and the different sources and During the Cold War, the United States developed methods for signals intelligence today compared the basic classification system that exists today. with the Cold War. This article asks the reader to Under Executive Order 13526, an executive agency contemplate the implications if important secrets must declassify its documents after 25 years often get revealed in months or a few years. unless an exception applies, with stricter rules if CYBERSECURITY INITIATIVE THE CONTINUING EFFECTS OF MOORE’S LAW REDUCE SECRECY The continuing improvement in computing is innumerable files can be posted to the Web without familiar to us all, but its implications for secrecy are the assistance of the mainstream media. Reporters less well understood. One implication is for the size who received files from Snowden have, in some of leaks. When Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon instances, decided not to print material due to Papers in 1971, the magnitude seemed enormous, concerns about harm to national security. But the over 7,000 pages in 47 printed volumes. Snowden, ability of the government to rely on gatekeepers, to by contrast, took between 50,000 and 200,000 prevent publication, has declined sharply. documents, according to former NSA Director Keith Alexander.3 Today a 64 gigabyte thumb drive costs Other well-known trends of modern computing less than $30, and holds over 4 million pages of put secrets at further risk. The Internet of Things is text.4 One full thumb drive is a gusher, not a leak. based on a pervasive network of sensors. Big Data That is why one government expert quipped to the refers to the analytic ability to find patterns where Review Group that “my goal is to have leaks get out none could previously be seen.