piner@pur-phy.UUCP (11/22/86)
Posted: Fri Nov 21, 1986 3:03 PM EST Msg: LGIG-2422-8441 From: RPARK To: WHATSNEW WHAT'S NEW, Friday, 21 November 1986 Washington, DC 1. SCIENCE AND SECURITY: THE FUTURE OF ARMS CONTROL will be discussed 4-5 Dec 86 at a colloquium in Washington. As the first major public review of the technological considerations of arms control since Reykjavik, the AAAS-sponsored conference has taken on added significance. Regardless of what was or was not accomplished at Reykjavik, the debate over arms control will never be the same again. Among the featured speakers are Gen. Abrahamson, director of SDIO, Nicolaas Bloembergen of Harvard, co-chairman of the APS study on directed energy weapons (WN 26 Sep 86), William Graham, the President's Science Advisor, and APS President Sidney Drell. Information on the conference can be obtained by calling (202) 326-6494. 2. THE DEFICIT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE THE 100TH CONGRESS will face, in the opinion of three-fourths of the congressional staffers responding to a survey by a Washington public relations firm. About half of all aides feel that Congress will have to raise taxes or create new taxes to meet the Gramm-Rudman mandate (WN 7 Nov 86). Foreign policy hardly registered on their scale of concerns, but the survey was taken before the debacle over arms deals with Iran. 3. NATIONAL POLICY ON PROTECTION OF SENSITIVE BUT UNCLASSIFIED INFORMATION IN FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND AUTOMATED INFORMATION SYSTEMS, issued last week by John Poindexter as National Telecommunications and Information System Security Policy No. 2 (WN 14 Nov 86), is still not available from the White House, but as usual copies are spewing out of Xerox machines all over Washington. The policy directs agency heads to determine what information is sensitive and to implement electronic security measures to protect it. "Sensitive" is defined as "information the disclosure, loss, misuse, alteration, or destruction of which could adversely affect national security or other Federal Government interests." "Other Federal Government interests" is broad enough to cover any information worth keeping in the first place. Moreover, the directive specifically applies to government contractors that "electronically transfer, store, process, or communicate sensitive but unclassified information." In short, if your research is federally funded and you use a wordprocessor, NTISSP 2 may apply to you. This new directive appears to run counter to the National Policy on the Transfer of Scientific, Technical and Engineering Information, issued last year as NSDD 189 (WN 4 Oct 86), which stated that "no restrictions may be placed upon the conduct or reporting of federally funded fundamental research that has not received national security classification, except as provided in applicable U.S. statutes." The gray area is back. Robert L. Park (202) 232-0189 The American Physical Society