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TECHNICAL
EYE
Indeed, the state of America’s electronic surveillance technology and other aspects of the national security system are the focus of current controversy. There is concern that America is lagging behind the Soviet Union in electronic surveillance technology, with one expert describing U.S. equipment as being of World War II vintage.
Note Two: “A House of Cards”
In another twist to the national security debate, a law professor at George Washington University claims that the government’s security clearance methods for preventing leaks of state secrets simply don’t work.
The structure that has been built up "so lovingly and laboriously over the past four decades” to protect classified information is “a house of cards on shifting sands,” Harold P. Green said in a paper that was presented weeks before the "sex for secrets” scandal was uncovered at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. - Mr. Green said the security ^clearance process "qqtually lets in more people who are potential security risks than it keeps out.” The clearance process tries to predict an individual’s future trustworthiness on the basis of a personal history statement and the background investigation, the most important part of the process. But it is doubtful that adequate information can be obtained from the investigation that would allow potential security risks to be identified, he claimed.
There is no assurance, Mr. Green said, that even someone who has lived “a life of total purity and probity” before being cleared will not become untrustworthy as a result of pressures or blandishments in the future.
The other major deficiency in the security systems is in the implementation of supposedly strict "need-toknow” procedures. These allow employees with appropriate security clearance access to specific items of classified information only if they have “an official need to know or see the information.”
But the “need-to-know” principle is more myth than reality, Mr. Green said, "and in any event is honored more in the breach than in observance.”
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