IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Winter 2013 - 58
w
e explore in
this article some
of the emerging
opportunities, and
associated
challenges, that the digital age offers
for public-domain verification of
compliance with international treaties. The increase in data volume,
in ever-improving connectivity,
and the relentless evolution towards
ubiquitous sensors all provide a
rapidly changing landscape for
technical compliance verification
of international treaties. From satellites to cell phones, advances in
technology afford new opportunities for verifying compliance with
international agreements, on topics
ranging from arms control to environmental and public health issues.
we will identify some of the engineering challenges that must be
overcome in order to realize these
new verification opportunities.
It is helpful to distinguish
between three different approaches
to treaty verification:
1) National Technical Means
(NTM) - using spy satellites
and various elements of information collection carried out
by nation states for verifying
compliance with formal treaty
agreements. This includes
both overt and covert methods. The resulting data are
typically held as classified
information, and are made
available only to professional
intelligence analysts in the
respective nations and (sometimes) selected allies.
2) Shared Technical Means
(STM) - by which we mean
instruments and their associated data sets that are shared
among participating nation
states and with international
compliance
organizations
such as the International
Atomic
Energy
Agency
(IAEA). Examples include
the International Monitoring
System (IMS) being implemented for the verification of
58
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the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty, and the Open Skies
Treaty. Data from these systems are shared among participating nations but access is
typically controlled by governments and restricted to intelligence professionals, even if
the information is unclassified.
3) Public Technical Means
(PTM) - defined as methods
that involve data, interactions,
and analysis in the public
domain. This includes information that is either generated
by or is made openly accessible to the general public,
the scientific community, the
private sector, and NGOs.
Examples include a) images
that are produced by commercial or scientific (as opposed
to NTM) satellites and made
available to the public for
analysis, b) exploiting sensors that are attached to the
global digital communication
network, be it through mobile
devices such as a smartphone
or laptop, or through a desktop computer, or as a standalone sensor with a separate
special-purpose satellite or
network connection, and c)
using scientific systems such
as seismic networks and
remote sensing satellites.
with the rapid growth of
social media, we take an expansive definition of PTM to include
"societal verification," which is
evolving from its initial definition
of individuals taking responsibility to report treaty violations to
include aggregate activities across
social networks, and the resulting
"crowd-sourced" interactions. The
political upheavals in North Africa
and the Middle East during the past
few years should dispel any doubt
about the power of social media
and modern connectivity in the
political arena.
These different treaty verification modes are of course interrelated, and interact with each other.
The joint knowledge obtained from
all of them, taken together, is what
we can and should exploit to assess
treaty compliance and adherence.
This is true of nuclear arms control as well as other international
agreements, which may at some
stage include international carbon
emission limits and other environmental accords.
The notion of a public role in
the verification process has a long
heritage.1 The principle that individuals bear a moral responsibility
to speak out if they become aware
of a treaty violation has been extensively discussed previously [4], and
labeled as "societal verification."
The focus of this article, however,
is on the data collection and analysis aspects of PTM, and not on
social networking. The prospect of
a technologically empowered public participating in future verification activities has been highlighted
in recent presentations [5] by highranking U.S. State Department
officials.
PTM Concept
The distinguishing feature of Public Technical Means is the generation and analysis of open-access
data, by the public, for treaty verification. The goal is not to replace
NTM or STM verification efforts,
but rather to actively engage a selfselected sector of the public in verification. Our definition of PTM
does not include "open source"
analysis by government intelligence professionals. That process
may ingest public domain information, but the output and analysis
products are not typically shared
openly.
1
For a nice historical overview see [1].
Mitchell's paper "Identifying undeclared nuclear sites: contributions from nontraditional
sources" [2] also discusses laying tripwires
through societal verification methods. Another
perspective is given in the chapter "The role of
non-governmental organizations in the monitoring and verification of international arms control and disarmament agreements," by Crowley
and Persbo, in [3].
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
|
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