On Friday, Peter Swire released his new paper titled “The Declining Half-Life of Secrets.” In this paper, Swire examines the challenges faced by the national security and signals intelligence communities in maintaining secrets. Swire’s paper explains why intelligence operations will continue to face ‘leaks’ given the pervasiveness and power of modern computing and the internet, the libertarian ethos of many information technology workers, and the changing nature of signals intelligence work. Within this context, Swire recommends that policy should focus on the ‘when’ (and not the ‘if’) of leaks by suggesting how policy-makers should actively plan for sensitive intelligence disclosures.
The paper is available from the New America Foundation, where Peter Swire is a Fellow. Swire also authored a blog post previewing and discussing the new paper.
Peter Swire is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology Scheller College of Business and Senior Counsel in Alston & Bird’s Privacy & Data Security Group.