The Foreign Service Journal, January-February 2014

18 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL SPEAKING OUT Protecting the Realm: The Past Must Be Prologue BY T I MOTHY LAWSON R ecent events, from the convic- tion of Bradley Manning for his role inWikiLeaks, credible allegations that the U.S. has been spying on top European lead- ers, and Edward Snowden’s revelations regarding the National Security Agency’s PRISMprogram, to the high-level focus on cybersecurity at last summer’s U.S.-China summit, all call tomind a series of similar uncertainties America faced nearly 240 years ago. As was true back in 1775, when Benja- min Franklin led a fledgling Committee of Secret Correspondence, today’s Foreign Service still requires secrecy to function effectively. Transparency is important, but the key to protecting U.S. national interests is information security. Secretary of State John Kerry has rightly acknowledged that while U.S. intelligence efforts have preventedmany calamities, in some cases those information-gath- ering efforts have reached too far. As our national leadership tackles this important issue, those of us in the Foreign Service are, as always, bound by our own institutional responsibility to protect national security information. While the Bureau of Information Resource Management’s Communica- tions Security and Information Assurance Timothy Lawson, a retired Senior Foreign Service officer, served in Amman, Moscow (twice), Beirut, Beijing, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Islamabad, Seoul and Washington between 1981 and 2007. Before joining the Foreign Service, he served in the Navy and was employed by the Army and Air Force supporting communications, intelligence and electronic warfare operations. Lawson now resides in Thailand, where he continues to follow U.S. national security issues. programs are security mainstays, today’s challenges are increasingly complex. For all the undisputed benefits new technol- ogy brings, real vulnerabilities remain. These weaknesses jeopardize our foreign policy, development initiatives, consular services and social media outreach, dam- aging U.S. strategic interests. They can also endanger lives. From Security to Efficiency to Peril Thirty years later, I still recall reporting for duty at my second post, Moscow, as a junior FS-8 Support Communications Officer in 1983. The first thing I gazed upon after entering the secure, highly restricted area of the Communications Programs Unit was a row of eight five-drawer Mosler safes, each with its own three-way combi- nation lock that rigorously testedmemori- zation skills. As at other posts behind the Iron Curtain, Moscow’s CPU safeguarded the embassy’s crown jewels: classified files containing top-secret telegrams, special captionedmaterials, cryptographic materi- als, keys and ciphers. Centralized files were cumbersome, but provided a high level of information security. Notorious U.S. Navy spy JohnWalker, convicted in 1985 for passing more than a million secrets to the Soviets, was able to do incalculable damage to national security because the Navy’s communica- tions security systemused a single key to encrypt communications between hundreds of ships. Moreover, each Navy command and unit maintained individual files, making the potential for even further information loss substantial. In contrast, the State Department’s “point-to-point” encryption practice, which employed unique encryption links between each post andWashington, coupled with centralized filing systems like the one inMoscow, limited potential damage from a security compromise. Yes, information was tightly locked up and dif- ficult to access—but that was the tradeoff for virtual immunity to accidental loss or intentional release. As new technology evolutionmorphed, however, security soon took a back seat to speed and accessibility. Centralized files gave way to computers, floppy disks, databases and local area networks. The burden of traditional “communi- cations and records” was replaced with new productivity. But those advances altered our culture for handling classified information, once the bedrock of Foreign Service tradecraft. The convenience of new technology trumped imprinted classifica- tion stamps, security markings and sealed envelopes. Fast forward to today when information access has never been simpler. Given the priority assigned to information sharing since 9/11, and the spread of cellphones,