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Oft-mentioned in the lore of U.S. intelligence is the quip of former Secretary of War and State, Henry Stimson, who offered the belief, “Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail,” as explanation for closing the State Department’s code-breaking cryptanalytic office, the Black Chamber, in 1929. Dismissed as error by the Chamber’s director, Herbert Yardley, as a naïve mistake, intercepting, decrypting, and capturing information remains a fundamental component of the intelligence enterprise. Nearly a century after the closing of Yardley’s office, much has changed in communications technology, but the idea that mass connectivity through cyberspace to enormous repositories of information somehow changes the larger political and ethical issues surrounding intelligence collection is a red herring. Nation-states can, and will continue to, collect information regarding strategic dispositions and intentions in their quest for security. As Microsoft’s trustworthy computing chief Scott Charney argues, “It is important to recognize that military espionage has been occurring from time immemorial, and that some victims of military espionage may be engaged in such espionage activities themselves.”
Decades of technological advancement notwithstanding, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is wise to embrace this reality, continue to develop the enhanced operating picture produced by Information Technology (IT), and construct pragmatic, interdisciplinary mechanisms and practices designed to protect information resources and at the same time maintain the capacity to purloin foreign-held information of benefit to national security. What this does not mean is that there shall be no rules in cyberspace for government or the IC. On the contrary, cybercrime and malicious acts designed to subvert critical systems should be thwarted at every possible opportunity. In addition, the IC should respect intellectual property protected by copyright, patent, and trade secret. Maintaining these positions while accepting the realities of contemporary global interactions—a post-Cold War, post-9/11, postInternet world—will not be easy, but it should be accepted that doctrine regarding the cyber domain of intelligence is not written on a blank slate. In cyber intelligence, the sources and methods are markedly changed, but that does not mean that the macro issues regarding intelligence collected by the cyber channel cannot be liberally borrowed from other domains.
Published in American Intelligence Journal.
