Controlling Scientific Information

Report Outline
Federal Restraints at Issue
Attempts to Strike a Balance
Special Focus

Federal Restraints at Issue

Keeping U.S. ‘High Tech’ from Russia

The U.S. government has become increasingly concerned that advanced technology being developed and used by Western countries is finding its way to the Soviet Union and especially Soviet weaponry. While there is evidence that this is, indeed, happening, the government's recenteffort to prevent it by controlling the international exchange of scientific information is causing alarm in science, academia and industry. It is also causing problems with America's allies, most notably over a Russian natural gas pipeline to Europe.

Government fears about technology transfer were made public in a 1976 report by the Department of Defense's Defense Science Board. The report, known as the Bucy Report, concluded that the United States was losing its technological and economic lead over its adversaries by giving them information crucial to the development of militarily critical technologies and recommended stricter controls on the flow of information out of the country.

Since then government agencies have claimed authority under existing controls to prevent publication of certain kinds of research and technical data, to bar foreign scholars from university research projects and symposia, and to impose secrecy on inventions related to making and breaking codes. These and similar actions raise complicated questions with far-reaching implications about who should control information in the interests of national security, what should be controlled, and to what extent.