CISAC Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker and a delegation of American scientists traveled to Moscow last week to revitalize nuclear cooperation with Russia, despite diplomatic tensions between the United States and Russia over the crisis in Ukraine.

The delegation that traveled to Russia last week included former U.S. laboratory scientists Paul White, James Toevs, and K. David Nokes, as well as CISAC research assistants Peter Davis and Alla Kassianova and CISAC fellow Jason Reinhardt.

The team traveled to Russia to host a workshop and make the case that continued scientific cooperation in reducing nuclear risks – particularly to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism – should remain a top priority for both countries, even as U.S.-Russia relations continue to deteriorate.

The White House has implemented increasingly stricter sanctions against top Russian officials and has restricted official travel and scientific cooperation. Washington accuses Moscow of trying to destabilize the new government in Ukraine by backing pro-Russian separatists in the former Soviet state.

Hecker chaired a Track II workshop at the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute (MEPhI) on April 24 on “Cooperation on Countering Nuclear Terrorism and Nonproliferation.” Presenters from Russian institutes and U.S. laboratories included Reinhardt, a national security systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories who is pursuing a PhD at Stanford in Management Science & Engineering. He argued for expanded cooperation to counter nuclear terrorism and reduce the risk of global proliferation.

“It is paramount that American and Russian scientists continue to work together to deal with today’s nuclear risks despite the tension between our two nations,” says Hecker, a Stanford professor of management science and engineering. The former head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory made his first trip to the Russian nuclear complex in early 1992, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union to promote joint efforts to mitigate the threats posed by the huge Russian nuclear complex during a time of political and economic turmoil.

The threats have changed during the past 22 years, but have not gone away, Hecker says. Yet cooperation between Russian and American nuclear scientists has declined significantly during the past decade because Russia has recovered economically and has grown progressively more protective against external intervention. Now, the crisis in the Ukraine threatens to stop cooperation completely.

More than 200 students from MEPhI’s nuclear science and nonproliferation programs participated in the workshop, alongside prominent Russian scientists.

“The large audience indicates how seriously the nuclear specialists from both sides take the need to protect the world from the spread of nuclear weapons and materials to other states and non-state actors,” says Hecker, whose workshop grew from his Nuclear Risk Reduction Project (NRR), which is funded by the Carnegie Corporation and the MacArthur Foundation.

Hecker is also working with his former Russian counterparts at the Russian nuclear weapons laboratories on a book about the history of U.S.-Russia national laboratory cooperation, which is due out later this year. That book will tell the story of how the scientists worked together during difficult times to make the world a safer place.

Russian and American scientists discuss nuclear collaboration as students from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute look on. Photo Credit: Peter Davis

We asked Hecker to answer several questions related to his trip to Moscow.

Why did you still travel to Moscow given the recent events in Ukraine?

I had to discuss the book with my Russian collaborators in order to meet our fall deadline for publication. We also wanted to reinforce the belief of scientists on both sides that we must continue to cooperate even, or perhaps especially, when our governments are at odds. That is why we organized the educational conference on nuclear cooperation.

Did the U.S. government try to stop you?

Since I went as a Stanford University professor, I did not need official approval. Key individuals in the government knew that I was going and did not try to stop me. However, colleagues from the Department of Energy’s nuclear laboratories were prohibited from attending a related conference and Washington canceled several official bilateral meetings and visits.

Were the Russians allowed to meet with your delegation?

Yes, we met with the key individuals on the Russian side and MEPhI organized a great conference. We did have to switch the venue of one of our side meetings from one of the Russian nuclear weapons laboratories to neutral ground. I think the Russian government did not want these meetings to look official after the U.S. government has canceled most interactions for the foreseeable future.

How do your Russian collaborators view the recent events in Ukraine?

Without exception, they viewed it with alarm and laid the blame squarely on the “fascists” who took over Kiev’s government illegally. They could not understand how the Americans could support what they see as an illegitimate regime. We got quite a lesson on the intertwined history of Russia and the Ukraine. They believe the Americans simply don’t understand the deep relations and commitment all Russians have for Ukraine. When we tried to give a Western point of view, some Russian colleagues told us that we have been brainwashed by Washington and the media.

How does the downturn in relations affect your views on the need for cooperation?

Despite their views on Ukraine, our Russian colleagues all said we must continue to work the nuclear issues together. So while we couldn’t agree on Ukraine, we agreed for the need to keep up our work – which for me has now spanned 49 visits to Russia during the past 22 years. 

What role has CISAC’s collaboration with the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute (MEPhI) played in your work on nuclear cooperation?

MEPhI is a great counterpart for CISAC and a number of other American universities. It educates about one-third of the scientists and engineers that make up the Russian nuclear complex. It is with the next generation that we have the best chance of reducing the global nuclear risks that we face now and in the future.

CISAC fellow Rachel Gillum writes in this commentary that the NYPD's decision to disband its special Muslim surveillance unit may eventually aid in counterterrorism efforts as the Muslim community regains trust and works together with the police to identify possible threats.

Gillum, a doctoral candidate in political science at Stanford, is the principal investigator at the Muslim American National Opinion Survey, which aims to better understand the political attitudes and behaviors of the diverse community of Muslims living in the United States.

She writes: "While terrorism in the U.S. remains a serious threat, the measurable results of the NYPD spying program appear to be less than desirable. In addition to potentially suppressing voluntary assistance from the Muslim-American community, after years of collecting information, the NYPD acknowledged that the unit never generated a lead."

The National Security Agency's mass surveillance of telephone metadata could yield detailed information about the private lives of individuals far beyond what the federal government claims, according to new Stanford research.

Stanford computer science student and CISAC cybersecurity fellow Jonathan Mayer and a fellow CS student, Patrick Mutchler, were able to acquire detailed information about people's lives just from telephone metadata: the phone number of the caller and recipient, the particular serial number of the phones involved, the time and duration of calls and possibly the location of each person when the call occurred.

The researchers did not do any illegal snooping – they worked with the phone records of 546 volunteers, matching phone numbers against the public Yelp and Google Places directories to see who was being called.

From the phone numbers, it was possible to determine that 57 percent of the volunteers made at least one medical call. Forty percent made a call related to financial services.

The volunteers called 33,688 unique numbers; 6,107 of those numbers, or 18 percent, were isolated to a particular identity.

Privacy issues

The metadata issue has taken on urgency in the wake of last summer's revelations about surveillance of American citizens by the NSA. Privacy experts have questioned the federal government's assertions on the subject.

President Obama has said, "They are not looking at people's names, and they're not looking at content."

Jonathan Mayer talks to Hari Sreenivasan on PBS Newshour in this video: 

Computer scientists such as Mayer say metadata are extremely sensitive and revealing.

They contend their research shows that metadata from phone calls can yield a wealth of detail about family, political, professional, religious and sexual associations.

"It would be no technical challenge to scale these identifications to a larger population," said Mayer.

At the outset, Mayer said, they asked, "Is it easy to draw sensitive inferences from phone metadata? How often do people conduct sensitive matters by phone? We turned to our crowdsourced MetaPhone dataset for empirical answers."

They crowdsourced the data using an Android application and conducted an analysis of individual calls made by the volunteers to sensitive numbers, connecting the patterns of calls to emphasize the detail available in telephone metadata, Mayer said.

"A pattern of calls will, of course, reveal more than individual call records," he said. "In our analysis, we identified a number of patterns that were highly indicative of sensitive activities or traits."

For example, one participant called several local neurology groups, a specialty pharmacy, a rare-condition management service, and a pharmaceutical hotline used for multiple sclerosis.

Another contacted a home improvement store, locksmiths, a hydroponics dealer and a head shop.

'Unambiguously sensitive'

The researchers initially shared the same hypothesis as their computer science colleagues, Mayer said. They did not anticipate finding much evidence one way or the other.

"We were wrong. Phone metadata is unambiguously sensitive, even over a small sample and short time window. We were able to infer medical conditions, firearm ownership and more, using solely phone metadata," he said.

All three branches of the federal government are now considering curbs on access to telephone metadata, Mayer noted. Consumer privacy concerns are also salient as the Federal Communications Commission assesses telecom data sharing practices, he added.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein is alleging the CIA may have violated the U.S. Constitution by spying on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Feinstein, D-Calif., who chairs the committee and has been a longtime supporter of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, made a dramatic speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, accusing the CIA of possible criminal activity in its attempts to obstruct the committee’s investigation into the agency’s use of torture in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

CIA Director John Brennan has dismissed the charges as “beyond the scope of reason” and insists the CIA has broken no laws.

CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart, an intelligence expert, tells Politico: “This is the most serious feud since the Intelligence committees were established."

Zegart, a former National Security Council staffer, answers questions about the dispute: 

Brennan said Feinstein's accusations of the CIA possibly violating the U.S. Constitution are "beyond the scope of reason." What's going on between these two?

This is a longstanding and before-now private, bitter fight over how the Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating the CIA's past detention and interrogation programs. The current controversy is about whether congressional staff illegally acquired CIA documents during the course of their investigation and whether the CIA illegally spied on those congressional staffers.

But the deeper fight is really about how history will record and judge the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. It's a complex battle that is tinged with politics. The Senate investigation began years ago as a bipartisan effort to examine these policies and their efficacy. Eventually, though, Republican members of the committee felt they could no longer participate. So we're now in a bizarre world where Democratic senators on the Intelligence Committee are feuding with a Democratic administration about investigating controversial policies practices that occurred under a Republican predecessor.

Feinstein calls the crisis a defining moment for the agency. Is it?

This is an extraordinary moment for CIA-congressional relations and the worst feud since the Church Committee investigation of CIA abuses in the 1970s. Oversight is always a delicate dance between intelligence officials who believe strongly in the importance of secrecy for carrying out their mission and lawmakers who believe strongly in the value of transparency to maintain the public trust. Intelligence officials never freely volunteer details of their agencies' activities. It's Congress's job to probe, to ask tough questions and demand good answers. 

But this is different than the usual tension between intelligence overseers and agencies. Feinstein isn't accusing the CIA of stonewalling or not telling the full truth. She is accusing the agency of spying on and intimidating her staff. That's totally out of bounds. For Feinstein, this conflict is Constitutional – raising serious questions about separation of powers and Congress's ability to check the executive's most powerful agencies. It is institutional, calling into question the role of her committee in particular. And it is personal. She is claiming that her own staff has been referred to the Justice Department for possible criminal prosecution.

How serious is this for CIA Director Brennan, who vehemently denies the accusations and says no computers were hacked. 

The CIA is in big-time trouble. We may never know what actually happened in a basement room in Virginia where congressional staffers were reading millions of pages of CIA documents on computers. What matters more now is the political narrative. Ever since Edward Snowden – the former contractor for the National Security Agency – started releasing documents last June, the political narrative has been that U.S. intelligence agencies spy on and lie to just about everyone.

Much of this narrative is woefully distorted and just plain wrong. NSA is not out there listening to your calls with grandma. And there is still no evidence that NSA programs violated the law. But the narrative of distrust is powerful. Which is why Sen. Feinstein's charges against the CIA -- coming from one of the intelligence community's biggest defenders -- is so devastating.