Obama Opens Secret Laboratories to Germany
By Christian Schwägerl
The
Americans have always kept their research into anti-terrorism
technologies top secret -- until now. A new treaty between Germany and
the US will give German scientists access to highly restricted
laboratories.
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It was a productive start to the week for US Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano
and German Research Minister Annette Schavan. The two women met at 7:15
a.m. on Monday for breakfast at a five-star hotel in Berlin to discuss
one of the most explosive issues in the era of international terrorism:
How can the population and infrastructure be protected against
catastrophic attacks without Western democracies being turned into
Orwellian regimes?
Getty Images
A microscopic view of anthrax bacteria: The US and Germany are to cooperate on research into fighting terrorism.
After breakfast, Napolitano and Schavan signed a treaty on
scientific and technological cooperation in the field of civil security
-- the first agreement between Germany and the new US administration.
"This is an important contribution to the strengthening of
trans-Atlantic cooperation with the new US government," Schavan said
ahead of the meeting.
"Homeland security is not about walling ourselves off from other
countries, it is about cooperating with our allies," Napolitano said
Monday, according to the Associated Press. Schavan said that Germany
and the US wanted to exploit technology to find "innovative solutions"
that guarantee a "good balance of security and freedoms."
The mere fact that Napolitano and Schavan were meeting to talk about
using technology to fight terrorism was unusual: Until now, the
Americans have kept their efforts to develop new security technologies
secret.
The research offensive began after the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001 and has been fuelled with huge sums of money ever since.
Universities, companies and secret laboratories are carrying out
research into highly sensitive surveillance cameras, bomb detectors,
biometric analysis software and vaccines against biological weapons,
among other things. Until now, neither the general public nor the
governments of the US's Western allies have learned much about the
contents of that research.
But that should now change with the new treaty, at least in selected
areas. Admittedly the joint research program will start on a small
scale, compared to the billions that the US research initiative
devours: Between €10 million and €20 million will be made available for
four major projects until 2012. The symbolic value of the treaty is
much greater, however. Although the preparatory work for the agreement
was begun under the previous US administration of George W. Bush,
President Barack Obama, in contrast to his predecessor, personally
supports a new beginning in science policy and greater openness with
American allies.
Germany is certainly in a position to offer the US something in
return. As German research minister, Schavan has massively promoted the
issue of civil security and initiated a large-scale research program.
Around €123 million has been allocated to research between 2007 and
2011 into, for example, improved detection of so-called "dirty" nuclear
bombs, developing emergency plans for large events and researching new
scanning technologies.
German and American scientists will jointly tackle similar issues in
the future. The 31-page treaty, which SPIEGEL ONLINE has seen, lays
down the basis for co-operation in four main areas:
- Understanding, prevention and detection of threats to civil security
- Forensic science
- Protection of critical infrastructure and key resources
- Crisis response, "consequence management" and damage control in the event of serious incidents.
According to the treaty, particular emphasis will be placed on "the
development of solutions which increase the security of individuals
without restricting their freedom." Conversely, this means that
solutions which do in fact limit civil liberties could also be
developed, even if they are not the main focus of research efforts.
AP
Janet Napolitano (left) and Annette Schavan celebrate with a glass of sparkling wine after signing the treaty Monday.
public is on the issue of security research when there was an outraged
reaction to plans for controversial airport body scanners,
which produce images effectively showing the naked bodies of
passengers. Schavan stressed that it was not only engineers who had the
say in German research programs -- academics from the humanities and
social sciences have been given the task of recognizing possible
threats to civil liberties, such as the use of biometric analysis, and
weighing up those risks against the potential benefits of the
technology.
Until now, the Americans have not shown so much consideration for
civil liberties. Hence it is even more surprising just how far-reaching
the objectives of the new German-American agreement are. The accord
envisions exchanges of staff and technologies and the development of
common standards and priorities. German researchers will get access to
the top-secret laboratories where the Americans test their latest
anti-terrorism technologies, and vice versa. Such openness would have
previously been unimaginable.
The openness does have its limits, however: On page 23 of the
treaty, it states that both sides can prevent the publication of
research findings.
But first some research actually has to be carried out. Already at the
Monday breakfast meeting, Schavan presented her American partner with a
proposal for an issue she would like to see investigated. The US
Congress has mandated that, as of 2012, each shipping container that
comes to America from the EU must be checked for dirty bombs and other
terrorist threats. On behalf of the German government, Schavan argued
at Monday's meeting that such a comprehensive check could harm trade
and would be hugely expensive.
Schavan believes that alternatives to 100-percent screening should
be sought within the new framework of joint security research. One
proposal is to classify containers into risk-based classes depending on
their origin and content and give them more or less intensive
inspections accordingly.
Schavan is hoping that Napolitano will be more ready to discuss this
issue than the representatives of the Bush administration were. Schavan
points out that Napolitano has questioned the 2012 deadline for the
start of the inspection program and is concerned about the economic
viability of the checks.
Nonetheless, Schavan is unlikely to push for her position too
forcefully. After all, she does not want to subject the new
German-American openness to a critical test right at the outset.
The US Department of Homeland Security told SPIEGEL ONLINE on Monday
evening that it had been striving for some time to promote
international cooperation in the field of security research. A similar
agreement has been in place with Canada since 2004 and cooperation
treaties were also signed with Israel and France in 2008.
The department confirmed that the treaty creates a legal framework
for cooperation in both classified and unclassified projects. The first
planned project is a joint workshop with experts in the field of visual
analytics, to be held in Germany in June, spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said.
However Kudwa said that clandestine laboratories whose existence is not
known to the public do not exist in the US.
"Expanding research collaboration with international partners, while
keeping a steady emphasis on personal information privacy and data
protection, is a point of high priority for Secretary Napolitano,"
Kudwa said. "The goal of the US-Germany agreement will be to enhance
security without limiting freedoms."
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