Washington

America's scientific élite has issued a stern warning about what it says are the pitfalls of the Bush administration's proposal to create a new category of sensitive, but unclassified, technical information.

The presidents of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine released a joint statement on 18 October rejecting the proposed category, which the White House says is needed to prevent the misuse of certain scientific and technical information. The administration hasn't released details of what kinds of information would be included in the category, which it calls 'sensitive homeland-security information' (see Nature 418, 906; 200210.1038/418906a).

“Experience shows that vague criteria of this kind generate deep uncertainties among both scientists and officials responsible for enforcing regulations,” the academies' statement says. “The inevitable effect is to stifle scientific creativity and to weaken national security.”

At a hearing of the House Committee on Science on 10 October, John Marburger, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), sought to assuage scientists' concerns about the proposal. He said that the category guidelines, when released, would not cover results from basic research. The designation is for the type of information held by the government that is not routinely released to the public, such as law-enforcement data, he told the hearing.

But Bill Colglazier, executive officer of the National Academy of Sciences, says that without written guidelines, scientists can't accept Marburger's assurances. “The concern is that if you leave this category very vague and amorphous, it could end up causing problems in the research community,” says Colglazier.

Biologist M. R. C. Greenwood, the chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz, agrees that it would be a bad idea to set up a category of unclassified but restricted information. “We would be better off building up science and technical enterprise so we have talent and ideas to outwit any threat that comes this way, as opposed to trying to keep information from escaping,” says Greenwood, who served as an associate director of the OSTP in the Clinton administration.

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