The Opportunities and Limits of Societal Verification

摘要

The uptick of interest in information and communication technologies (ICT) continues togenerate new thinking in the arms control and nonproliferation sectors. Ripe for further study,public technical means (PTM), as some leading experts are now calling it, have the potential tosupplement traditional verification tools and mechanisms, and bolster international confidencein future bilateral and multilateral agreements. As interest in the ICT domain expands, however,fundamental questions related to the reliability and legality of these tools and sources remain. Aspart of its Verification Pilot Project, the Nuclear Threat Initiative launched its SocietalVerification Working Group nearly two years ago in order to examine the role heightened publicawareness and vigilance may play in future verification and monitoring regimes. This paperbuilds on NTI's 2012 INMM submission and the work of NTI's Societal Verification WorkingGroup, detailing new case studies which retroactively track the social media footprint of pastincidents, and further analyzes key questions surrounding societal verification tools andprocesses. We explore mobilization tactics and challenges, areas of overlap and divergence withall source intelligence gathering as well as privacy and legal issues that must be addressed ifthese tools are to make meaningful contributions to the arms control arena.