Academics from American, European and Asian universities came together September 19th and 20th to present their research on the large-scale movements of people, and engage in a multidisciplinary exchange of ideas and perspectives.  This installment of the Europe Center - University of Vienna bi-annual series of conferences and workshops was held on the Stanford campus and co-sponsored by The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

For the agenda, please visit the event website Migration and Integration: Global and Local Dimensions.

CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart and nine other national security and intelligence scholars were recently invited to the headquarters of the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., for unprecedented talks with high-ranking officials. They discussed cybersecurity, the plummeting public trust in the agency, its relationship with Congress and how to rebuild the agency’s reputation and rethink its program operations. 

The academics were first taken to the black granite wall carved with the names of 171 military and civilian cryptologists who have died in service. “I think they wanted us to know that this is an organization of people, not some robots trolling through your emails,” said Zegart, author of the book, “Spying Blind,” which examines why U.S. intelligence agencies failed to adapt to the terrorist threat before the 9/11 attacks. 

The scholars were then taken to a windowless conference room for several hours of what Zegart called remarkably frank and free-ranging talks about the agency and its tactics.

The NSA is one of the world’s most secret intelligence gathering organizations. Its methods have come under intense scrutiny with a series of damaging leaks about its operations. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and national intelligence reporters have revealed tactics that have left many Americans cold and questioning the legality and necessity of the agency’s methods. From monitoring emails and phone calls, to secretly cracking encryption codes that protect personal email as well as financial and medical records and Internet chats – the revelations just keep coming. Civil liberty organizations and Internet privacy advocates here at Stanford are outraged, while some foreign governments are accusing Washington of Big Brother tactics run amok. 

Zegart answers questions about those perceptions and her Sept. 23 briefing at NSA headquarters.

 Are the accusations that the NSA is Big Brother squared fair?

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If you look at the reporting on the NSA so far, there is zero evidence of a widespread, deliberate and nefarious plan by the agency to violate the law and spy on American citizens. This is a policy debate, not a scandal. There’s no question in my mind that the NSA has interpreted its legal authority to the maximum extent of the law possible. They’ve taken what Congress has granted them and they have pushed to the edge – but that’s a very big difference from running amok.  

How did this unprecedented meeting come about and why do you think the senior NSA officials – who asked not to be identified – called on social scientists?

In our group, the last time someone went to the NSA was in 1975, which tells you how rare it is for them to invite academics in. The was a sense at senior levels that they need to think more systematically and long-term about education, about being more open to academics coming in and doing research about the NSA and hearing what academics have to say. In part, thought-leaders at universities can play a role in transmitting some of the complexities in which the NSA operates – the tradeoffs the agency is confronting and the constrains under which they are operating. 

 One thing this meeting highlighted for me is that the NSA is not free to respond to the criticism it gets in the press. It’s intertwined with other organizations that have a say in how it responds: the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the Justice Department and the White House. And they have never had to deal with the spotlight before. They gave me this statistic: Last summer, there were 167 legitimate questions from the press; in the summer of 2013 there were 1,900 media requests. That’s a tenfold increase. This is a whole new world for this agency. And to go against secrecy is just totally counter to their culture. This was a bold step for them to have us come in.

Did the NSA officials talk about whether they had broken any laws? 

They definitely wanted us to believe that what they are doing is lawful and effective. I believe the lawful part; I’m not so sure about the effective part. I think they haven’t looked hard enough about what effective means. Do they know it when they see it? And who’s to judge?

They were quick to point out that they’re under extensive oversight both by Congress and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. The question is whether Americans are comfortable with the lines that have been drawn by their own government and if they’re comfortable with the lack of transparency. The NSA is really bad at letting us know what the gains are (from surveillance) and they’ve struggled with how to deal with the public reaction to the Snowden revelations. 

This is an intelligence agency and they’re supposed to be stealing information from other governments; that’s what we pay them to do and other governments would use those capabilities in an instant if they had them. That has gotten lost in the debate. When I talk to my parents and friends, they think that the NSA is listening in on their phone calls. That’s just not true. They’re examining phone logs: who called whom and for how long. No one is listening to your conversation with grandma.

The fundamental problem is that the NSA is highly regulated – but nobody trusts the regulatory framework."

Did you discuss former NSA contractor Edward Snowden? 

Extensively. It’s the biggest breach in the agency’s history. They’ve been in crisis mode since June. They’ve been putting our fires every day and the arsonist is still out there. NSA officials told us that they know 125 documents have been compromised; they believe Snowden probably has already passed to the press another 50,000 documents and that the entire tranche that he may have taken is bigger than that. But there’s a question about whether that tranche is accessible, that Snowden may have done things to make some of his data hard to read.  

They said Snowden didn’t just download documents he himself had access to. He used social engineering, convincing someone else to give him access to additional information to breach security protocols. Meanwhile, Snowden had plenty of avenues for whistleblowing, including five inspectors-general and the members of the congressional intelligence committees, but he availed himself of none.

Have Snowden’s actions endangered national security or international relations? 

The standard lines about “irreparable harm” are not convincing to many people because they are so vague, we’ve heard them so often, and the government classifies boatloads of information that shouldn’t be secret. But NSA officials got a little more specific. They said Snowden has hurt national security in three ways: The first is that he revealed government surveillance capabilities. Second, he’s revealed politically embarrassing things that are harming relations with our allies – and they believe there is more to come. (Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff postponed a state visit to Washington, for example, following the release of evidence that the U.S. spied on Brazilian politicians and business leaders.) They said Snowden has a pattern of releasing embarrassing information around big international meetings, such as the G20 summit. The third damaging impact is that Snowden has hurt the NSA’s ability to produce intelligence.

What are some of the challenges and solutions moving forward? 

Intelligence is a political loser and so you see a lot of members of Congress who says they are shocked – shocked! – to find out what the NSA is doing when they had full opportunity to be briefed on these programs for a long time. So they’re making political hay out of NSA’s difficulties. Most members of Congress have zero incentive to actually learn anything about the complexities of intelligence because the voters don’t hear about it and they don’t reward them for it. 

The near-term challenge is to stop Congress from doing something stupid, such as the wholesale cancelling of NSA programs and capabilities. The medium-term challenge is to figure out what sensible options there are to restoring the public trust and make the NSA more transparent and more targeted in its collection approach. When NSA chief Keith Alexander steps down, we are going to see all of these issues come to a head in a very public way with the confirmation of the next director. 

The longer-term challenge is creating better mechanisms to assess whether NSA should do things just because it can technically – to weigh the wisdom and efficacy of programs, not just their legality. The NSA also needs a sustainable education campaign so that when things break in the news, legislators and constituents have an understanding of what this agency does and can put these revelations into perspective.

They definitely wanted us to believe that what they're doing is lawful and effective; I believe the lawful part, I'm just not so sure about the effective part." 

What are the strengths of the NSA that the public doesn’t get to see? 

The NSA is the organization that’s responsible for information assurance, like if you’re in government on a secure phone line. And most people don’t know the NSA wrote the codes to protect our nuclear arsenal from day one. So the NSA has two, often conflicting missions. One is signals intelligence, which is offense, and the other is the information assurance that is defense. In an era of cyber vulnerabilities, information assurance is huge. They feel like they were doing what they were authorized to do and serving the mission and that they are being characterized as evil for doing what they think is right.

What were your biggest takeaways from this meeting? 

I would say one of the things that I did walk away from the meeting hearing – and I think that perhaps this is the big policy question – is that the NSA orientation is to collect now, ask questions later. So the question is: Is that the right operating philosophy; are we comfortable as a democratic society with that collect-now-ask-later approach?

David Lobell, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, has been named a 2013 MacArthur Fellow and one of Foreign Policy Magazine's 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013.

MacArthur "Genius Grant"

Lobell, who is also the associate director of FSI’s Center on Food Security and the Environment, was cited "for unearthing richly informative, but often underutilized sources of data to investigate the impact of climate change on crop production and global food security." He received his doctorate degree from Stanford in 2005 and was appointed to the faculty in 2009.

A pioneer of the emerging field of crop informatics, Lobell is revolutionizing the understanding of the environmental factors controlling crop yields, with a particular emphasis on adaptation to climate change.

His work provides decision makers, for the first time, with critical information about how to adapt agricultural development to climate change.

"I was completely surprised by this recognition, but am really excited by the opportunity it presents," said Lobell, who is also a senior fellow at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "To have the MacArthur Foundation recognize the value of taking new approaches and the importance of the topics of hunger and food production is deeply gratifying."

Lobell's research focuses on identifying opportunities to increase yields of crops including wheat and corn in major agricultural regions, with projects currently underway in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States. 

"I'm interested in how to feed the world and protect the environment at the same time," he said. "While there are many theories about how to do that, my work tries to test these theories, often using data that were collected for completely different reasons."

The citation emphasized Lobell's work on understanding the risks of climate change, and options for adaptation. "Climate change is one of the reasons for concern about feeding people in the future, but it's not insurmountable if good decisions are made," he said. 

When asked how he would use the funding, Lobell said he would not rush the decision. He said that some of the award would likely relieve him of writing grant proposals. In addition, he said he would consider using some toward more travel.

"A lot of my better ideas in the past have started with travel and interactions with international collaborations," he said.  "And there's always a tradeoff between my work travel and family.  I now might take my wife and young sons with me on some extended trips."

Foreign Policy's Leading Global Thinkers

In December, Foreign Policy named Lobell one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers of 2013. The recognition comes for his work "helping farmers feed the world" in a changing climate. Lobell is joined on the magazine's list by fellow researchers working on climate issues, along with prominent public figures like German Chancellor Angela Merkel, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Pope Francis.

Widely sought throughout the world to provide expert advice, Lobell is a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report chapter on food security, to be published in 2014. The IPCC, which won the Nobel Prize in 2007, also made Foreign Policy's 2013 Leading Global Thinkers list alongside Lobell, "for showing that humanity is on the brink of catastrophe" if climate change is not addressed quickly and aggressively.

Lobell studied applied mathematics at Brown University, and before receiving his bachelor's degree in 2000, he spent the summer of 1999 as a research intern at Stanford, developing remote sensing algorithms. He then pursued graduate studies at Stanford, receiving his doctorate in geological and environmental sciences in 2005.

He was a postdoctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 2005-2007, and returned to Stanford as a senior research scholar in the Program on Food Security and the Environment in 2008-2009.  He accepted an appointment as assistant professor in the Stanford School of Earth Sciences in 2009. 

In addition to his research, Lobell teaches several courses open to both undergraduates and graduate students, including "Feeding Nine Billion," "Climate and Agriculture," and "Global Land Use to 2050," as well as modeling and statistical methods classes.

Lobell received a NASA New Investigator Program Award for 2008-2011. He received the James B. Macelwane Medal from the American Geophysical Union in 2010, awarded for significant contributions to the geophysical sciences by an outstanding scientist under the age of 36.

Nancy Peterson is the chief communications officer for Stanford's School of Earth Sciences. Laura Seaman, communications manager for the Center on Food Security and the Environment, contributed to this article.

The Liberation Technology Seminar Series is set to continue this fall with a remarkable set of speakers. The series debuts on Thursday, September 26, 2013 and will continue until December 5, 2013. The last season focused on domestic issues given the debates around SOPA and the use of technology in the U.S. Presidential elections. This emphasis this fall will be tilted towards international initiatives. 

The series will begin with Canada’s effort at direct diplomacy with people abroad using technology and move on to crowd-souring of a law by the Parliament of Finland. Talks will also cover the political impact of the internet in Malaysia, a review of the world’s most ambitious open government project by a state government in India, and an ambitious Stanford project to bring design thinking to accountability projects internationally. On the domestic front, we have timely presentation on mass surveillance in the United States and a discussion on Code for America’s initiatives to build civic engagement by coders. Finally, we are set to have a look at the history of information technology in social initiatives by our own Terry Winograd who retired from the Department of Computer Science last year. 

Students can take this as a one credit course by attending at least seven out of the ten seminars. The course is listed as CS 546 / POLISCI 337S.

Where: Wallenberg Auditorium [Map]

When: Every Thursday 4.30 – 6 pm from Sept 26 – Dec 5 (except Nov 28)