The Global Diffusion of Societal Verification Tools: A Quantitative Investigation of the Public’s Ability to Engage in Citizen Oversight

The spread of nuclear and dual-use technologies and the need for more robust, effective and efficient nonproliferation and arms control treaties have led to an increasing need for innovative verification approaches and technologies. This need, paired with advancements in online computing, mobile devices, commercially available satellite imagery and the evolution of online social networks, has led to a resurgence of the concept of societal verification for arms control and nonproliferation treaties. One variant of societal verification envisions the officially sanctioned involvement of the public in the monitoring, reporting, and verification of international nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament treaties in their respective countries.1 In the event a country accepts its citizens’ assistance in supporting transparency, confidence-building and societal verification, the host government will need a population that is willing and able to participate. For society to contribute to verification it must be politically acceptable and it must be technically and geographically feasible for citizens to monitor, report on, and help verify the events, commodities, infrastructure, materials, and other activities within their own countries. However, it is unclear whether citizens in countries interested in exploring or adopting societal verification will have the technology they need to participate and the social framework in place to support their citizens. While scholarly interest in societal verification continues to grow, social scientific research on the topic is lacking. Many authors recognize advantages and obstacles to global implementation of societal verification as a verification methodology2, yet their enthusiasm or skepticism is based largely on assumptions and conjecture rather than rigorous, reproducible, policy research and evaluation. Scholars have yet to construct and measure systematically the technical and social capability profileii for citizens to participate in societal verification. The aim of this paper is to begin the process of understanding public societal verification capabilities, extend the availability of quantitative research on societal verification and set in motion complementary research to increase the breadth and depth of knowledge on this topic.