Protection of safeguards sensitive information: the tension between the need to know and the need to get the job done.

The nuclear non-proliferation safeguards system is a field in which the various agencies involved have to walk a fine line between a range of competing priorities. Safeguards are best achieved through transparency yet, paradoxically, can only be achieved if the relevant information is afforded the highest possible level of protection. Tensions of this type arise at every level of safeguards. The resource costs of IAEA inspection planning would be greatly reduced if such plans could be made in full cooperation with the member states to ensure optimum use of resources by both the inspectorate and the member state. Unfortunately such openness and transparency would provide any potential diverter with sufficient time to defeat many of the IAEA?s containment and surveillance measures and to conceal a wide range of possible diversions. Maximising inspection resource usage efficiency in this way would potentially result in an unacceptable loss of safeguards effectiveness The technical aspects of the process of evaluating safeguards relevant information about states would be improved if the IAEA could draw freely upon the technical expertise of the member states in order to evaluate the information, but that would require giving third parties access to safeguards sensitive information and would be unacceptable to many member states. Improving the efficiency of information analysis in this way would lead to heated discussions at the IAEA Board of Governors and potentially result in loss of access to information by the IAEA. Within the IAEA itself there is a wide range of expertise. Allowing widespread access to safeguards relevant information within the Secretariat would improve the situational awareness of professional staff and provide opportunities for synergies between work in different areas, but maintenance of such a free-flowing information environment would compete with the „need to know principle? – one of the keystones of information security. How can the IAEA balance the need to know against the need to do the job effectively? This paper will explore these tensions and suggest ways in which the unavoidable tension might be managed.