Attracting a crowd: What societal verification means for arms control

Abstract

The idea that ordinary people might contribute to verification of arms control treaties is not new; abstract discussions of the concept date back decades. But powerful and portable electronic devices have spread so widely in recent years that societal verification now seems an imminent reality. Motivated individuals might, for instance, collect treaty-relevant data through onboard sensors that smartphones can carry and then transmit the information to multilateral verification bodies or, as is already happening, share it online with global communities that subject it to crowdsourced analysis. But will societal verification generate enthusiasm in the developed and developing worlds alike? What legal protections must be established for participants? And will information gathered through societal verification ultimately prove useful and trustworthy? Three authors explore these emerging questions: from Burkina Faso and representing the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, Lassina Zerbo; from the United States, research fellow Nima Gerami (2013); and from Malaysia, nuclear engineer Jamal Khaer Ibrahim (2013).

The idea of empowering individuals to participate in arms control efforts touches on a fundamental pair of questions: Should arms control verification be left to a closed circle of experts from the world’s most technologically advanced countries? Or should verification be a global and “democratic” undertaking that is open to all countries, and their institutions and experts, without regard to a nation’s size and political or economic might?

In my current field of work—nuclear test-ban verification—the trend toward openness and democracy is clear. During the Cold War, only the most technologically advanced states had the means to monitor for nuclear explosions. This changed fundamentally in 1996, when negotiations for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty were completed, opening the way the following year for the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) to launch its International Monitoring System.

So far, the commission has established about 290 facilities that constantly monitor the globe for signs of nuclear explosions. Crucially, the data collected at these facilities, and the results of the CTBTO’s data processing, are transmitted in near-real time to the National Data Centres of member states. This allows each country to perform its own data analysis and to draw its own conclusions about the nature of events that are detected.

Verification of the treaty is thus a highly collaborative endeavor. For example, after North Korea’s three announced nuclear tests, all members of the United Nations Security Council, including the nonpermanent members, have had access to essentially the same information about the events, and this has enabled the body to react swiftly.

One hundred thirty governments and more than 1,300 of their dedicated users are currently able to receive data from the CTBTO, and these numbers are constantly growing. Some nations have yet to develop the technical capability to participate, but the commission, through its extensive training programs, is helping developing countries in particular to play a more active role in treaty verification.

Though its primary purpose is to detect nuclear explosions, the commission’s monitoring system picks up a range of other signals that are relevant to scientific research, environmental studies, and disaster mitigation. Member states, including developing countries, are thus able to use the commission’s data to benefit their nations in a variety of ways. For instance, seismic stations can warn of earthquakes that are capable of generating tsunamis; seismic data can also help identify areas at high risk of earthquakes and landslides. Infrasound stations, meanwhile, which listen for the ultralow-frequency sound waves that are emitted by atmospheric nuclear explosions, can detect volcanic eruptions, something that is useful in air-traffic safety and volcanic sciences. Such data can also be used to study storm systems and climate change. Hydroacoustic stations, which listen in the oceans for explosions, can support research on ocean processes, including those involving marine biology. And radionuclide stations, which sniff the atmosphere for radioactive particles or gases, can provide critical information about emissions generated from nuclear accidents.

The CTBTO monitoring system, then, is large, versatile, and open. The question when it comes to societal verification is whether the system could usefully be supplemented by data that ordinary people collect, particularly with the help of handheld devices. It is sometimes suggested, for example, that networks of citizens using personal electronic devices equipped with onboard gyroscopes and accelerometers could contribute to seismic monitoring (Fargo, 2013). From my perspective, it is difficult to conceive how sensors not firmly connected to the ground could detect seismic waves produced by nuclear tests, or at least by smaller or more distant tests. Yet handheld devices can—and in some cases already do— play an important role in test-ban monitoring.

To begin with, an increasing number of National Data Centres use mobile devices to access and process CTBTO data. Next, the existence of publicly available information from open-source data centers like the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology makes it possible for interested individuals with handheld devices to double-check data published by the commission or by governments. For example, an enterprising student with open-source data and a powerful laptop computer could have confirmed the location, time, and magnitude of North Korea’s nuclear test in February of this year.

When it comes to data collection, the CTBTO typically uses handheld devices such as portable magnetometers, or even conventional video or still cameras, for exercises that simulate on-site inspections. After the treaty has come into force and challenge inspections become possible, up to 40 inspectors will search for telltale signs of a nuclear explosion. While individuals theoretically could use such techniques as well, it is difficult to see how “private” on-site inspection efforts could be feasible and safe, let alone credible and useful.

Another handheld device that might seem promising for societal verification is the dose rate meter, a commercially available device that can measure external gamma radiation in the event of a nuclear accident. But dose rate meters cannot detect clandestine nuclear tests, because their sensitivity is not adequate for the trace-level radiation that may leak from an underground test location—unless the person using the device is dangerously close to the source. It is necessary instead to use portable spectrometers and advanced sample-collection units. These items can aid in detecting the radioactive noble gases, especially xenon and argon, that may leak from an underground nuclear test. In recent years, technological advances have made these devices more portable and easier to use. But these specially developed items are very costly and generally inaccessible to private citizens.

An inherent feature of the treaty is that it allows for new technical developments to be incorporated into the verification regime, and the regime continues evolving as a result. Recent research has suggested, for example, that animal thyroids could be used as highly sensitive monitors for the presence of radioiodine (Steinhauser et al., 2012). And a study at Ohio State University suggests that nuclear explosions might be detected through the disturbances that they create in the upper atmosphere (Science Daily, 2006).

New approaches like these must overcome various technical and political hurdles before they become functioning tools of multilateral treaty verification; even the commission’s existing monitoring system had been discussed for decades before it came into being. But the treaty regime remains open to new developments like societal verification. When, for example, nations make a case to the commission that an on-site inspection should be launched, they would be free to supplement the information that they gather through national technical means with data collected via societal verification. Meanwhile, it should be remembered that the thousands of scientific experts, with and without handheld devices, who participate in verification efforts—at National Data Centres, as station operators, or as delegates to the commission’s decision-making organs—already constitute a kind of collective verification mechanism that supports the global consensus against nuclear testing. ¹