An Evaluation of Epidemic Intelligence Service Alumni in Public Health Leadership Roles

Background The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has administered the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS) fellowship for over 50 years, with the goal of developing scientists and leaders in applied epidemiology. Our objective was to understand the extent to which CDC EIS alumni are present in select public health leadership roles. Methods We conducted an evaluation describing EIS alumni representation in five preselected leadership positions (CDC director [1953–2016]; CDC center director, state epidemiologist, Field Epidemiology Training Program [FETP] resident advisor, and Career Epidemiology Field Officer [CEFO] [2000–2016]). We developed a dataset using multiple sources to identify staff in selected positions. We then matched these data with an internal EIS alumni dataset. Results Selected positions were staffed by 353 persons, of which 185 (52%) were EIS alumni; 10 persons served in >1 leadership position, of which 6 were EIS alumni. Among 12 CDC directors, four (33%) were EIS alumni; collectively these alumni led CDC for approximately 25 years. EIS alumni accounted for 29 (58%) of 50 CDC center directors, 61 (35%) of 175 state epidemiologists, 27 (56%) of 48 Field Epidemiology Training Program resident advisors, and 70 (90%) of 78 Career Epidemiology Field Officers. Of 185 EIS alumni in leadership positions, 136 (74%) were physicians, 22 (12%) were scientists, 21 (11%) were veterinarians, 6 (3%) were nurses; 94 (51%) were assigned to a state or local health department. Among 61 EIS alumni who served as state epidemiologists, 40 (66%) were assigned to a state or local health department during EIS. Conclusions EIS alumni accounted for between approximately one-third (CDC directors and state epidemiologists) and 90% (CEFOs) of people serving in essential leadership positions at multiple levels.

‘Within or outside Canada’: The Charter’s application to the extraterritorial activities of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service

Since the swift passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act in 2015, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has had the unprecedented and highly controversial authority to take ‘reasonable and proportionate’ measures to reduce threats to Canadian security. While there are some limits to the types of measures CSIS can employ, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act permits the use of measures that would otherwise contravene the laws of Canada or limit a right protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms so long as they are judicially authorized by the Federal Court. As new threats proliferate around the world, it is anticipated that CSIS will increasingly carry out this mandate overseas. Yet review bodies tasked with monitoring CSIS’s use of threat reduction measures (TRMs) report that CSIS has never sought judicial authorization to conduct a TRM. Why? One answer may be that CSIS has concluded that the Charter does not govern actions carried out abroad, and, as such, their extraterritorial conduct falls beyond the reach and oversight of the Federal Court. Whether the Charter applies to CSIS’s overseas conduct ostensibly lies in the Supreme Court of Canada’s leading case on the extraterritorial application of the Charter, R. v Hape. This article canvasses domestic and international law, as well as intelligence law theory, to explain why that presumption is wrong. Wrong, not least because the majority opinion in Hape is deeply flawed in its analysis and application of international law. But also, because intelligence operations are so distinguishable from the transnational criminal investigations at issue in Hape, the Court’s findings are inapplicable in the former context. In short, this article demonstrates that applying Hape to the actions of CSIS officers not only leaves their actions beyond the scrutiny of Canadian courts but also creates a significant human rights gap.

System Design and Development

This chapter presents the Socrates DigitalTM system's design and development process. It describes the four phases of design and development: understand, explore, materialize, and realize. The completion of these four phases results in a Socrates DigitalTM system that leverages artificial intelligence services. The artificial intelligence services include a natural language processor provided by several artificial intelligence service providers, including Apple, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and Amazon.

Political Sentiments of White Émigrés in the Far East in the 1920s

Based on the documents from the Central Archives of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation and the State Archives of the Russian Federation, analysed in line with the anthropological approach, this article describes in broad outline the sentiments of white émigrés in the Far East during the 1920s. The archival documents include informant reports from the Beijing and Shanghai residencies of the Foreign Department of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU), summaries and analytical reports of the Counterintelligence Department of the OGPU, reports of operational officers of the Foreign Department of the OGPU, official and personal letters, reports and correspondence of top White Guard leaders, and reports from Chinese newspapers. The paper specifies the total number and location of exiles in the Far East. Further, it dwells on the reasons for Russian citizens’ emigration to China and mentions their peacetime occupations in Russia. Moreover, the article describes the attempts of foreign adversaries to involve white émigrés in anti-Soviet activities and the reasons for their failures. It is shown that white émigrés formed organizations for the purpose of cultural and other communication in a kindred environment and for mutual moral and material support. A conclusion is substantiated that the dogma of the irreconcilability of class interests influenced the tendentious selection of information about white émigrés, about their general “hostility” towards the Soviet Union. In addition, it is alleged here that the majority of white émigrés, including some of their leaders, wanted to return to their homeland. This conclusion is based not only on analytical information reports compiled by secret agents of the GPU-OGPU, but also on surveys initiated by top white émigré leaders and carried out abroad in the 1920s.

The construction of emergency intelligence service system for think tanks in the context of big data

The big data era has ushered in huge transformation in the form of major media, with WeMedia nowadays becoming the mainstream. As is witnessed, WeMedia has achieved a rapid and widespread growth in both dissemination and influence, which has posed a series of challenges to the Emergency Intelligence Service System for Think Tanks, including changes to the subject, content, form, and connotation of platforms. Based on big data, this study makes an investigation into the Emergency Intelligence Service for the modern think tanks and applies the method of factor analysis to draw the conclusion on what kind of factors will influence the performance of the Emergency Intelligence Service for Think Tanks. Then, from the perspective of the life-cycle theory, this research not only optimizes the work process of the Emergency Intelligence Service for Think Tanks, but also constructs a multi-dimensional Emergency Intelligence Service System based on the concept of “Data Driven + Technology Application + Expert Decision” from the aspect of theoretical and technical perspectives. Meanwhile, a public health incident emergency information service system is built on this basis, describing the application process with food poisoning as an example. Last but not least, hopefully, this study could help improve the quality of decision and effectiveness of the Emergency Intelligence Service for Think Tanks and enhance the power of influence and communication for agencies of Emergency Intelligence Service and this paper provides a reference for the establishment and improvement of government decision-making and governance mechanisms.

Hidden Continuities?: The Avatars of “Judicial Lustration” in Post-Communist Romania

This Article grapples with the instrumentalization of the past in Romania, in the specific context of “judicial lustration” measures. It argues that decommunization and lustration policies, which could not be pursued in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of state socialism in 1989, were weaponized much later and used in order to advance other purposes. In 2006, an expedited judicial vetting procedure, in the context of the EU-driven fight against corruption, was repurposed by the center-right as a lustration instrument. In the same year, the dismantling of an intelligence service created after 1991 in the Justice Ministry (SIPA) to monitor ‘vulnerabilities’ in the justice system has set in motion a long series of failed attempts to bring closure to the question regarding the service’s archives, fomenting continuities of suspicion until today. More recently, in 2018, a form of ‘mock-judicial lustration’ has been used by the political left to deflect or at least delegitimize repressive anti-corruption policies. The new “lustration procedure” implicitly equated the recent cooperation between prosecutors and intelligence officers, in the context of the fight against corruption, with past practices of collusion between the members of the judiciary and the communist Securitate. These three episodes of ‘dealing with the past’ are reviewed in order to showcase path-dependencies. Such path-dependencies are not linked only with carryovers from or throwbacks to the communist past. Rather, pre- and post-communist deficiencies of modernization, combined more recently with gaps in post-accession monitoring by the EU Commission, create continuities of peripheral instrumentalism. Various narratives, such as decommunization, the fight against graft, judicial reform and the rule of law are used to legitimize short-term consequentialism, evincing a resilient, structural resistance to legislative and legal normativity.

State security and individual security as exemplified by operational surveillance used by the Polish counter-intelligence service

The material scope of the research problem presented in the text encompasses the issues concerned with operational surveillance that the Polish civilian counter-intelligence service, i.e. the Internal Security Agency (in Polish abbreviated as ABW – Agencja Bezpieczeństwa Wewnętrznego), is authorised to. The main purpose of the analysis is to assess the changes introduced as a result of the passing of the so-called Surveillance Act in 2016. The Act was supposed to introduce new regulations with regard to the powers concerning operational surveillance and obtaining of ICT data, granted to particular secret and police services. The said changes were enforced by the judgment of the Constitutional Tribunal, which in 2014 found numerous violations of the provisions of the Constitutions of the Republic of Poland caused by the existing regulations authorising the services to engage in particular operational and investigative actions. In order to elaborate the material scope of the research problem, and to present the conclusions, the following research questions have been presented in the text: Do the legal regulations concerning the powers vested in the Polish civilian counter-intelligence service within operational surveillance infringe individual rights and freedoms (e.g. the right to privacy, protection of personal information, privacy of correspondence), and if so, then to what extent? Functional and pro-constitutional interpretations have been applied to assess the provisions regulating the powers of the Internal Security Agency with regard to operational surveillance and obtaining of ICT data. The functional interpretation focuses on the function of selected legal solutions, whereas the pro-constitutional interpretation focuses on the assessment of legal solutions in the context of the principles of a democratic state ruled by law, as well as human rights and freedoms. As regards the pro-constitutional interpretation, the tool used for assessment is the test of proportionality, i.e. the rule used for interpreting legal norms according to the degree and legitimacy of the interference in individual rights and freedoms.