The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) last month quietly ended an exemption that seven civilian science laboratories had enjoyed from certain security regulations involving visiting foreign scientists. From now on, the labs will have to gather and report to DOE more information about non-U.S. citizens who want to use their facilities. "It's a little tedious, but it shouldn't keep anyone away," says Judy Jackson of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, where scientists are getting new security badges and filling out more forms.
The old rules, developed in the wake of the 1999 Wen Ho Lee spying scandal at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, required DOE labs doing classified research to screen and track visitors from about two dozen nations, including China and Russia. Officials at the more academic labs--including Fermilab and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California--had successfully argued that the rules weren't necessary in their settings. But on 17 December, after the DOE Inspector General found continuing problems in tracking foreign visitors, the agency announced that it was ending the exemption, to enhance security.
