Prism Program ( Big Brother gone too far?)

[Zoraptor]

You're not going to get a very thorough answer since it's 130 am here and my typing is suffering a bit...

 

Perhaps a bit simplistic, but I suspect the fundamental difference amounts to you thinking that military stuff should be default secret while I think it should not be. So while you approach the release as asking "what justifies it's release?" I approach it as "what justifies it being secret in the first place?". So you expect me to justify the release while I expect you to justify it being secret at all. So from my point of view having someone say that the stuff released was inconsequential in terms of potential damage done to military operations by itself justifies releasing it- if it's inconsequential, why is it secret? And the answer I tend to come up with is that this 'inconsequential' stuff gets classified  frequently not because it is dangerous, but because it is merely embarrassing and used to regulate the message and information rather than protect operations.

 

Nobody disputes that some secrecy is required just as nobody disputes that there are enemies who need monitoring from the NSA/GCHQ or whoever, it's just that the opinion on what is reasonable in terms of secrecy and in scope differs. Something like an enemy's bombs not detonating, per the Falklands, fine. It's definitely militarily important and knowledge of it would give an advantage to (well, remove a disadvantage from) an active enemy. Lists of civilians killed when your spin doctors are insisting they haven't been? That's spin and information control for the domestic market, the Afghans and Iraqis already know the truth. The Collateral Murder killings probably weren't murder themselves as asterisks happen in war, but equally they knew very soon after that they'd asterisked up, yet publicly insisted they hadn't while classifying the evidence.

 

And I'm not a fan of chain of command as an absolute concept at all. The worst thing that can happen in any army is absolute unquestioning obedience to all commands, because those commands are issued by humans and human institutions which are inherently flawed, you have to have leeway for questioning, refusing and in some cases actively resisting orders. Again, that ain't a recipe for refusing all commands or complete breakdown in discipline, just a recognition that sometimes you just have to short the circuit rather than run through the same series of wires and switches again and again.

[Walsingham]

I am grateful for your continuing the trend away from an oppositional argument. It is, after all, the weekend.

 

I suppose *shifts position, and relaxes calf muscles* that my perspective is heavily influenced by British experiences 1940-1942 and in Ulster in the 1980s. I can give references if anyone is interested, but then I'd have to go downstairs to get the books, and that's tedious.

 

If, for one reason or another you cannot use firepower to win a conflict - either due to circumstance, or due to ROE - then you have to leverage other factors. Psyops, surprise, coherence of action and inducing disunity in an opponent. These things end wars quicker. But they simply don't work if some tw** on your side gives away chpater and verse on your situation to the opposition.

 

If I may shamelessly play a card you might like, you will recall that I am fiercely opposed to the use of torture in interrogation. My pragmatic case for this is based on the fact that senior terrorists will not 'turn' under pressure. They only 'turn' when convinced that they were fundamentally in error, and when they realise that their erstwhile colleagues are a bunch of psycho weirdos.

 

To expand, a tortured terrorist may tell you when a scheduled operation is going ahead. He will not, he cannot give you a complete run down of who is who in the hierarchy. What makes them laugh or cry. How they talk. How they move.  So that the next half glimpse you receive will be more than noise. It becomes a note in an ongoing symphony.

[alanschu]

I think there might be a deferral to the importance of intelligence integrity (that I probably also am ascribing to) based on some historical accounts of compromised integrity.

 

Andrew May's revealing of the inadequate depth of Japanese Depth Charges (I don't have any source to corroborate whether or not the Japanese did alter their strategies, unfortunately).

Cracking Enigma in Europe

Cracking the Japanese codes (resulting in increased reinforcement of Midway, as well as shooting down Yamamoto's plane) in the Pacific.

 

 

So I can understand the initial outrage, especially if Manning didn't know for certain the information that was all contained in his leak.  If he did, this is less of an issue (assuming the leaks didn't really contain much actual information that would be useful).

 

Of course, for all I know intelligence operations are not at all like they were back in WW2, because the whole process was still quite new, relatively speaking.

[ShadySands]

So I can understand the initial outrage, especially if Manning didn't know for certain the information that was all contained in his leak.  If he did, this is less of an issue (assuming the leaks didn't really contain much actual information that would be useful).

 

I think the sheer number of items he (she) leaked rules out the possibility of him (her) knowing what was in them all

[alanschu]

That's my implicit assumption as well.

 

Unless maybe it was categorized somewhere.

 

Maybe it was in C:\Secret Stuff\Not A Huge Deal if Leaked\ folder?

 

>.>

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one with one of those.

[Zoraptor]

Andrew May's revealing of the inadequate depth of Japanese Depth Charges (I don't have any source to corroborate whether or not the Japanese did alter their strategies, unfortunately).

Cracking Enigma in Europe

Cracking the Japanese codes (resulting in increased reinforcement of Midway, as well as shooting down Yamamoto's plane) in the Pacific.

They'd all be Top Secret- literally; the classification class 'Top Secret', or the British equivalent. Manning didn't leak anything Top Secret and only a very little that was even Secret, most of it was just little c classified (or Confidential, if wiki is to be believed).

 

To give an idea of how big the difference was the truth about Ultra was known to a few dozen people, a tiny number when they had to be almost completely manually decrypted so you had techs and decrypters who had to be in the loop. The stuff Manning leaked had literally millions of people who could access it in whole or part. End of the day you have to at least trust that the military won't give really important stuff a low classification which millions can access.

[Walsingham]

So, what was it that he leaked that was so valuable for the public to know?

[Zoraptor]

So, what was it he leaked that was so valuable for the public not to know?

 

It's like that fundamental difference in viewpoint I was talking about...

 

In other news 'Snowden' releases information on a UK Spying base to the Independent. To a newspaper he has no links to, and a leak which he denies unlike all the other stuff he has released. A certain Grauniad reporter gets grumpy and accuses the UK government itself of leaking it.

[alanschu]

Hmmm.  Is it a situation where, if one (or at least, a not huge number) of documents can come up where there's a more uniform consensus that this clearly should/should not be for public consumption, that there'd be less of a divide?

 

Of course you'll always get SOME sort of divide, and no, I certainly cannot be arsed to looked through them all!  Haha.

 

 

For Wals:  What's the type of content that would need to be contained for it to be deemed necessary for public consumption?

For Zor: What's the type of content that would need to be contained for it to be deemed necessary for the public to not consume it?

Edited August 24, 2013 by alanschu

[Zoraptor]

I'd basically just swap the justifications around, and say that stuff should not be classified by default, though I think you have to take a certain amount of safety first. It's a bit difficult to define exactly how to set things up properly though, as public good would be a reason not to classify but much of the stuff Manning leaked was of public interest mainly- or only- because it contradicted or significantly expanded official accounts. It's doubtful there'd be as much interest if they were more honest in the first place.

 

I guess the best illustration I can give is that the military regularly declassifies 'guncam' or 'bombcam' footage when it's showing something 'good', so the footage itself and its existence is not secret. If it's a public good to see the footage when it goes right, and give the impression that it always goes right, I'd need a very good reason for why it isn't a public good to know and see that things go wrong as well. Because one is state propaganda, the other is having an informed public.

[ShadySands]

The Black Budget

 

 

The Washington Post has obtained a copy of the so-called "black budget," leaked by the fugitive former NSA computer specialist Edward Snowden.

 

It shows the budget tops $52 billion, with the biggest share, more than $14 billion, going to the CIA