WikiLeaks

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Re: WikiLeaks

Post by Imp-Chan »

Graybeard wrote:So do you trust Wikileaks to make the judgment call on when the "endanger our troops" line is legitimate and when it's bogus?
Of course not. Neither do I trust the people who are supposed to be making those choices... but then, I also don't even know who they are. Or how they get the job. Or where they meet. Or what the process is. Or... you know, really the shorter list is what I do know, which is that there's a website out there that claims to propagate leaked information that I also largely do not care about, and a bunch of guys who presumably think that sharing said information is a bad idea. But then, there would inevitably be a bunch of guys who didn't want to share even if the information was only the recipe for Grandma's Snickerdoodles, so that's not exactly a giant revelation (and it's all well and good to point out that there's a system for classifying information, but you'd be surprised how important some people feel a good snickerdoodle can be to national security).

Trust is eroded because we don't KNOW what the system is or how it is working for us, but we do all ASSUME that someone out there has something to gain by lying and keeping us in ignorance. So I would say that information leads to trust. If you want me to trust you to know what should or should not be shared, to make decisions that affect my life and reflect on my morality, then you first need to aggressively share everything else. That, or convince me that I don't actually care what you do, though that's just apathy, not trust, and is much riskier since the truly apathetic tend to randomly care a LOT about unpredictable topics.

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Edit: Also, I like the new name for the board. Good job, Viking-sensei!
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Re: WikiLeaks

Post by Graybeard »

Imp-Chan wrote:Trust is eroded because we don't KNOW what the system is or how it is working for us, but we do all ASSUME that someone out there has something to gain by lying and keeping us in ignorance. So I would say that information leads to trust. If you want me to trust you to know what should or should not be shared, to make decisions that affect my life and reflect on my morality, then you first need to aggressively share everything else. That, or convince me that I don't actually care what you do, though that's just apathy, not trust, and is much riskier since the truly apathetic tend to randomly care a LOT about unpredictable topics.
Well, if you'd like me to write a long, boring epistle on how the system works, I can do that; I'm what's called a "derivative classifier," meaning that at my facility and in my field of expertise (arms control, nuclear nonproliferation, etc.), I can deem things classified or unclassified based on written guidance that has been developed over the years covering that field. What you're asking for is covered in the training that we "DCs" receive, and believe me, the thing that I'd write would be very long, and very boring, indeed. It would, however, scratch the itch of you not "KNOW(ing) what the system is or how it is working for us". Do you really want that? I'd be surprised, but I'll do it if you wish, with the caveat that I speak only for myself and not with an "official" voice.

One thing that I will say, bidden or not, is that that written guidance is often extremely difficult to apply consistently and logically. This is simply the nature of the beast, because the guidance is intended, on the one hand, to establish general principles regarding classification in a subject area, and on the other, to provide absolutely iron-clad protection for certain very tightly specified things. In between those two extremes, there is a great deal of murky reality, in which abundant judgment calls must be made. For it to be otherwise, the guidance would have to be longer and windier than the documents we're classifying (or not), and the system is already plenty bureaucratic without that. It's OK, that's why I'm paid the big bucks (don't I wish...), but it is something to keep in mind the next time you see a particularly delicious "secret" thing in a leak and say "WTF did they classify that for?"

Which brings me to my main point. I have never read Daniel Ellsberg's "Pentagon Papers" (and couldn't comment on them if I had), which probably were the watershed event in the development of that un-trusting situation that you describe (and happened before you were born, and before I ever imagined seeing a real classified document). In the time between that and the Wikileaks fiasco, literally millions of documents have been written, judged classified or not, and handled accordingly -- and quite uncontroversially. Tell me true, Impy: were you aware of having your "trust" in that invisible system "eroded" by its inaccessibility during that long period when it just kinda functioned in the background? Or is your present suspicion of the system (which is shared by many people, I'm just singling you out because you stated the key points concisely and eloquently) rooted in the fact that with Wikileaks, someone has in essence told you that you SHOULD be suspicious of it? I'm honestly curious here, because working with this stuff gives you a very different perspective on it, and I'm not sure I'm in a position to understand your starting point for that erosion of trust.
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Re: WikiLeaks

Post by Imp-Chan »

My first experience that I can recall of information being controlled to achieve a specific end was when I was seven years old. It was a localized experience in which I was very careful about how much information I revealed to CPS about an incident that was reported to them. After that, I just sortof assumed that everyone controlled the outflow of information to further their own ends, and by age 14 or so I assumed that extended to the government. Did I have specific theories about what was concealed? Not particularly, no.

I wouldn't say that my personal trust has been eroded at all, it was more that I never particularly saw a reason for it to exist in the first place. But then, I also did things like argue against a monetary system in preference to a barter system in my third grade history class... so it's not exactly like I ever really embraced a life of trust in the established mode. My comments about the erosion of trust were really based more on observation of the populace in general.

I have some personal difficulty with the concept of classification. I generally prefer to be as transparent as possible, I feel it's altogether more honest and far more practical as information is notably easier to share than to conceal. Still, in some cases restriction of information really is about not causing people to get hurt (as distinct from avoiding trouble for doing things that would be hurtful or at least unpleasant to deal with if discovered), and while those cases are vastly more complicated on a government level and thus harder to define and/or police, on a personal level I go back to my Quaker upbringing and feel that it's a matter to resolve in a respectful and worshipful way on a case by case basis. For example, I am not going to elaborate about the CPS incident, because I cannot do so in a way that would not instantly cause people to take sides without a full understanding of the events. So I'll be open that that's what I'm choosing and why, but the information itself remains classified, and I feel right about that.

^-^'
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Re: WikiLeaks

Post by Sareth »

Hey, welcome! And thanks for expressing disagreement. The best discussions have divergent views.
Kaigen wrote:[T]he oft-discussed list of "vital security locations" has me wondering if some of these people in the State department aren't going a bit too far with this. Forming informed decisions on who is and isn't corrupt in a foreign government is one thing, checking out "vital security locations," and commenting on their vulnerabilities seems to be quite another.
For me, this is actually one of the issues with the Wikileaks situation. To my mind, listing vital security locations in foreign nations and addressing their weaknesses is helpful to more than the U.S. Sure, it helps the U.S. plenty to keep a close eye on, say, an oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia that provides fuel oil for import to the U.S. But it also helps the host nations of those resources, because they know that we will help provide for the security of those items as well, including through advice or even physical assistance on addressing the weak points. So it's mutually beneficial. Exposing this list thus increases the risk for those nations as well as the U.S. If an attack on one of them is successful, it hurts the U.S. economically in the short run, but it damages the physical infrastructure of the host nation in the long term. Wikileaks' release of this information thus damages more than just the State Department.
The flip side of this, though, is that I'm awfully tired of my government lying to me. I don't like finding out that my government is knowingly supporting corrupt governments and telling me they're not. And I'm sick and tired of the "if we reveal this it will endanger our troops!" line because I strongly suspect that it, like executive privilege, is an empty excuse that only protects officials in my own government from having their misconduct revealed. If Wikileaks does lead to greater transparency, that's something I'd be glad to see.
As a former troop, I assure you, it's no excuse. But more importantly, I'd like to address the part about revealing misconduct. I am all for exposing misconduct. Some things should not be tolerated. This particular incident, however, is not the way to do it.

Abu Ghraib was an example of it being done right. Specific misdeeds were being performed there. The misconduct was specifically reported, specific investigations were conducted, and specific people were held accountable. It was direct and to the point.

Wikileaks, on the other hand, has taken the tactic of dropping a nuke to take out a pillbox. It's release is so enormous and scatterbrained it won't serve to produce any sort of openness. Instead it will basically muddle everything. True misdeeds will get lost in a morass of sensationalism, and many, many very good people will wind up gun shy or even wind up being scapegoated while real abusers will avoid the mess simply by dint of hiding in the muck. Had Wikileaks really intended to bring to light misconduce, it would have been very specific in what it released instead of maliciously airing sensational material that has no misconduct in it.

For example, releasing documents showing Chinese leaders calling North Korea "childish" during talks with the U.S. don't reveal one speck of misconduct. Instead, they grab sensational headlines and damage the ability for the Chinese to act as the good cop in dealing with North Korea's provocations.

Looking forward to a rebuttal.
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Re: WikiLeaks

Post by Kaigen »

Well, first, I think I should point out that I'm not trying to justify Wikileaks. I think "wildly irresponsible" is the mildest charge that can fairly be leveled at that organization. It's more like my condemnation is blunted by the sense that we wouldn't be nearly as vulnerable to this sort of attack if we were less prone to taking questionable actions and then sweeping them under the rug. If I were to try to chart the growth of my personal distrust of the US government (to answer Graybeard), I think I could narrow it down to 4 main things, in roughly this chronological order:

1) Learning about the CIA-backed coup which overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, a democratically elected leader of Iran, and reinstated the Shah in his place. Following the Law of Unintended Consequences, this led to the Iranian Revolution and the current repressive Islamist regime in Iran.

2) The Abu Ghraib scandal: while the people who performed the specific misdeeds were punished, I am disheartened by the impression that their commanding officers, who allegedly at the very least encouraged those actions and perhaps even ordered them, have escaped public investigation. I don't want to use the word "scapegoat," because that implies that the "goat" bears no personal responsibility, but I think that a few low level soldiers were offered up to the media in order to distract from equally culpable people above them. I think this might have been my first instance of raising an eyebrow to the claim that further investigations would "endanger the troops," on the grounds that releasing more information about it and conducting more investigations would supposedly incense the terrorists and insurgents further (it seems like they would know well enough for their purposes already). Related to this is the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay and the continued use of it to detain "enemy combatants" in the absence of formal charges or due process.

3) Seeing The Most Dangerous Man in America a documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and his famous leak. The actual leak happened before I was born, but learning about the extent of the information being hidden while telling the public the exact opposite to maintain support for a questionable war across several administrations, both Democratic and Republican, reinforced the suspicions I had acquired from the earlier sources.

4) Learning from This American Life about the precedent of "executive privilege," specifically, the legal practice of refusing to provide evidence to courts on the grounds that it contains information vital to national security. The case which set this precedent involved a military plane crash which killed all those on board while carrying experimental technology; the family of the men killed charged that the crash happened due to negligence and subpoenaed the crash report, which the government refused to turn over, and the Supreme Court sided with the government without seeing the report in question. Decades later, the crash report was declassified naturally, and it turned out that there was no sensitive information about experimental technology whatsoever in the report--only damning evidence of the military's negligence with regards to maintenance on the plane.

Now, all of the above sources have a liberal bias (#1 was learned in a Poli Sci course taught by a liberal professor, and my main news sources for #2 were from left-leaning media outlets), as do I, which is why I'm freely airing them in the hopes of seeing different viewpoints. What frustrates me is that while I know that there are plenty of documents and information which are rightfully classified, or of little consequence, behind those documents are information hidden merely because it is politically convenient or relates to activities in violation of law and ethics, and there seems to be nothing I or the general public can do to rectify that situation. In that context, it's hard not to hope for a steady stream of whistleblowers, even if I'd like them to be far more precise that Wikileaks.
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Re: WikiLeaks

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Sareth wrote:Hey, welcome! And thanks for expressing disagreement. The best discussions have divergent views.
Kaigen wrote:[T]he oft-discussed list of "vital security locations" has me wondering if some of these people in the State department aren't going a bit too far with this. Forming informed decisions on who is and isn't corrupt in a foreign government is one thing, checking out "vital security locations," and commenting on their vulnerabilities seems to be quite another.
For me, this is actually one of the issues with the Wikileaks situation. To my mind, listing vital security locations in foreign nations and addressing their weaknesses is helpful to more than the U.S. Sure, it helps the U.S. plenty to keep a close eye on, say, an oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia that provides fuel oil for import to the U.S. But it also helps the host nations of those resources, because they know that we will help provide for the security of those items as well, including through advice or even physical assistance on addressing the weak points. So it's mutually beneficial. Exposing this list thus increases the risk for those nations as well as the U.S. If an attack on one of them is successful, it hurts the U.S. economically in the short run, but it damages the physical infrastructure of the host nation in the long term. Wikileaks' release of this information thus damages more than just the State Department.
Yes, but is this done with the full knowledge and consent of the countries in question? Did Saudi Arabia come to us and say, "By all means, have your state department officials investigate our infrastructure for potential weaknesses, we are fully confident that you will only use that information with our best interests in mind." That's more where I'm coming from with my musings. No matter how much I trust my neighbors, I don't want them going through my trash, "just checking" to see if I've shredded any documents containing information that could be used to steal my identity. And I particularly don't want the neighbor I've exchanged heated words over his barking dog poking around in my garage (to over-extend the metaphor completely). Perhaps I'm looking at this in the wrong light.
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Re: WikiLeaks

Post by Viking-Sensei »

Completely moving beyond the issue of whether the leaked cables should exist - because at this point, they do - I think there's a larger issue at play here. The world's governments have gravely mishandled this situation from the word go, in part because they continue to be decidedly "old guard" about their policies, practices, and proceedures and are fighting a "new guard" enemy they probably had no chance of winning against even if they did adapt their tactics.

I liken the difference to the first few disasterous exchanges between US and UK troops during the American Revolutionary War. The US Government, taking the place of the British and all impressive in their bright red (highly visible) coats have formed a solid line, weapons raised, and waited for an enemy to step in front of them so they could all fire at once. Meanwhile, the internet, clad in brown and green and waiting in the trees and tall grass where the Red Coats would never dare go, are picking the Red Coats off one by one without the collective "good guys" ever even having a chance to see their faces.

We Americans (for that is what I am, anyway, your mileage may vary) champion freedom of speech as one of our first and foremost rights... but we're actually fairly bad at it. Oh, sure, there's places much worse than here, but we still put a number of limitations on what you can actually "say" with Free Speech. There's words you can't say because they might offend someone, hurt some precious unique snowflake's feelings, or defame their character, or it might be slander... or it could be a secret.

The internet puts us to shame; for better or worse, there is almost absolute freedom of speech there. There is no government of the Internet. There is only peer review, at it's highest (and lowest) form. If you say or create something on the internet and people support it, they will share it - hopefully they will be respectful and send people to you (links, recommendations, tweets, etc) but it's almost always beyond your control, beyond the control of any mere mortal, and there's very little stopping people from behaving badly.

That's the critical failing of the US Governmentin this altercation. Their determination to force The Internet to comply to their rules and regulations - especially when we're talking about a global community that there's really no way to practically inforce any rule upon - goes beyond stupidity and well into the realm of hubris. Their attempt to throw their weight around and intimidate people fell flat, because (as it turns out) on the internet, shouting at people and saying you're in charge is everyday background noise. Nobody listened, nobody cared, and all they managed to do was piss off the worst of the worst - Anonymous - with their shock-and-awe tactics.

When the companies (most likely under direct pressure from the US government) started trying to nail down Wikileaks by shutting down their DNS, killing their Amazon acct, sending white-hat hackers after them, and blocking payments to them... a lot of people rose up as one, decided that this violated their individual senses of right and wrong, and did something people haven't done in real life for about 50 years now - they decided to actually do something about it. Just like the government was attacking real-world locations to hurt the internet presence of Wikileaks, Anonymous started attacking Internet locations to hurt the Real World presence of those against Wikileaks.

I suspect this may be the first real, actual, genuine "Cyber War". And if so, we (the United States) are going to lose. Badly. The good news is that we (the People of the United States) are going to win. If this sounds confusing, it is... but the best way to put it is that there are a lot of people, not just here but globally, who feel that their governments are no longer acting ON the will of the people, but are instead acting AS the will of the people. That's fine, so long as the people agree, but the number of people who've come out of the woodwork over WikiLeaks should show that there are a good number who do not feel adequately represented by their governments, and who have essentially resorted to their own soft version of terrorism.

Which brings up another good point - with their power growing by leaps and bounds as they become more and more visible, are Anonymous terrorists? Technically, yeah, they probably are... but so were the American forces in the Revolutionary War. We throw the word arround a lot since 9/11, but from a tactical point of view the Terrorist label usually is less about actual "terror" and more about "Guys who thought of a new and innovative way to fight the enemy before the enemy figured out a way to fight back". Historically, there's a fine line between terrorist and freedom fighter (to quote George Carlin, "If fire fighters fight fire, what do freedom fighters fight?") and it usually depends on who writes the history books to determine who the "good guys" were in any war.

Like the student riots currently happening in the UK, I think the US Government has lost the narritive thread (or, in this case, never even tried to pick it uP) with a lot of it's people. Unpopular presidents, controversial laws, the middle class going deeper into debt while a lot of words are said and very little is actually done to help, secret (but widely known) under-the-table deals between seats of power and large corporations - a lot of people know about these things, but there's very little we can actually do about them.

People have been searching for a handle for the people to pull back at their own government. Here in the US we had a lot of hope for the last two elections, but it turns out that even with a genuine grass movement and an outcry from the people, by the time the political machine as a whole is done with your candidates you still wind up with either a bought-and-paid-for election or picking the better of two bad choices, because "The Party" manages to keep the good, hard working, honest people working for those who know how to - and are willing to - use and abuse the system to The Party's own ends. I say "The Party", because this used to just be a Democratic thing, but after the 2010 elections I've seen it happen to both sides now. I may not have agreed with them, but watching the genuine Tea Party movement become a more and more corrupt, watered-down, spun-by-media frankenstein of a thing until it was reduced from values and ethics and ideals to talking points and catchy slogans was painful.

Unfortunately, it looks like the first major opening, the first gap in the armor of The System for those looking to hurt said system, has been the Wikileaks kerfuffle. It's about like realizing that the only part of the enemy that isn't covered by their Armor of Invincibility is their testicles - it's a low blow, but if you're desperate enough, a good number of people appear to have been willing to take the shot anyway. Just think about this - if something of the same scale as the cables had been found, but internal, exposing corruption and deception INSIDE the US, wikileaks would be up for every journalistic award in the book.

And as much as I suspect the wikileaks themselves are bad, I fear the US government succeeding to kill them would be worse. They've long been eroding people's freedoms - how much longer after a successful campaign against WikiLeaks and Anonymous do you think it will be before this becomes little more than a strawman for a wider attack on freedom of speech on the internet? This may not be the ideal battle, but if we're ever going to get back to a place where the government fears it's people and not the other way around, the battle is going to have to be fought in places like this. Nobody has to "buy a seat" on the internet, so it's a much more level playing field for individuals and smaller groups, even like Anonymous, to have their ideas heard based on merrit and popularity and not on social and economic position.
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Re: WikiLeaks

Post by Sareth »

You know? I don't think I can dispute any of that (save for a minor personal quibble about the definition of "terrorist" that doesn't change the crux of what you say). Darn it, stop being so well reasoned! XD
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