There's a flip side to this as well: as a voter, I don't know what information my elected leaders have when making decisions.
In theory, with a small amount of secrecy needed to make diplomacy and security function, this makes sense. The problem is that it's not actually working in practice. There are so many un-elected people who have jobs for life and also the ability to classify broad swaths of information that the incentives are all set to increasing amounts of classified data. There's no correction mechanism. In theory, you'd have Congressmen aggressively using their oversight powers to correct the system. In practice, elected officials are mostly in for life (or as long as they choose) and are easily manipulated by the system. In fact, they don't want anything to do with making tough decisions. The more things are secret, the less they have to worry with those nagging voters giving their opinions about things. I read about intelligence oversight committees being told they don't have clearance to see things and it just blows my mind: our entire system of using force rests on civilian oversight. Thousands have died because civilians have made mistakes with information they've be given -- and that's the way it is supposed to work. Somehow we've forgotten all about this critical principle.
As an example, I'll pick a topic where you guys can all call me fuzzy-headed: UFOs. I pick this topic because of its ludicrous nature. Heaven help me if I were to pick something that was diplomatically sensitive and start hammering on it. I've been studying sightings and evidence as a hobby for many years, and based on credible eye-witness testimony I'm comfortably convinced that the United States government knows a lot more about intermittent atmospheric phenomenon than they are letting on. Why? I don't know. Why not a little more openness? I don't know. What part of this information is being used by my elected officials to make decisions? Again, I don't know.
This leaves the door open for all kinds of crazy speculation. It's an insane way for a democracy to treat its citizens. Yet this is just par for the course. All I did was pick a way-out example. Laugh off my UFO example if you wish, but for every thing like that there is a thousand other things that drive public policy -- and you and I will never know about them. Taken to this level, it is a very unstable way to maintain consent of the governed.
Not only does it make it impossible for an elected official to take advice, it makes it impossible for voters to make reasoned and educated judgments about the actions of officials. Secrecy corrupts everything it touches. That's why it must be aggressively minimized.
Taken to this level, it is a very unstable way to maintain consent of the governed.
Bingo. Even a radical anarcho-capitalist like me is grudgingly willing to accept a minimal amount of government, in the sense that Bastiat described it as no more than "the collective extension to our individual right to self defense." BUT... with a big caveat that said "government" must be accountable to "We The People" and must be subject to our oversight, supervision and - possibly - dismantling if it fails to serve the end it was organized for. But when this entity accumulates and hoards crucial information about the world we live in, it's removed itself from that oversight and supervision.
This is the same reason why - despite the fact that I generally don't advocate "black hat" hacking - I don't really have a problem with people hacking government systems and releasing information contained therein, and why I generally support Bradley Manning. We need to know what our government is doing and how/why it's justifying those decisions, in order to maintain the feeling that the government is serving us.
Not only does it make it impossible for an elected official to take advice, it makes it impossible for voters to make reasoned and educated judgments about the actions of officials. Secrecy corrupts everything it touches. That's why it must be aggressively minimized.
Not only does it make it impossible for an elected official to take advice, it makes it impossible for voters to make reasoned and educated judgments about the actions of officials.
You know, here in San Francisco they put out a thick pamphlet every election with the full legal text of all statewide and city ballot initiatives, using typography to also show how the existing legislative language would changed or deleted if the ballot initiative were to pass.
I am the only person I know who sits down and reads them all every election cycle. I'm sure there must be others, but most people vote based on soundbites - and they might be making a more efficient use of their time than I do. economists refer to this as 'rational ignorance,' where the cost of educating oneself on a topic exceeds the value of the knowledge gained as a result.
Some people favor minarchy or isocracy; I used to, but have changed my mind. Call me paternalist, but I'd rather have a technocratic government, or maybe even a gnostocracy.
Even with that information, you still have nowhere near enough information to understand how the new laws will impact you. You have to understand who the major players are and how it will impact them. How have courts interpreted similar statements? Is this law being used as a wedge to affect other laws or voting patterns? I'm not saying don't read them, but you'll only catch really obvious or frivolous stuff that way unless you understand the ecosystem. Code ain't written in a vacuum either.
I don't disagree with your fundamental point, but I think you misunderstand how things become classified. It's always either
a) due to how the information was collected
b) something derived (citing) a piece of classified information.
So a special collection platform may collect material at some high level of classification, anything that references that information (it could be 100,000 reports) are also all classified at that level automatically.
It's just how the system works not individual politicians stamping individual pieces of information as classified.
It's not politicians certainly, but it's often unaccountable bureaucrats stamping something classified for questionable reasons. The conventional wisdom is that nobody ever got fired for classifying data, and the administration may classify a lot of information that is simply embarrassing.
You actually can't handle classified data, or derive something from classified data, that doesn't automatically classify the derived work (a report, or some such) at at least the same level. To not do that risks releasing the information and you can actually end up in prison over it, or at the very least lose your job.
So in 99% of the cases it's not like you make a decision to "classify" something. It is by its nature classified.
Think of it this way. You have a friend that tells you via email a secret. This secret can only be known between you and your friend. For example, you are arranging a surprise party for a third friend.
Using this knowledge it is your job to get a birthday cake that has the person's name and age (and a decoration) on it. But the only baker in town is also friends with the birthday friend. You don't want to risk the baker leaking the surprise of the cake to your friend. So you decide to buy a blank cake, and decorate it yourself.
This cake is also classified at the same level of the original information (Classified//only between you and your friend). Because it is derived from the knowledge of the birthday party email).
Now your friend prints off decorations with some party specific information, say a sign or some streamers or something. Those are also classified at the same level.
Suppose there are some other odds and ends that are a result of this email and the party plans. Say a "making of video" for the party etc.
Now let's say you also hire a clown for the party. You only provide the clown the time and place to come and perform, not any other details. Because the clown isn't in on the original secret, the arrangements for the clown and the various transaction documents pertaining to it are at a lower classification level. You might still not want the birthday friend to know that somebody he knows hired a clown on his birthday (a convenient coincidence) so you swear the clown to secrecy.
Even if it gets out and the birthday friend asks the clown directly, the clown has plausible dependability and doesn't know why he was hired, only that he was. So it's not good that your friend finds out, but it doesn't entirely screw up the surprise.
I'm stretching the analogy a bit, but hopefully that makes it clear how knowledge of single piece of information (the email that established the surprise party) can end up producing so many classified documents and how that process happens.
Is it reasonable for everyone to have access to everything? Taking your UFO example, what if the military had information about unknown objects - could these just as easily be foreign drones with advanced technology? In which case, it's arguably in the interest of national security to hold certain things close to the vest. If the President immediately announced that something unknown was spotted, a potential invader could nimbly push to plan B or re-allocate resources toward better cloaking technology.
Secrets are a competitive advantage - conversely, having competing countries (in terms of economics just as much as defense) know exactly what we know would be a terrible disadvantage.
As a government you'd probably want some insane theories floating around so you can hide the less insane but real secrets inbetween - after all, conspiration theorists are rarely taken serious.
An example in the UFO case: You tested your new amazing stealth plane, but something went wrong and there are reports. However, if they fit the common UFO sighting tropes, chances are the whole issue is ignored/misinterpreted, leaving the secrets you want to stay hidden.
>There's a flip side to this as well: as a voter, I don't know what information my elected leaders have when making decisions.
I once had a discussion with an Air Force officer who was involved with Homeland Security planning. I made points about warrantless wiretapping and other 4th amendment violations by DHS and TSA. He just shrugged and said I would probably feel differently if I knew all the things they had prevented. I said "Absolutely, tell me. Let me make an informed decision about whether DHS should exist or not".
He just shook his head and changed the subject. So much for an informed electorate.
It gets even worse when you start to think that this information is probably also used to achieve a political ends to a means. By that I mean, those in charge of classifying things, know who has what classification, and should they play favorites or the opposite therof for anyone in their bureaucracy, information will lay hidden to all, just to keep it away from a few, solely for personal gain.
Keep in mind that there are probably north of 1 in 150 Americans with current access to classified material. It's a huge number and just because you aren't in the club doesn't mean it's really all that hard to get in. Get a job that gets you a clearance and you can see what's on the other side of the curtain. Believe it or not, it's amazingly mundane.
This comment is a little misleading; clearances don't give you unfettered access to classified information, they only allow you to receive whatever information you have a "need to know". A security clearance alone doesn't give you access to anything, it just tells the government you've had a background check and could potentially be trusted with certain information.
Well...it can be conflicting. At the Secret level, you tend to have access to much wider ranging information than in a SAP. A person working Intelligence in Japan for example, might also have access to information about Lithuania at that level. In fact, they probably do.
At TS it starts to get more restricted. You have more ability to request access to things outside your general area, but you may/may not get approved.
In the Compartments, my experience has been they are surprisingly global in nature, but focused in content. Meaning I can pretty much get that "kind" of information for any place on the planet, but it's only that "kind" of information. There's some exceptions, but not many.
SAP programs tend to be where it gets very focused. Often because they represent information only collected in your area using only a specific means. So there isn't a global collection of that kind of data -- well, there might be, but you aren't in all of the SAP programs to try and figure it out.
Well this is certainly only partly true. The difference between a generic Secret clearance and the level of clearance talked about in the article is probably bigger than the difference between having a secret clearance and not having one at all. I got my first secret clearance in a month or so, with the interim clearance coming in only a couple of weeks. Hardly anything that would be considered "oh cool!" is labelled Secret. Once you get to the up levels of clearances you start to have a harder and harder time getting and keeping that clearance. You make it sound easy, when in fact it isn't. I was on a small team and a surprisingly large percentage of people we tried to bring onto the team got their request for clearance denied. If you are trying to get a TS/SCI clearance and have a foreign born wife, or too much debt, or a gambling problem, or you used drugs and didn't announce that on your form, or you were completely sketched out on the polygraph, boom, no clearance for you (obviously those are just examples, not set in stone).
Also, once at the TS/SCI level and above everything in compartmentalized. It isn't as if you get the clearance, get some password to some digital book of secrets and all of a sudden you know what really went down at Area 51.
I'm actually surprised by this. I work with a ton of people with foreign born wives (many not even green carded yet) -- soldiers tend to marry where they are first stationed.
Also, I work with plenty of people with TS/SCIs who have used drugs in the past.
The key is just being honest with the investigators.
You are right that people with too much debt, gambling problems, current drug use, etc. don't get one. But that makes sense. I've worked with some pretty sketchy characters though and they didn't have a problem getting or keeping there clearances.
I don't think I've ever personally known somebody who had theirs denied, I've known one person who had their taken from them for doing some questionable things.
It could have been the particular agency that was doing the clearance in my case. With a military customer, I saw less issues, but with the customer I was referring to in my previous post, there were lots of denials. I think the location of foreign born wives is important in this case. The few cases I saw were countries we don't have good intelligence relationships with, in asia and the middle east.
Yes, close personal contacts with people from unfriendly countries can be a problem. However, I do know people with clearances who are from several countries the U.S. is not particularly friendly with.
Quite often it could be that the investigator could not ascertain the relationships on the wife's side and/or they don't have a citizenship yet.
More mundane than protecting secret codes and espionage, I think there's a strong argument for keeping the private conversations between the representatives of two governments confidential. Much as my conversations with my close friends would be very different if I knew the contents would be published in the New York Times today, to have functioning relationships governments need to know that some level of confidentiality will be kept when requested.
That said, over-classification is definitely a problem, particularly if done with domestic political considerations in mind. Even worse can be selective declassification, when the public is presented with a few bits of intelligence that present only part of the story and may lead to conclusions very different than had the full picture been presented (i.e. 2003 Iraq War run-up).
> to have functioning relationships governments need to know that some level of confidentiality will be kept when requested.
To have relationships that function the exact same way they do now. It's clear that things would be different. It's probably true that things would be harder for people in those roles. It's not at all clear that things would be worse for those outside of government, which is the real question of whether it is desirable.
What part doesn't make sense? An example from WWII was when the Allies cracked the enigma code. Obviously the intelligence value goes down if the British brag about it to all the voters and the Germans stop using it.
In that case, why not brag about cracking some code that's just too hard to crack? Make the enemy question the value of a difficult code, and put them through the expense of replacing code books, cypher machines, or at least changing out all public keys.
You'd have to come up with something you could leak to prove that the code was broken, I suppose. But what about bragging about a code you've broken pretty thoroughly, and then giving really shoddy evidence that only arguably proves you've broken it? Sort of the opposite of Cryptonomicon's Unit 2702. You might make the enemy snort in derision, and believe that the cypher in question was still secure.
Do that a few times, and then suddenly reveal a lot of stuff that could only have come from one of the bragged-about-in-a-shoddy-fashion cyphers. Now all cyphers, especially the one's not bragged about come under suspicion.
I've answered this elsewhere already, but spin the question around: Could you explain how it doesn't make sense to you? It seems obvious on its face to anybody who's ever withheld any information from anybody else.
In theory, with a small amount of secrecy needed to make diplomacy and security function, this makes sense. The problem is that it's not actually working in practice. There are so many un-elected people who have jobs for life and also the ability to classify broad swaths of information that the incentives are all set to increasing amounts of classified data. There's no correction mechanism. In theory, you'd have Congressmen aggressively using their oversight powers to correct the system. In practice, elected officials are mostly in for life (or as long as they choose) and are easily manipulated by the system. In fact, they don't want anything to do with making tough decisions. The more things are secret, the less they have to worry with those nagging voters giving their opinions about things. I read about intelligence oversight committees being told they don't have clearance to see things and it just blows my mind: our entire system of using force rests on civilian oversight. Thousands have died because civilians have made mistakes with information they've be given -- and that's the way it is supposed to work. Somehow we've forgotten all about this critical principle.
As an example, I'll pick a topic where you guys can all call me fuzzy-headed: UFOs. I pick this topic because of its ludicrous nature. Heaven help me if I were to pick something that was diplomatically sensitive and start hammering on it. I've been studying sightings and evidence as a hobby for many years, and based on credible eye-witness testimony I'm comfortably convinced that the United States government knows a lot more about intermittent atmospheric phenomenon than they are letting on. Why? I don't know. Why not a little more openness? I don't know. What part of this information is being used by my elected officials to make decisions? Again, I don't know.
This leaves the door open for all kinds of crazy speculation. It's an insane way for a democracy to treat its citizens. Yet this is just par for the course. All I did was pick a way-out example. Laugh off my UFO example if you wish, but for every thing like that there is a thousand other things that drive public policy -- and you and I will never know about them. Taken to this level, it is a very unstable way to maintain consent of the governed.
Not only does it make it impossible for an elected official to take advice, it makes it impossible for voters to make reasoned and educated judgments about the actions of officials. Secrecy corrupts everything it touches. That's why it must be aggressively minimized.