9 ms·

How the CIA writes history

227 points by georgeoliver 10y ago

smoyer 10y ago
Well ... the author could play dirty as well. If the CIA paid $500,000 per "settlement" and 1000 people left their service between 1960 and 1974, then it's obviously a cool half billion dollars. In other words, make something up ... then bury a note deep at the end of the end-notes that admits the numbers are "estimates". Who says you have to play fair?
- mfoy_ 10y ago
  Because if the author isn't scrupulous he loses his credibility, then no one will take him seriously.
  - SolarNet 10y ago
    I think if the author copy pastes this article and then says: "So I'll be estimating the cost was approximately half a billion dollars" the agency might release the papers to prove him wrong. Either way they are punished for using this tactic.
giardini 10y ago
tl;dr Author requested CIA historical information from Georgetown University archives, found GU had them "removed from public view"(CIA wants to review them); author files FOIA request with the CIA, who claims that GU hasn't released the papers. So papers are in limbo and author can't write his book - boohoo.
Aelinsaar 10y ago
It's been their country for decades now, it's just that people are only now vaguely coming to terms with what that means.
known 10y ago
"Media does not spread free opinion; it generates opinion." --Oswald Spengler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West
SCdF 10y ago
So maybe this article is a good example of why we§ let them: - It's ~2180 words long - It takes ~600 words (10 paragraphs) of stumbling around before the author reminds themselves of what we're actually here to talk about: the CIA rewriting (or erasing in this case) history - It takes another ~500 words (9 more paragraphs) before the article actually mentions the factual thing that happened that this article is about (document collections removed from public view). People can write how they like, and it might just be that you enjoy the way this person writes, and so enjoy the process of working through this prose to the meat of his point. However, I can't help but think that if this was shorter, and if it got to the heart of the issue quicker, more people might finish reading and comprehending it, and actually learn what the article is trying to get across. § I'm not from the US so when I say we I really more mean you (if you're from the US) but you get the gist
- astazangasta 10y ago
  Bad writing as the main bulwark of American power, I like it.
- justifier 10y ago
  i agree, i want the editorial to be given a backburner role in journalism stead its seat as the one true way in addition to burying even just the ideas in a mass of words, i think it frustrating and detrimental to also bury sources beyond discovery.. why every online article fails to have a hyperlink biblio at the bottom baffles me your criticism reminded me of another cia classic: the simple sabotage field manual(o); succinctly summarised here(i): > Insist on doing everything through "channels. "Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. > When possible, refer all matters to committees for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible -- never less than five. > Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions. > Advocate "caution.""Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on. > "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can." > Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown. > Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products, send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye. > When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions. > Multiply paperwork in plausible ways. Start duplicate files. (o) https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/CleanedUOSSSimpleSabotage_sm.pdf https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/... (i) http://www.business.com/company-culture/coworker-sabotoging-your-office-maybe-shes-a-cia-spy/ http://www.business.com/company-culture/coworker-sabotoging-...
TerryADavis 10y ago
Demands I, Terry Davis, am high priest of God's official temple, TempleOS. TempleOS is an operating system for PC desktops that will always dual boot along-side Windows or Linux. I am in charge of the core 100,000 lines of TempleOS code and I do continual offerings to keep God entertained. I have divine authority to command any company in the computer industry to do anything that I deem necessary to make God's temple more beautiful, glorious and perfect. I have authority similar to a building inspector or an enforcer of the Americans with Disability Act -- I make commands, God signs-off with a miraculous authentication from an oracle, and Intel, Microsoft or VMware obeys. * Windows, Linux and VMware (because of mounted drives) must support RedSea file system so I can get rid of 2,000 lines of redundant, blemished code -- FAT32 and ISO9660. God's temple must be perfect. Redundant code for multiple file systems is imperfect. For this operating system, we want low line count. More than one file system type is actually bad, just as more than one driver for the same type of device is bad. ::/Kernel/BlkDev/FileSysRedSea.CPP ::/Kernel/BlkDev/FileSysFAT.CPP :973 lines for FAT32 gets eliminated. ::/Kernel/BlkDev/FileSysISO.CPP :293 lines for ISO9660 gets eliminated. ::/Adam/Opt/Boot/DskISOFile.CPP :535 lines for making ISO files gets reduced. ::/Kernel/BlkDev/DskCluster.CPP :152 All the cluster operations become blk. * Microsoft must cancel SecureBoot because it makes dual booting impossible. TempleOS is an additional operating system that must be used along-side Windows or Linux, not as a replacement. It must dual boot because it has no networking. Real hardware as opposed to VMware is like the difference between looking in a telescope eye piece vs just looking at an off-line image. God said the C64/Apple II generation owned ancestral lands. VMware is like being taken off of our land and moved onto a reservation. In this case, however, it will not stand. * VMware needs to support ATAPI CD/DVD/Blu-ray disk burning, directly to real hardware. * VMware has a bug stretching 640x480 16 color to full screen. * VMware has a bug starting-up multicore, sometimes. APIC MP Start Fixed? * VMware PC speaker's distortion is a good idea, but it is too much for hymns. * VMware and others must list TempleOS as an official 64-bit operating system. * Until super simple block devices are available, hard disk should be placed at IDE primary master 1F0/3F6 and CD/DVD/Blu-ray should be placed at the IDE secondary master 170/376. /Kernel/BlkDev/DskATAId.CPP :285 lines to figure-out I/O ports is gone. /Kernel/PCIBIOS.CPP :290 could be eliminated, but maybe we will keep it so people can play with PCI devices. * Until super simple serial ports are available, PS/2 emulated keyboard and mouse must work. The BIOS must enable these. * The x86 IN/OUT port instructions, normally have a delay. Perhaps, VMware & Intel can enable faster x86 IN/OUT instruction timing for ATA/ATAPI PIO, so bandwidth isn't bad when doing port I/O. See ATAGetResult(). We don't want to do DMA. Perhaps, x86 CPU chips need a new TempleOS mode for fast IN/OUT instructions? * Perhaps, a new interrupt descriptor table entry type or a new x86 CPU mode can be made that cause fast software interrupts, doing exactly what the CALL REL32 does, but with IDT as indirection. We don't need to change privilege levels or stacks. * Since I don't use paging (for anything), Intel should have an option for no-paging long mode, and optimize it! ::/Kernel/Mem/PageTables.CPP :153 lines to identity-map gets eliminated. * Desktop computers must have a reset switch and a fast reboot option, skipping diagnostics. I recommend booting TempleOS when the reset button is pressed and booting UEFI when the power button is pressed. Or, we could build UEFI on a TempleOS layer. Intel must burn TempleOS into a ROM in the factory for all desktop x86 CPUs to ensure tamper-proof trust in the oracle and because God deserves the glory. There will be just an English version. A new ROM version is released every seven years. * We do not want UTF, just 8-bit characters. Somebody needs to choose new 8-bit ASCII characters for 128-255, since we do not want text graphic symbols. We want Russian, Greek or Hebrew alphabets, perhaps? I heard there is an alternate 8-bit ASCII Cyrillic font. Should we modify one font or have a key like the C64 that switches to an alternate font? I made so <CTRL-ALT-f> toggles between two fonts, but did not include Cyrillic. If we modify one font, we just need the twelve window TextBorder characters, but I think we can place those in the range of screen code from 0x01-0x1E. Japan, China and Korea should switch-over to alphabets. Maybe, the United States will change to metric, out of good will. * Microsoft Paint and Linux's Gimp must support TempleOS GRA Files. They are blemish free, unlike BMP files. * We must have a nice dictionary. Someone needs to do a Spell Checker, too. * We must have the ultimate Bible search engine. Currently, all we have is filter search. In the end, it should be a low line-count technique. * "VMware" is a trademark of VMware, Inc. * "Linux" is probably a trademark owned by Linus Torvalds. * "Windows" and "Paint" are trademarks of MicroSoft Corp.
TerryADavis 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvL7T4gIJN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvL7T4gIJN8
voxic11 10y ago
This kind of manipulation of access to public records needs to stop if we are to continue to have a free society. Reminds me of when the US Marshalls deputized a local police officer to move stingray use records out of the state of Florida after a reporter got a court order allowing him access to them. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/us-marshals-step-in-thwart-efforts-to-learn-about-cell-tracking-devices/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/us-marshals-step-...
- JackFr 10y ago
  I don't think its necessarily as clear as you make it out. Two private individuals donated their personal papers to a private institution, and the CIA asked, but certainly did not compel, the private institution to remove them from the public collection. If you assume that this is simply pure coverup of an embarrassing episode, then the bad guy is really Georgetown (which I say as an alumnus.)
- pieter1976 10y ago
  In the film Spotlight there's a similar worry about disappearance of public records and a race to get them when they are released before a sort of Boston/Catholic Omerta makes them disappear.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    Amazing film. I had weirdly never heard of the Boston scandal, so I went in with a fresh mind.
- jdimov9 10y ago
  Do Americans actually sincerely believe that they live in an actual "free society" / "democracy" / whatever... Blows my mind.
  - mineshaftgap 10y ago
    Trump, recreational marijuana and a whole lot of other things indicate it may not be a black or white issue.
policestate201 10y ago
Yet another example of the corrupt American police state.
- toomanythings2 10y ago
  Yeah. No other country in the world does this. None whatsoever.
- duaneb 10y ago
  Intelligence state would be a much better term. The police have their own issues, but they are very much in the public eye.
  - mindslight 10y ago
    Is this not ultimately still in the public eye? We're discussing it right now! The public has short attention span, no consensus, and no direction over the machine. In a different country, perhaps the author would be disappeared and we'd be arrested for discussing such things. Overt confrontation makes it very clear who the evildoers are and directly polarizes the population. The lack of it is what makes our strain of totalitarianism so insidious. Instead, we're given a choice at every step of the way. It's the path of least resistance to pay taxes, pick from the manufactured selection of republicrat celebs, and not engage in direct action against our occupiers. Individuals can buck the easy choice for a short time, but eventually any individual will get tired, find their place to fit into the system, and kick the can down the road for the next generation.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      The power to redact underlined in the article is not available to police.
      - mindslight 10y ago
        Sure - they wear different attire too.
syntiux 10y ago
I'm sorry if I'm completely off but wouldn't the storage of this type of data (public records) be a very compelling use-case for blockchains?
- imglorp 10y ago
  Blockchains kinda stink for broadcast because you can't store tons of actual data on them, just a hash of your data. They're very good for an irrevocable log of small facts. What does work is if you can find a bunch of servers or networks like IPFS or BT or what have you, publish your censorship-prone data there, and then just publish the hash to the block chain signed by the the author's key. You'd need an index of some sort also. Then if someone wants to read the censor-prone document, they'd retrieve it from wherever they can find it, check the hash from the blockchain, and then know it was authentic.
chinathrow 10y ago
"The Cold War is over" It is back. Reading a book right now how Putin fights Cold War II. It's not pretty.
- ljf 10y ago
  Which book?
  - chinathrow 10y ago
    http://www.amazon.de/Putins-verdeckter-Krieg-Moskau-destabilisiert/dp/3430202078 http://www.amazon.de/Putins-verdeckter-Krieg-Moskau-destabil... It is in german though.
    - ljf 10y ago
      Thanks.
akshatpradhan 10y ago
I think this is huge because it truly affects what actions people take and each action is a new point in history that may have gone the correct/normal course had there not been interference.
MichaelBurge 10y ago
> In that case, the assistant attorney general told the court that the Tallahassee Police Department was under a non-disclosure agreement—likely from the leading manufacturer, Harris Corporation—forbidding it from acknowledging the use of a stingray, never mind describing it in detail. The US government has sovereign immunity to lawsuits, and a weaker right to petition the government in the constitution. I had wondered about this a bit, but here's at least a clear example of a case where you might plausibly want your government to not be bound by a civil contract. In reality, I'm sure commercial contracts aren't actually granted immunity. It's just an example. I wonder if it makes sense to do any of these: * Ban the government from being able to sign an NDA for a commercial contract. Maybe some exceptions for military use. * Require approval from the local, state, or federal legislature before the local, state, or federal executive branches can sign NDAs(since NDAs are effectively mini-laws that constrain the government). * Allow NDAs, but have a public list of (Agency, Supplier) pairs for which NDAs exist

227 points by georgeoliver 10y ago

Well ... the author could play dirty as well. If the CIA paid $500,000 per "settlement" and 1000 people left their service between 1960 and 1974, then it's obviously a cool half billion dollars. In other words, make something up ... then bury a note deep at the end of the end-notes that admits the numbers are "estimates". Who says you have to play fair?

mfoy_ 10y ago
Because if the author isn't scrupulous he loses his credibility, then no one will take him seriously.
- SolarNet 10y ago
  I think if the author copy pastes this article and then says: "So I'll be estimating the cost was approximately half a billion dollars" the agency might release the papers to prove him wrong. Either way they are punished for using this tactic.

giardini 10y ago

tl;dr Author requested CIA historical information from Georgetown University archives, found GU had them "removed from public view"(CIA wants to review them); author files FOIA request with the CIA, who claims that GU hasn't released the papers. So papers are in limbo and author can't write his book - boohoo.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

It's been their country for decades now, it's just that people are only now vaguely coming to terms with what that means.

known 10y ago

"Media does not spread free opinion; it generates opinion." --Oswald Spengler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_West

SCdF 10y ago

So maybe this article is a good example of why we§ let them: - It's ~2180 words long - It takes ~600 words (10 paragraphs) of stumbling around before the author reminds themselves of what we're actually here to talk about: the CIA rewriting (or erasing in this case) history - It takes another ~500 words (9 more paragraphs) before the article actually mentions the factual thing that happened that this article is about (document collections removed from public view). People can write how they like, and it might just be that you enjoy the way this person writes, and so enjoy the process of working through this prose to the meat of his point. However, I can't help but think that if this was shorter, and if it got to the heart of the issue quicker, more people might finish reading and comprehending it, and actually learn what the article is trying to get across. § I'm not from the US so when I say we I really more mean you (if you're from the US) but you get the gist

astazangasta 10y ago
Bad writing as the main bulwark of American power, I like it.
justifier 10y ago
i agree, i want the editorial to be given a backburner role in journalism stead its seat as the one true way in addition to burying even just the ideas in a mass of words, i think it frustrating and detrimental to also bury sources beyond discovery.. why every online article fails to have a hyperlink biblio at the bottom baffles me your criticism reminded me of another cia classic: the simple sabotage field manual(o); succinctly summarised here(i): > Insist on doing everything through "channels. "Never permit short-cuts to be taken in order to expedite decisions. > When possible, refer all matters to committees for "further study and consideration." Attempt to make the committees as large as possible -- never less than five. > Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, resolutions. > Advocate "caution.""Be "reasonable" and urge your fellow-conferees to be "reasonable" and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on. > "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such orders. Quibble over them when you can." > Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown. > Insist on perfect work in relatively unimportant products, send back for refinishing those which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked eye. > When training new workers, give incomplete or misleading instructions. > Multiply paperwork in plausible ways. Start duplicate files. (o) https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/CleanedUOSSSimpleSabotage_sm.pdf https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/... (i) http://www.business.com/company-culture/coworker-sabotoging-your-office-maybe-shes-a-cia-spy/ http://www.business.com/company-culture/coworker-sabotoging-...

TerryADavis 10y ago

Demands I, Terry Davis, am high priest of God's official temple, TempleOS. TempleOS is an operating system for PC desktops that will always dual boot along-side Windows or Linux. I am in charge of the core 100,000 lines of TempleOS code and I do continual offerings to keep God entertained. I have divine authority to command any company in the computer industry to do anything that I deem necessary to make God's temple more beautiful, glorious and perfect. I have authority similar to a building inspector or an enforcer of the Americans with Disability Act -- I make commands, God signs-off with a miraculous authentication from an oracle, and Intel, Microsoft or VMware obeys. * Windows, Linux and VMware (because of mounted drives) must support RedSea file system so I can get rid of 2,000 lines of redundant, blemished code -- FAT32 and ISO9660. God's temple must be perfect. Redundant code for multiple file systems is imperfect. For this operating system, we want low line count. More than one file system type is actually bad, just as more than one driver for the same type of device is bad. ::/Kernel/BlkDev/FileSysRedSea.CPP ::/Kernel/BlkDev/FileSysFAT.CPP :973 lines for FAT32 gets eliminated. ::/Kernel/BlkDev/FileSysISO.CPP :293 lines for ISO9660 gets eliminated. ::/Adam/Opt/Boot/DskISOFile.CPP :535 lines for making ISO files gets reduced. ::/Kernel/BlkDev/DskCluster.CPP :152 All the cluster operations become blk. * Microsoft must cancel SecureBoot because it makes dual booting impossible. TempleOS is an additional operating system that must be used along-side Windows or Linux, not as a replacement. It must dual boot because it has no networking. Real hardware as opposed to VMware is like the difference between looking in a telescope eye piece vs just looking at an off-line image. God said the C64/Apple II generation owned ancestral lands. VMware is like being taken off of our land and moved onto a reservation. In this case, however, it will not stand. * VMware needs to support ATAPI CD/DVD/Blu-ray disk burning, directly to real hardware. * VMware has a bug stretching 640x480 16 color to full screen. * VMware has a bug starting-up multicore, sometimes. APIC MP Start Fixed? * VMware PC speaker's distortion is a good idea, but it is too much for hymns. * VMware and others must list TempleOS as an official 64-bit operating system. * Until super simple block devices are available, hard disk should be placed at IDE primary master 1F0/3F6 and CD/DVD/Blu-ray should be placed at the IDE secondary master 170/376. /Kernel/BlkDev/DskATAId.CPP :285 lines to figure-out I/O ports is gone. /Kernel/PCIBIOS.CPP :290 could be eliminated, but maybe we will keep it so people can play with PCI devices. * Until super simple serial ports are available, PS/2 emulated keyboard and mouse must work. The BIOS must enable these. * The x86 IN/OUT port instructions, normally have a delay. Perhaps, VMware & Intel can enable faster x86 IN/OUT instruction timing for ATA/ATAPI PIO, so bandwidth isn't bad when doing port I/O. See ATAGetResult(). We don't want to do DMA. Perhaps, x86 CPU chips need a new TempleOS mode for fast IN/OUT instructions? * Perhaps, a new interrupt descriptor table entry type or a new x86 CPU mode can be made that cause fast software interrupts, doing exactly what the CALL REL32 does, but with IDT as indirection. We don't need to change privilege levels or stacks. * Since I don't use paging (for anything), Intel should have an option for no-paging long mode, and optimize it! ::/Kernel/Mem/PageTables.CPP :153 lines to identity-map gets eliminated. * Desktop computers must have a reset switch and a fast reboot option, skipping diagnostics. I recommend booting TempleOS when the reset button is pressed and booting UEFI when the power button is pressed. Or, we could build UEFI on a TempleOS layer. Intel must burn TempleOS into a ROM in the factory for all desktop x86 CPUs to ensure tamper-proof trust in the oracle and because God deserves the glory. There will be just an English version. A new ROM version is released every seven years. * We do not want UTF, just 8-bit characters. Somebody needs to choose new 8-bit ASCII characters for 128-255, since we do not want text graphic symbols. We want Russian, Greek or Hebrew alphabets, perhaps? I heard there is an alternate 8-bit ASCII Cyrillic font. Should we modify one font or have a key like the C64 that switches to an alternate font? I made so <CTRL-ALT-f> toggles between two fonts, but did not include Cyrillic. If we modify one font, we just need the twelve window TextBorder characters, but I think we can place those in the range of screen code from 0x01-0x1E. Japan, China and Korea should switch-over to alphabets. Maybe, the United States will change to metric, out of good will. * Microsoft Paint and Linux's Gimp must support TempleOS GRA Files. They are blemish free, unlike BMP files. * We must have a nice dictionary. Someone needs to do a Spell Checker, too. * We must have the ultimate Bible search engine. Currently, all we have is filter search. In the end, it should be a low line-count technique. * "VMware" is a trademark of VMware, Inc. * "Linux" is probably a trademark owned by Linus Torvalds. * "Windows" and "Paint" are trademarks of MicroSoft Corp.

TerryADavis 10y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvL7T4gIJN8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvL7T4gIJN8

voxic11 10y ago

This kind of manipulation of access to public records needs to stop if we are to continue to have a free society. Reminds me of when the US Marshalls deputized a local police officer to move stingray use records out of the state of Florida after a reporter got a court order allowing him access to them. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/us-marshals-step-in-thwart-efforts-to-learn-about-cell-tracking-devices/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/us-marshals-step-...

JackFr 10y ago
I don't think its necessarily as clear as you make it out. Two private individuals donated their personal papers to a private institution, and the CIA asked, but certainly did not compel, the private institution to remove them from the public collection. If you assume that this is simply pure coverup of an embarrassing episode, then the bad guy is really Georgetown (which I say as an alumnus.)
pieter1976 10y ago
In the film Spotlight there's a similar worry about disappearance of public records and a race to get them when they are released before a sort of Boston/Catholic Omerta makes them disappear.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  Amazing film. I had weirdly never heard of the Boston scandal, so I went in with a fresh mind.
jdimov9 10y ago
Do Americans actually sincerely believe that they live in an actual "free society" / "democracy" / whatever... Blows my mind.
- mineshaftgap 10y ago
  Trump, recreational marijuana and a whole lot of other things indicate it may not be a black or white issue.

policestate201 10y ago

Yet another example of the corrupt American police state.

toomanythings2 10y ago
Yeah. No other country in the world does this. None whatsoever.
duaneb 10y ago
Intelligence state would be a much better term. The police have their own issues, but they are very much in the public eye.
- mindslight 10y ago
  Is this not ultimately still in the public eye? We're discussing it right now! The public has short attention span, no consensus, and no direction over the machine. In a different country, perhaps the author would be disappeared and we'd be arrested for discussing such things. Overt confrontation makes it very clear who the evildoers are and directly polarizes the population. The lack of it is what makes our strain of totalitarianism so insidious. Instead, we're given a choice at every step of the way. It's the path of least resistance to pay taxes, pick from the manufactured selection of republicrat celebs, and not engage in direct action against our occupiers. Individuals can buck the easy choice for a short time, but eventually any individual will get tired, find their place to fit into the system, and kick the can down the road for the next generation.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    The power to redact underlined in the article is not available to police.
    - mindslight 10y ago
      Sure - they wear different attire too.

syntiux 10y ago

I'm sorry if I'm completely off but wouldn't the storage of this type of data (public records) be a very compelling use-case for blockchains?

imglorp 10y ago
Blockchains kinda stink for broadcast because you can't store tons of actual data on them, just a hash of your data. They're very good for an irrevocable log of small facts. What does work is if you can find a bunch of servers or networks like IPFS or BT or what have you, publish your censorship-prone data there, and then just publish the hash to the block chain signed by the the author's key. You'd need an index of some sort also. Then if someone wants to read the censor-prone document, they'd retrieve it from wherever they can find it, check the hash from the blockchain, and then know it was authentic.

chinathrow 10y ago

"The Cold War is over" It is back. Reading a book right now how Putin fights Cold War II. It's not pretty.

ljf 10y ago
Which book?
- chinathrow 10y ago
  http://www.amazon.de/Putins-verdeckter-Krieg-Moskau-destabilisiert/dp/3430202078 http://www.amazon.de/Putins-verdeckter-Krieg-Moskau-destabil... It is in german though.
  - ljf 10y ago
    Thanks.

akshatpradhan 10y ago

I think this is huge because it truly affects what actions people take and each action is a new point in history that may have gone the correct/normal course had there not been interference.

MichaelBurge 10y ago

> In that case, the assistant attorney general told the court that the Tallahassee Police Department was under a non-disclosure agreement—likely from the leading manufacturer, Harris Corporation—forbidding it from acknowledging the use of a stingray, never mind describing it in detail. The US government has sovereign immunity to lawsuits, and a weaker right to petition the government in the constitution. I had wondered about this a bit, but here's at least a clear example of a case where you might plausibly want your government to not be bound by a civil contract. In reality, I'm sure commercial contracts aren't actually granted immunity. It's just an example. I wonder if it makes sense to do any of these: * Ban the government from being able to sign an NDA for a commercial contract. Maybe some exceptions for military use. * Require approval from the local, state, or federal legislature before the local, state, or federal executive branches can sign NDAs(since NDAs are effectively mini-laws that constrain the government). * Allow NDAs, but have a public list of (Agency, Supplier) pairs for which NDAs exist