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And They have an obligation to do what's in the best interest of the citizens of this country. Classification is useful only so far as it improves our well-bei
by arohner 17y ago
And They have an obligation to do what's in the best interest of the citizens of this country.
Classification is useful only so far as it improves our well-being. Nuclear launch codes and radio frequencies fall under this. Keeping something classified because it embarrasses a gov't official or maybe costs him a job is not.
- GHFigs 17y agoReality is not so clear cut. There is a huge span of information which is useful to potential enemies without directly being a risk to people's lives. For instance, in the Army counterintelligence report that Wikileaks recently published one of the classified items (much of the content of the report was actually unclassified information) lists certain countries that were believed to have the capacity to hack Wikileaks. Now, if you were (say) North Korea, then your presence or absence on that list tells you something about what the US knew about your cyberwarfare capabilities. If you were the US, leaking this information undermines your desire to not reveal all you know, and might even reveal something about your own intelligence capability. I've intentionally chosen a fairly benign example because my point is not that this information is so valuable, but that classification of information does not simply break down into "nukes" and "embarrassing".