6 ms·

Honest question: is this the type of material that should be leaked? Is there an overriding good to revealing this document to the public? I lean towards no, b

Honest question: is this the type of material that should be leaked? Is there an overriding good to revealing this document to the public? I lean towards no, but I'd be interested in discussion on this.

losteric 10y ago
I think it's fair to leak because most of this content is common-sense. My highschool civics class had a project to create a terrorist checklist... we hit at least 95% of this list. So I see absolutely no danger here.
- BoringCode 10y ago
  I suspected I'd see a variation of this answer in this thread. While on some level it makes sense for some cases (the information is so benign that it doesn't matter if it is leaked), in this case I don't think it quite adds up. First, while much of the information might be common-sense, it might not be to potential adversaries and I see no reason to provide further aide. Second, revealing documents like this helps prove what FBI isn't doing. When trying to plan an effective counter to surveillance, it can be just as important to know what isn't be tracked as well as what is. Again, I don't see a public good here. I simply don't think there is an overriding good that outweighs potential downsides (even if small). Revealing this document does not show moral or legal problems. All it does is fulfill curiosity. Which isn't a good reason for leaking information related to national security.
  - Godel_unicode 10y ago
    > revealing documents like this helps prove what FBI isn't doing. Does it?
    - BoringCode 10y ago
      Not conclusively, no.
      - Godel_unicode 10y ago
        One might go so far as to conjecture that the FBI hopes people will see this and think exactly that.
- akhilcacharya 10y ago
  > My highschool civics class had a project to create a terrorist checklist What the hell?
  - err4nt 10y ago
    A very common mantra you'll find repeated everywhere if you visit the US is 'If you see something, say something' They have it on posters in transit hubs, stadiums, airports, all over the place. Americans live in this constant state of paranoia about things like this.
  - losteric 10y ago
    I took civics about 4 years after 9/11... It was an exercise in understanding governing ethics/effectiveness. You'd be surprised, or perhaps disturbed, by how many kids put "is a Muslim" on their list...
astrodust 10y ago
I think it's more important people are informed about what their activities might appear like to law enforcement than what actual terrorists are going to have to do to cover up their tracks. Many would-be terrorists seem to only take casual precautions to avoid getting caught. Maybe, like so many criminals, they think they're better than others who have been caught. It's come out again and again that a lot of these attacks have been planned with nothing more than email, Facebook and unencrypted text messages. There's just too much information out there to sift through and find all the true positives. If they actually cared about operational security they'd read up on how spies do it. That stuff is pretty much public knowledge if you spend time researching.
mtgx 10y ago
Let's phrase in a different but similar way. "48 ways the CIA uses to determine when to drone strike someone". Wouldn't you like to know if the CIA actually uses common sense methods to determine when to assassinate someone? By the same token, we should know when the government decides to put people on no-fly lists, and all sorts of other lists. And before you say that the CIA is an intelligence agency and therefore everything it does must be kept secret, the thing is drone strikes should not be done by the CIA. If you wage war, then it should be done in the open, lest you want a repeat of the Vietnam war (which arguably is already the case with the mostly failed, yet continuing operations in the Middle East]). Obama actually wanted to give drone strikes to the Pentagon, but of course, Obama as a weakly-minded politician that he was that always compromised to the other side's benefit, eventually backed down and allowed the CIA to handle drone strikes. If you don't see doing drone strikes (of which thousands were kept completely secret) against 8 different nations by a secretive intelligence agency, then I don't know what else to tell you.
- BoringCode 10y ago
  If your analogy was true, there would be a stronger moral argument for revealing such information. But it isn't. I'm talking about this very specific case.
tboyd47 10y ago
I am a convert to Islam and I say yes, I'm ready for the gap between reality and "common sense" to close on this topic. I don't consider it offensive to talk about these issues openly because I am secure in my knowledge that Islam does not encourage terrorism. I'm more offended when people sweep it under the rug. When it's about safety, people have to leave their fears and biases at the door and accept the truth. A typical person in some parts of America today will look at a practicing Muslim and automatically see a terrorist, but that's neither helpful nor accurate. The facts don't support that stereotype, and I think the FBI understands that. Of course ideology plays a role in detecting threats, but there are other factors that may play a bigger role, like mental health, social stability, criminal history, training in weapons, etc. If everyone understood this, it would lead to more accurate tips by the public to law enforcement, and the concept of a "Muslim ban" wouldn't be seen as productive. But the centuries-old narrative of Muslim hordes attacking the West has been revived, and that is how people see the issue, and that's unfortunate.
- _red 10y ago
  >but there are other factors that may play a bigger role, like mental health, social stability, criminal history, training in weapons, etc Sounds like we need some sort of way to vet people coming into the country?
  - tboyd47 10y ago
    If the extreme vetting uses the criteria in the leaked document, then I don't have a problem with that at all. Of course, it would be silly to (for example) bar someone from immigrating solely because they played laser tag, but I'd assume they would aggregate multiple factors into a total score and measure it against some threshold.
  - chillingeffect 10y ago
    At least on my fb feed, it's a far-right trope that refugees are admitted with no vetting process whatsoever. Enough that I managed to research it and found this very informative infoposter from the Obama administration: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/11/20/infographic-screening-process-refugee-entry-united-states https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/11/20/infogra... note: multiple stages of bio checking, numerous three-letter agencies, additional steps for Syrians. I used to post this every other day on fb, but lately I just realize there are simply groups who repeatedly gaslight each other and aren't interested in reality. One of them referred to my post as "liberal facts," implying, apparently, that the government doesn't perform the above screening process which it claims it does. shrug.jpg
loteck 10y ago
Leaked document appears to be from 2013. Have you considered the possibility that the FBI was itself the source of the leak and the questions/methods have since evolved?
- BoringCode 10y ago
  I'm not sure speculation changes the central premise of the question. Assume that the document was up to date with the latest techniques. Would you still that consider it to be a document worth leaking for the public good? edit: I will acknowledge that the age of the document does change its impact. But 2013 is pretty recent.

losteric 10y ago

I think it's fair to leak because most of this content is common-sense. My highschool civics class had a project to create a terrorist checklist... we hit at least 95% of this list. So I see absolutely no danger here.

BoringCode 10y ago
I suspected I'd see a variation of this answer in this thread. While on some level it makes sense for some cases (the information is so benign that it doesn't matter if it is leaked), in this case I don't think it quite adds up. First, while much of the information might be common-sense, it might not be to potential adversaries and I see no reason to provide further aide. Second, revealing documents like this helps prove what FBI isn't doing. When trying to plan an effective counter to surveillance, it can be just as important to know what isn't be tracked as well as what is. Again, I don't see a public good here. I simply don't think there is an overriding good that outweighs potential downsides (even if small). Revealing this document does not show moral or legal problems. All it does is fulfill curiosity. Which isn't a good reason for leaking information related to national security.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  > revealing documents like this helps prove what FBI isn't doing. Does it?
  - BoringCode 10y ago
    Not conclusively, no.
    - Godel_unicode 10y ago
      One might go so far as to conjecture that the FBI hopes people will see this and think exactly that.
akhilcacharya 10y ago
> My highschool civics class had a project to create a terrorist checklist What the hell?
- err4nt 10y ago
  A very common mantra you'll find repeated everywhere if you visit the US is 'If you see something, say something' They have it on posters in transit hubs, stadiums, airports, all over the place. Americans live in this constant state of paranoia about things like this.
- losteric 10y ago
  I took civics about 4 years after 9/11... It was an exercise in understanding governing ethics/effectiveness. You'd be surprised, or perhaps disturbed, by how many kids put "is a Muslim" on their list...

astrodust 10y ago

I think it's more important people are informed about what their activities might appear like to law enforcement than what actual terrorists are going to have to do to cover up their tracks. Many would-be terrorists seem to only take casual precautions to avoid getting caught. Maybe, like so many criminals, they think they're better than others who have been caught. It's come out again and again that a lot of these attacks have been planned with nothing more than email, Facebook and unencrypted text messages. There's just too much information out there to sift through and find all the true positives. If they actually cared about operational security they'd read up on how spies do it. That stuff is pretty much public knowledge if you spend time researching.

mtgx 10y ago

Let's phrase in a different but similar way. "48 ways the CIA uses to determine when to drone strike someone". Wouldn't you like to know if the CIA actually uses common sense methods to determine when to assassinate someone? By the same token, we should know when the government decides to put people on no-fly lists, and all sorts of other lists. And before you say that the CIA is an intelligence agency and therefore everything it does must be kept secret, the thing is drone strikes should not be done by the CIA. If you wage war, then it should be done in the open, lest you want a repeat of the Vietnam war (which arguably is already the case with the mostly failed, yet continuing operations in the Middle East]). Obama actually wanted to give drone strikes to the Pentagon, but of course, Obama as a weakly-minded politician that he was that always compromised to the other side's benefit, eventually backed down and allowed the CIA to handle drone strikes. If you don't see doing drone strikes (of which thousands were kept completely secret) against 8 different nations by a secretive intelligence agency, then I don't know what else to tell you.

BoringCode 10y ago
If your analogy was true, there would be a stronger moral argument for revealing such information. But it isn't. I'm talking about this very specific case.

tboyd47 10y ago

I am a convert to Islam and I say yes, I'm ready for the gap between reality and "common sense" to close on this topic. I don't consider it offensive to talk about these issues openly because I am secure in my knowledge that Islam does not encourage terrorism. I'm more offended when people sweep it under the rug. When it's about safety, people have to leave their fears and biases at the door and accept the truth. A typical person in some parts of America today will look at a practicing Muslim and automatically see a terrorist, but that's neither helpful nor accurate. The facts don't support that stereotype, and I think the FBI understands that. Of course ideology plays a role in detecting threats, but there are other factors that may play a bigger role, like mental health, social stability, criminal history, training in weapons, etc. If everyone understood this, it would lead to more accurate tips by the public to law enforcement, and the concept of a "Muslim ban" wouldn't be seen as productive. But the centuries-old narrative of Muslim hordes attacking the West has been revived, and that is how people see the issue, and that's unfortunate.

_red 10y ago
>but there are other factors that may play a bigger role, like mental health, social stability, criminal history, training in weapons, etc Sounds like we need some sort of way to vet people coming into the country?
- tboyd47 10y ago
  If the extreme vetting uses the criteria in the leaked document, then I don't have a problem with that at all. Of course, it would be silly to (for example) bar someone from immigrating solely because they played laser tag, but I'd assume they would aggregate multiple factors into a total score and measure it against some threshold.
- chillingeffect 10y ago
  At least on my fb feed, it's a far-right trope that refugees are admitted with no vetting process whatsoever. Enough that I managed to research it and found this very informative infoposter from the Obama administration: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/11/20/infographic-screening-process-refugee-entry-united-states https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/11/20/infogra... note: multiple stages of bio checking, numerous three-letter agencies, additional steps for Syrians. I used to post this every other day on fb, but lately I just realize there are simply groups who repeatedly gaslight each other and aren't interested in reality. One of them referred to my post as "liberal facts," implying, apparently, that the government doesn't perform the above screening process which it claims it does. shrug.jpg

loteck 10y ago

Leaked document appears to be from 2013. Have you considered the possibility that the FBI was itself the source of the leak and the questions/methods have since evolved?

BoringCode 10y ago
I'm not sure speculation changes the central premise of the question. Assume that the document was up to date with the latest techniques. Would you still that consider it to be a document worth leaking for the public good? edit: I will acknowledge that the age of the document does change its impact. But 2013 is pretty recent.