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"Top Secret America": The Washington Post's contracting investigation
- jokull 16y agoWhat's the easiest way to create clusters like that on a map? I worked on something that required clustering at a zoomed-out level and then being broken down into smaller clusters, eventually singular entities on the map. I look at scipy/numpy and some clustering algorithms but most of them required you to define the number of clusters up front. Any idea what they're using here?
- adbge 16y agoUnfortunately, the map seems to be limited to "there are some 'top secret' things in this general area." I was hoping for something more comprehensive, although I realize that in some instances there may not be a whole lot of information.
- tseabrooks 16y agoFor the companies one of the tabs will last all* of the companies. You can do searches with the state or city name. The result has info on what the company does and how many employees.
- david927 16y agoThe very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. --JFK
- balding_n_tired 16y agoSee: Bay of Pigs, the unfortunate matter of the Diem family; etc.
- KonaB 16y agoHow dare you allude to what someone actually did?! Don't you know that Americans like appearance more than content? Seriously now: I upvoted you, and I wish I could upvote you twice. This myth that JFK was a saint has to die. He handled the Cuban Missile Crisis quite well, but he also escalated U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and had Diem executed (one of the greatest mistakes the U.S. ever made in Indochina). The fact that you're being downvoted for countering an admittedly pretty (yet meaningless) quote with facts is surprising. I thought HN'ers were truth-seekers, not flag-waving retards.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- david927 16y agoOr just see: Allen Dulles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Welsh_Dulles http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Welsh_Dulles
- Charuru 16y agoI don't think this is the same thing. You're conflating a bureaucracy and expenditure problem with the CIA. I mean it's hard to say which one is the bigger problem, but they're very clearly 2 different issues. The problem with pointed out by the article is that there's a closed community within the security apparatus that has grown so big and extensive that it's difficult for the government to control, and could give us a situation where the tail wags the dog. Greater transparency there could be helpful. On the other hand I don't see how the CIA could work without secrecy. It's nuts.
- mcantelon 16y ago>On the other hand I don't see how the CIA could work without secrecy. It's nuts. Whether the CIA is a net benefit to society is debatable.
- buzzblog 16y agoSpending all of this money and having an allegedly free society subjected to this level of government secrecy would be difficult to justify under the best of circumstances. Given that no one knows if it's helping -- or even necessary -- nudges difficult pretty darn close to impossible.
- yock 16y agoOT: Seriously? They embedded a Google Map in a Flash app? How revolting...
- mortenjorck 16y agoI get what appears to be a JavaScript redirect to a 404 on Mobile Safari. Disabling JavaScript made the page viewable.
- chasingsparks 16y agoSame here. Redirect to: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/map/[object%20Object] http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/map/[o...
- philk 16y agoYou can get to the full text of the first article "A Hidden World, Growing Beyond Control" here: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/print/ http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articl... It paints the national security apparatus as the expensive, bureaucratic clusterfuck one would expect it to be.
- thebigshane 16y agoElsewhere in these comments I have defended secrets and secret keeping but I should make it clear that the security world is one HUGE, expensive, wasteful, overly bureaucratic, total clusterfuck. But that doesn't mean it is useless or even worse... "evil".
- dieterrams 16y agoAlso see the trailer for Frontline's documentary, based on this investigation: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/topsecretamerica/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/topsecretamerica/
- Charuru 16y ago850,000 people have top secret clearance? It doesn't feel that secret...
- Ardit20 16y agoWell America is 300 million. 850,000 then is about 0.30 percent of the population. Thus, it is secret to the 99.70% of the American population. That sounds very secret to me.
- Robin_Message 16y agoBear in mind that you have to have a "need to know" in addition to your clearance. We can speculate that there are also levels beyond top secret. In particular, eyes-only for the most sensitive stuff [1], and (what I have seen called but can't find a reference for) code-word secrecy for particular projects/operations. [1] Which is where the Bond film For Your Eyes Only gets its title.
- Tamerlin 16y agoThe clearance levels that I can remember are: confidential secret top secret top secret ssbi -- "single scope background investigation" top secret sci -- "secured compartmentalized information" IIRC There are probably others above that that I don't remember. TS and TS/SSBI might be the same thing with different investigations. I'm not sure.
- philwelch 16y ago"SCI" (Secured Compartmentalized Information) is a separate clearance for some specific set of information. For instance, since my dad worked with tactical nukes in the Marine Corps, he had a Top Secret clearance with SCI authorization from the Atomic Energy Commission. So he was cleared to access any information classified Top Secret as well as any information protected by the AEC on a need-to-know basis. Arbitrarily high levels of clearance can probably be implemented as separate SCI authorizations.
- hugh3 16y ago
- anigbrowl 16y agoInteresting though this is in terms of infographics and data accessibility, I am not very exercised about the 'secret' part of it. Of course I was not expecting to discover anything truly secret, but the presentation seems to inclusive that anything upwards of cafeteria supply to a federal government office counts as 'secret'. I do like it as a way of browsing a large quantity of disparate tabular information. It would be good to have this sort of interface available for research on government or business in general - for example, I'd quiet like to have this interface available (and ideally, $ weighted) for learning more about my city & county government.
- sesqu 16y agoThe article states that they only considered top secret facilities, because they would get swamped even worse by the merely secret ones.
- bd 16y agoSo this explains Palantir's massive funding [1]. Even in a normal environment what they do is lucrative, but in a current state of affairs this must be a gold mine. [1] http://www.crunchbase.com/company/palantir-technologies http://www.crunchbase.com/company/palantir-technologies
- known 16y ago"If you don't read a newspaper you are uninformed. If you do read a newspaper, you are misinformed." Mark Twain
- Ardit20 16y agoThe only option then it seems is to use your common sense and read books humans do not change that much.