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I'm a little skeptical. The intelligence services would say something that would make you skeptical of the motivations of leakers. If they're selfishly motivate
by jadedhacker 9y ago
I'm a little skeptical. The intelligence services would say something that would make you skeptical of the motivations of leakers. If they're selfishly motivated the public doesn't mind them being locked up and put into isolation and tortured in ways that don't leave a mark.
The leakers that come to mind immediately are Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning whom both suffered greatly for their leaks (Snowden had to leave his life behind and Manning was kept in isolation and had her medical needs neglected amongst other things). While they both may have wanted to be recognized as having done something good, they also clearly wanted to let the public know what the government was doing in their name.
- walshemj 9y agoNo you can read the declassified analysis of why people leak on the CIA website https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-61-no-2/pdfs/why-spy-why-leak.pdf https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig...
- gameswithgo 9y agoWhy does your response start with the word No?
- wonton2 9y agoThe point, I think, was that CIA is biased, not that they came to these results. You cannot really trust their research, since they analyze their «enemies». It is like when a skin care company cites that «9 out of 10 said this is the best skin cream (in a survey of 30 people)»
- rockinghigh 9y agoThe CIA is interested in leakers because it uses them to get information from foreign intelligence agencies. They are not enemies.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> The CIA is interested in leakers because it uses them to get information from foreign intelligence agencies. To be fair, that is also a reason why they would have a motive to spread misinformation about what they believe motivates leakers, since information about their beliefs on that matter give target nations clues to both actual vulnerabilities and CIAs likely means of attempting to exploit them.
- solarkraft 9y agoBy the same arguments their world fact book may be incredible.
- krisoft 9y agoI would agree with you that it's quite extraordinary. :) Joking aside. I think the difference lies in how easily an adversary can refute the information. You can just call up a library or an embassy to verify most claims in the world factbook. How would you get access to a wide selection of leakers?
- mygo 9y agothe world factbook is unbelievable. also, just because an adversary is denying information does not mean that they themselves are being truthful.
- nottheciagency 9y agoThe CIA has also had a lot of high profile failures and appear to be a hotbed if groupthink derived from their current political masters. They are a great example of an organization hiring the best and brightest, only to be dimmed by org and political structures. This is not a recent thing. I believe they blew up a Russian refinery with a sweet exploit in he 80s. But other than that, I’m not sure why anyone would see them other than a bumbling comedy of politics.
- jacquesm 9y ago> It is like when a skin care company cites that «9 out of 10 said this is the best skin cream (in a survey of 30 people) After throwing out the all but three of the original 100 people saying one of the other 9 were the best skin cream.
- eltoozero 9y agoStatistics are like bikinis: it’s not what they reveal, it’s what they conceal.
- Cyph0n 9y agoDidn't Manning leak classified information that threatened the lives of foreign operatives? I never understood why Snowden and Manning are put on equal footing in that regard.
- Anderkent 9y agoBecause it is equally important that the us invasion be seen for what it is, as it was for nsa to be seen for what it is. Collateral murder itself was probably big enough to warrant the risk to us spies
- michaelmrose 9y agoCitation needed.
- sincerely 9y agoDoesn't seem like it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/bradley-manning-sentencing-hearing-pentagon https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/31/bradley-mannin...
- nottheciagency 9y agoPrivate Manning did not, at least as far as I know. Their motives were not necessarily pure, but let’s leave the FUD to FB and the feds.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Didn't Manning leak classified information that threatened the lives of foreign operatives? No. Foreign agents or sources working with US intelligence (which are not the same as operatives) maybe. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/20/chelsea-manning-wikileaks-no-impact-us-war-pentagon https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/20/chelsea-mann...
- ebullientocelot 9y agoI don't know, but I can speak from experience as a former enlisted soldier in a deployed military intelligence section of the US Army: 95%+ of the "secret" stuff I had access to wouldn't even have been of great interest to the local insurgents, to be honest. The line soldiers going out on mission everyday openly talked in chow halls about their mission schedules and things that would have been far more interesting to the insurgents than what I had on my computer. Now granted, the mission plans would have been pretty interesting to the other team (I almost wrote the word enemy, but I don't believe that to be accurate, but that's irrelevant to this post), but those were printed out and ended up laying around on desks, all the platoon leaders / platoon sergeants had them, and despite best efforts to keep track of that stuff it is never 100%. Granted, Chelsea may have had WAY more access than I did, I'm not trying to speak about things I have no facts regarding. I am trying to say that I find it VERY hard to believe that an E-4 intel soldier (or even most O-6's, to be honest) would have access to anything that could compromise field intelligence activities or actionable information about the goings on with special forces teams. The overwhelming majority of the information we had on SIPR (basically the 'secret' internet for USG, the computers with red cables coming out of them) relevant to the local theater of operations was an insanely disorganized mess of reports following missions, almost none of which had anything juicy in them. Having become a software engineer and math guy after getting out of the service, looking back on the "information" available to US and allied commanders in Afghanistan I'm 100% certain that my current boss would fire me for delivering such a mess. EDIT Looked up Manning's unit level: Full Disclosure: Chelsea Manning worked in a Brigade level S-2 (intel section), and I was only at Battalion, so she definitely had better systems / access than I did. I still doubt she could find out what Jason Bourne was up to.
- snowwrestler 9y agoThe notion that leakers are driven in part by ego was not invented by the CIA. It's well-known and exploited by reporters. As an example there's a short discussion in the recent movie The Post where Post reporters are trying to figure out who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Ben Bagdikian says something like these guys are always a bit of a showboat and it leads him to remember Ellsberg at Rand. EDIT to add: the CIA is interested in why people leak because the #1 job of the CIA is to create leakers in other countries. You mention locking people up, but that is not the CIA's job. The FBI is the counter-intelligence lead in the U.S.
- jadedhacker 9y agoThe Post is a movie about the Washington Post, which has a large undisclosed financial conflict of interest with the CIA. Jeff Bezos's AWS has a large CIA contract, and Bezos owns the Post. Getting a take about leakers in such a movie is not the best way to acquire a real picture of the world. The CIA only locks up brown people and tortures them in Thailand (star). It refers US leakers to the FBI which throws them into lonely prisons, terrifies, and abuses them. EDIT: (star) Or rather it did. That's what Gina Haspel, our new CIA director nominee, is famous for. EDIT2: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/why-the-washington-posts_b_4587927.html https://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-solomon/why-the-washin...
- wmgries 9y agoYou understand that The Post is about the Pentagon Papers, and takes place in the 1970s, when Jeff Bezos was like 10 right?
- ebullientocelot 9y agoI was curious so I looked it up, Wikipedia has Jeff Bezos born in 1964, and the Pentagon Papers leak in 1971. I'm too tired to bother with months, so for the sake of convenience we'll go with Jeff was 7 when this happened. In response to the parent post here-- I know Jeff is an impressive guy, but using technology that wouldn't appear for half a century or so to create a conflict of interest with the CIA at 7? Holy shit! If I were 1/100,000th that awesome I'd have a Turing Prize to go with my Fields Medal :P
- sidlls 9y agoEgo and narcissism are perhaps the most common and strong traits in leakers and betrayers of confidence. Financial motives and motivations to avoid scandal pale in comparison. So much so that I find it laughable clearance investigations focus on the latter at all.
- John_KZ 9y agoSo if a man that sacrifices his life and career for the common good is an egoist and narcissist, what does an altruistic and giving person looks like? Like a corporate drone? Like a conspirator in an effort to control the minds of all free citizens? The strongest common trait in leakers is belief. They believe in something. They aren't willing to sit back and witness some people damage society as a whole.
- jacquesm 9y agoAnd then there is the occasional upstanding citizen.
- andrewflnr 9y agoMaybe it's because scandal and money are the low hanging fruit that the current process successfully picks. Skepticism is warranted, laughter is not.
- solarkraft 9y agoI did think immediately of Edward Snowden. I could imagine it applying to him - he quickly went to high global significance by standing for something he may not believe in (though it seems like it & is still important), but satisfies his want to do something right. It does not make him less credible to me, but rather more because it presents him in a very non-selfish light. People have been trying much harder and more successfully to discredit Snowden using other arguments. The characterisation actually makes me more hopeful for the future of whistle blowing.
- toopsss 9y agoThe ego argument doesn’t make me skeptical of the leakers, why would it. It sounds like a plausible explanation. What is a better explanation that accounts for the tremendous downside?
- jadedhacker 9y agoI don't think ego plays no role but you can interpret it positively or negatively, and as a dominant factor or a secondary factor. For instance, if ego is predominant, then a leaker would find something to leak, but if it is secondary, it may motivate them to leak when the public interest is at stake when they might otherwise be afraid to.
- rdlecler1 9y agoI’d put Snowden in a different camp because he fell on the sword. Would Manning have leave if she thought she would be caught?
- nosequel 9y agoWait what? Snowden never turned himself in. Snowden ran for the hills right into the arms of rival intelligence. Please don't confusing cowardly running with the act of committing suicide by sword to the stomach. Whether you agree with Snowden or not, he still committed a crime and broke a contract he signed and swore to. Manning at least spent her day in court. Yeah they are different, Snowden was a coward. If he truly did it for the good of the world, he'd turn himself in because of the reward he has already gotten by sharing information he felt like the world needed.
- rdlecler1 9y agoSnowden knew he was going to get exposed (and likely caught) and he did it anyway. And I certainly don’t blame him for running. The system was never going to give him a fair shake.
- lawnchair_larry 9y agoIn no way does forfeiting one’s freedom unnecessarily validate their righteousness. Doing so would be foolish.
- ebullientocelot 9y agoI don't think that's fair to Snowden. Doing something altruistically does NOT preclude skipping the step where you throw yourself into the belly of the most powerful beast in the world, which also happens to be incredibly pissed off at you.
- michaelmrose 9y agoYou call someone who threw away their future,their peace of mind, and any hope of a normal life to expose wrongdoing a coward for not also throwing away his life. " If he truly did it for the good of the world, he'd turn himself in because of the reward he has already gotten by sharing information he felt like the world needed." This is offensively manipulative nonsense. Wanting to avoid being thrown in a hole and tortured is a normal human response and utterly orthogonal to whether his motives were pure or not.
- volgo 9y agoI believe that. Anecdotally, I know people from past work experience, the ones who rattle to an outsider (either to another department or to the public) are generally the "frustrated asshole" type with a huge sense of entitlement and god syndrome.
- hueving 9y agoThis has nothing to do with setting public perception of leakers. It's about researching what motivates them so they can both exploit people like this in other organizations and help protect against it in internal organizations.
- soneil 9y ago> The intelligence services would say something that would make you skeptical of the motivations of leakers. I'd assume most intelligence services love leakers. They just want to be the recipient, not the source.
- ggg9990 9y agoSnowden became one of the most famous people in the world, and a hero to millions, and a villains to millions. Without knowing his personal utility function it’s hard to say whether he feels that this was a net positive for him, but some people care deeply about their legacy and “going down in the history books.”