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When does information generated or collected by the government not belong to its people? If we could refactor the government, I think that question would be on

When does information generated or collected by the government not belong to its people? If we could refactor the government, I think that question would be on my short list of things to define in such a way that it guides everything else.

henryfjordan 8y ago
The government generated the nuclear launch codes. Do you think you should have access to those?
- Lowkeyloki 8y ago
  I never said that all government information should belong to the people. I asked a question. I do believe there's a line. But I don't like where that line is now, in part because the line isn't well-defined. Although, if I did have nuclear launch codes, I doubt I could do anything meaningful with them. As it should be. Simply knowing the codes is not enough to authorize one to launch nuclear weapons. That would be a catastrophic single point of failure.
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    Indeed, you have to be the president too. That person should always be able to launch the nukes at any target whatsoever, and ensuring this is possible is the task of the United States Nuclear forces.
  - henryfjordan 8y ago
    Ahh, sorry I read your comment as more zealous than it was. To my knowledge (and I could be very wrong), Manning and Assange released info about then-current troop operations in the middle east. People's lives were endangered by the release of the info. You might not like where the line is, but I don't think they have too much of a leg to stand on either (assuming my understand is correct).
    - Lowkeyloki 8y ago
      TL;DR: I do think some of what Assange did was morally wrong, but not nearly as much as what he's legally guilty of. I feel that way because the way the US government weilds the information classification system makes it far too blunt a tool. --- Thank you for rereading and acknowledging. The then-current troop operations information is a great example of sensitive information that shouldn't be public for obvious reasons. (Although I don't want to tug at that thread too hard because it leads to opinions on the validity of the war in the first place. It's complicated. ;-) That's a well-reasoned view of the specific thing that was done wrong. However, our government doesn't seem to want to draw the line there. There was a lot of other stuff in that dump. Some of it was embarrassing. Much of it was banal. But the US government doesn't want to make that distinction. It was classified information, whether that made sense in every case or not. I can't say with any certainty, but I doubt the troop operations information was intentionally released. If, hypothetically speaking, all the other information in the dump was declassified, I don't think Manning and Assange would have wanted to release information that would endanger lives. I think they were just overzealous and didn't have the time or want to take the time to comb through it all first. Look how long it took journalists to do it. So if they were being specifically prosecuted for the troop ops info, that would be one thing in my book. It's quite another thing to be accused of high treason for disseminating embarrassing things and things that are only considered sensitive because that's the default classification.
- Pxl_Buzzard 8y ago
  No. So in his proposed system, we would define the procedure for making that information protected. The failure of our current government in this regard is that the default for any information is to classify it. There is more burden to create open documents than classified.
  - Lowkeyloki 8y ago
    Or, better yet, a given set of information is automatically classified or not by virtue of what it is and what it's about, rather than an opt-in/opt-out system. Of course, that's just the first step. Next we'd have to define who or what makes the determination for a given document. And we'd have to define the granularity. Otherwise the system could be gamed in such a way that you could cause an entire document to be classified by inserting an otherwise unrelated footnote containing sensitive info.
    - Retra 8y ago
      In my experience, most information is classified by virtue of it being aggregated and manipulated on a classified system. The only way to declassify that information is to have someone laboriously scrub all the data you want to put on an unclassified system and get it approved. if your entire network is classified, there's going to be a lot of mundane stuff there that is classified by default, because securing such a network requires that people can't just take data off of it without oversight.
    - roguecoder 8y ago
      I have worked on classified systems. We would have rules drawn up for what was classified and what was not. If you can draw up clear rules with no edge cases, no missed possibly-leaky information, where decisions are unambiguous and 20 people would always make exactly the same decision for every piece of information, you should go file a patent for that method because it is a truly novel invention. And we were only covering a single tiny domain of data, not trying to build a rules set for all possible data that could ever exist.
- monocasa 8y ago
  Sure, it was 00000000 during the time that it was most likely that they would fired without question. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuclear-missile-code-00000000-cold-war_n_4386784 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuclear-missile-code-00000000... There you go.
raxxorrax 8y ago
more speedy automatic declassification without exceptions would be nice. Retrospective control is better than nothing. Although if you commit benign computer sabotage and happen to acquire information about war crimes, that should be a freebee.

henryfjordan 8y ago

The government generated the nuclear launch codes. Do you think you should have access to those?

Lowkeyloki 8y ago
I never said that all government information should belong to the people. I asked a question. I do believe there's a line. But I don't like where that line is now, in part because the line isn't well-defined. Although, if I did have nuclear launch codes, I doubt I could do anything meaningful with them. As it should be. Simply knowing the codes is not enough to authorize one to launch nuclear weapons. That would be a catastrophic single point of failure.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  Indeed, you have to be the president too. That person should always be able to launch the nukes at any target whatsoever, and ensuring this is possible is the task of the United States Nuclear forces.
- henryfjordan 8y ago
  Ahh, sorry I read your comment as more zealous than it was. To my knowledge (and I could be very wrong), Manning and Assange released info about then-current troop operations in the middle east. People's lives were endangered by the release of the info. You might not like where the line is, but I don't think they have too much of a leg to stand on either (assuming my understand is correct).
  - Lowkeyloki 8y ago
    TL;DR: I do think some of what Assange did was morally wrong, but not nearly as much as what he's legally guilty of. I feel that way because the way the US government weilds the information classification system makes it far too blunt a tool. --- Thank you for rereading and acknowledging. The then-current troop operations information is a great example of sensitive information that shouldn't be public for obvious reasons. (Although I don't want to tug at that thread too hard because it leads to opinions on the validity of the war in the first place. It's complicated. ;-) That's a well-reasoned view of the specific thing that was done wrong. However, our government doesn't seem to want to draw the line there. There was a lot of other stuff in that dump. Some of it was embarrassing. Much of it was banal. But the US government doesn't want to make that distinction. It was classified information, whether that made sense in every case or not. I can't say with any certainty, but I doubt the troop operations information was intentionally released. If, hypothetically speaking, all the other information in the dump was declassified, I don't think Manning and Assange would have wanted to release information that would endanger lives. I think they were just overzealous and didn't have the time or want to take the time to comb through it all first. Look how long it took journalists to do it. So if they were being specifically prosecuted for the troop ops info, that would be one thing in my book. It's quite another thing to be accused of high treason for disseminating embarrassing things and things that are only considered sensitive because that's the default classification.
Pxl_Buzzard 8y ago
No. So in his proposed system, we would define the procedure for making that information protected. The failure of our current government in this regard is that the default for any information is to classify it. There is more burden to create open documents than classified.
- Lowkeyloki 8y ago
  Or, better yet, a given set of information is automatically classified or not by virtue of what it is and what it's about, rather than an opt-in/opt-out system. Of course, that's just the first step. Next we'd have to define who or what makes the determination for a given document. And we'd have to define the granularity. Otherwise the system could be gamed in such a way that you could cause an entire document to be classified by inserting an otherwise unrelated footnote containing sensitive info.
  - Retra 8y ago
    In my experience, most information is classified by virtue of it being aggregated and manipulated on a classified system. The only way to declassify that information is to have someone laboriously scrub all the data you want to put on an unclassified system and get it approved. if your entire network is classified, there's going to be a lot of mundane stuff there that is classified by default, because securing such a network requires that people can't just take data off of it without oversight.
  - roguecoder 8y ago
    I have worked on classified systems. We would have rules drawn up for what was classified and what was not. If you can draw up clear rules with no edge cases, no missed possibly-leaky information, where decisions are unambiguous and 20 people would always make exactly the same decision for every piece of information, you should go file a patent for that method because it is a truly novel invention. And we were only covering a single tiny domain of data, not trying to build a rules set for all possible data that could ever exist.
monocasa 8y ago
Sure, it was 00000000 during the time that it was most likely that they would fired without question. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuclear-missile-code-00000000-cold-war_n_4386784 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuclear-missile-code-00000000... There you go.

raxxorrax 8y ago

more speedy automatic declassification without exceptions would be nice. Retrospective control is better than nothing. Although if you commit benign computer sabotage and happen to acquire information about war crimes, that should be a freebee.