11 ms·

Umberto Eco: "the crypts of state secrets are not beyond the hacker’s grasp..."

108 points by fiaz 16y ago

danielnicollet 16y ago
Great article. I especially liked this thought provoking segment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1976276 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1976276
blue1 16y ago
It seems that Eco's DVD player has no "pause" button. Also, the interesting part regarding Berlusconi in the WL cables are not the facts, but the american opinions about them, which apparently are quite different from the official ones.
takrupp 16y ago
Makes sense. Another article spoke of how documenting the Bush and Obama presidencies will be tough and probably not that thorough, as the juicy bits are written on scraps of paper that are immediately disposed of. There is a market for an offline, secure technology, like a modern day codex.
- hugh3 16y ago
  The Bush and Obama White Houses are still producing documents at a far greater rate than any prior White House, I'm willing to guess. If anything, it'll be a difficult job because the Bush and Obama Presidential Libraries will be filled with so many dull emails between White House staff members that you'll never be able to find the interesting ones. Anyway, the really juicy bits have always happened in face-to-face meetings.
tptacek 16y ago
Each Wikileaks dump is a different kind of funhouse mirror, aborbing the gazes of politicians, activists, philosophers, pundits, and what-have-you, repaying them with illusory advancements of their agendas. So now we get --- respectfully! The Name Of The Rose is one of my all-time top-5 books! --- the take of a blowhard classically-trained Italian semiotician (yeah, there's someone who isn't going to see his life's work reflected in the Wikileaks narrative) on world politics. And from it, we get these gems of foreign policy: * The State Department doesn't know anything you can't learn in the newspaper * Embassies have turned into spy centers (heavens!) * Wikileaks did irreparable damage to Clinton and Obama (irreparable! Unlike, say, losing the house and practical control of the Senate?) * Technology has advanced to the point where governments can't keep secrets anymore These points, all utterly banal, some dubious, would have been shrugged off in any article not written by a famous person in the context of Wikileaks. But now that we have Wikileaks, anything any famous person writes, be it bridge trolls like Michael Scheurer and John Bolton or has-been literary stars like Umberto Eco, glistens with supposed insight. I'm not a WL supporter, but I'm worried that the effect it's having on public discourse may be bothering me even more than the underlying principles. PS: I'll concede the humor buried in the subtext of Eco making reference to Dan Brown.
- elblanco 16y ago
  > The State Department doesn't know anything you can't learn in the newspaper This is the bit that has me the most mystified...none of the released cables reveals anything particularly surprising (or at least not surprising to anybody who pays even minimal attention to world news)...yet the media is acting like these are huge revelations and it leaves me confused -- is the media reporting that wikileaks is leaking these completely obvious things? or are they reporting about these fantastic new completely obvious things?
  - tptacek 16y ago
    To the media, each Wikileaks dump is just another lump of fuel for the attention-gathering machine. Everyone knows this, including Assange, who acknowledges it openly. One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate; it might, perish the thought!, be boring. Where would we find the persecuted elfin protoganist? What about the sex? The gossip? To whom would we sell the movie rights about a policy process story?
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      > One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate; This one is pretty real. For one we now have official confirmation that the Netherlands hosts a foreign countries nuclear weapons inspite of numerous politicians being on the record to the contrary and for that alone I thank Julian Assange. I'm pretty sure that there are lots of other bits and pieces that are relevant to various parties. One thing this all shows is that you really can't trust governments with any collection of data and that's another useful thing to know with direct application to everyday life.
      - roel_v 16y ago
        To the best of my knowledge the Dutch government, like the Belgian, never confirmed nor denied that US nuclear warheads were stored on Dutch resp. Belgian soil. Everybody knew for at least 25 years that they were there, and nobody was even coy about it - just that there was no 'official' confirmation. So it's not a new fact at all.
neilk 16y ago
I like Umberto Eco, but a lot of this is what I call "profundity by paradox". Technology goes backward as it advances! The real secret is that there is no secret! Etc.
- borism 16y ago
  this is philosophy you know, not everything is what it sounds like at first!
- steadicat 16y ago
  Sadly, I find this extremely common in Italian writing (I am Italian). I wouldn't be lying if I said that this kind of logic (or lack thereof) is one of the main reasons why I left the country.
- ggchappell 16y ago
  I'd have to agree. Also, that phrase "profundity by paradox" is a nice one. And remarkably little-used. Right now it gets just 3 Google hits (a 1993 book, a 2007 quote from that same book, and a 2009 philosophy discussion); perhaps we should see what we can do to increase that.
makmanalp 16y ago
>> "but (digital) CDs now only allow us quantum leaps from one chapter to another" They say to write what you know about ...
jacquesm 16y ago
Even though Umberto Eco probably does not realize that mr. Mannings activities do not really qualify as hacking he's right on the money in that any large trove of data will sooner or later become public. There is a ratchet action at work here which causes information to be disseminated even when you really don't want to. The mere existence of information that more than just a very few people have access to almost guarantees a leak and eventual publication, with some direct numerical link between the number of people that have access and the chances of the information being leaked. Those tasked with guarding our privacy are worried about all this precisely because they seem to be incapable of doing so, even when dealing with stuff that would never have seen daylight 20 years ago. With every advance in telecommunications technology, computing and storage the amount of information explodes further and avenues through which it may leak out multiply. Cellphones with cameras are one nice example of this effect. When you put together a 'list of sensitive installations' you need to realize the impact of just creating such a list. Once created you have to assume that eventually it will fall in to the hands of those that you don't want to have it (and what a banal list it is, is that the best they could do?). Spy novels have been preaching 'need to know' for a long time, and governments the world over have always struggled with finding the right balance between being able to do their jobs as well as not helping their perceived enemies or other parties to the information they so painstakingly collected. It looks to me as though the big lesson of this leak (besides a bunch of important details in the cables themselves) is that this process is currently failing.
- poet 16y ago
  Jacques your rhetoric on Wikileaks is quite frankly awful. Here are some specific pieces I take issue with: The mere existence of information that more than just a very few people have access to almost guarantees a leak and eventual publication Empirically not true. What percentage of classified information has been leaked in the course of history? It's infinitesimally small. With every advance in telecommunications technology, computing and storage the amount of information explodes further and avenues through which it may leak out multiply. Cellphones with cameras are one nice example of this effect. The government can control what technology they allow into secured facilities. Cellphones with cameras are irrelevant when they aren't allowed into secure locations. what a banal list it is, is that the best they could do?. Obviously not. Do you really think the list that was leaked is the only such list? More detailed lists would obviously be classified at TS. It looks to me as though the big lesson of this leak (besides a bunch of important details in the cables themselves) is that this process is currently failing. The stuff that's been leaked is relatively low level Secret stuff. To claim that recent events prove that the government's ability to protect classified information is failing is ridiculous. -- Why the standard of debate so low for this particular issue?

108 points by fiaz 16y ago

Great article. I especially liked this thought provoking segment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1976276 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1976276

blue1 16y ago

It seems that Eco's DVD player has no "pause" button. Also, the interesting part regarding Berlusconi in the WL cables are not the facts, but the american opinions about them, which apparently are quite different from the official ones.

takrupp 16y ago

Makes sense. Another article spoke of how documenting the Bush and Obama presidencies will be tough and probably not that thorough, as the juicy bits are written on scraps of paper that are immediately disposed of. There is a market for an offline, secure technology, like a modern day codex.

hugh3 16y ago
The Bush and Obama White Houses are still producing documents at a far greater rate than any prior White House, I'm willing to guess. If anything, it'll be a difficult job because the Bush and Obama Presidential Libraries will be filled with so many dull emails between White House staff members that you'll never be able to find the interesting ones. Anyway, the really juicy bits have always happened in face-to-face meetings.

tptacek 16y ago

Each Wikileaks dump is a different kind of funhouse mirror, aborbing the gazes of politicians, activists, philosophers, pundits, and what-have-you, repaying them with illusory advancements of their agendas. So now we get --- respectfully! The Name Of The Rose is one of my all-time top-5 books! --- the take of a blowhard classically-trained Italian semiotician (yeah, there's someone who isn't going to see his life's work reflected in the Wikileaks narrative) on world politics. And from it, we get these gems of foreign policy: * The State Department doesn't know anything you can't learn in the newspaper * Embassies have turned into spy centers (heavens!) * Wikileaks did irreparable damage to Clinton and Obama (irreparable! Unlike, say, losing the house and practical control of the Senate?) * Technology has advanced to the point where governments can't keep secrets anymore These points, all utterly banal, some dubious, would have been shrugged off in any article not written by a famous person in the context of Wikileaks. But now that we have Wikileaks, anything any famous person writes, be it bridge trolls like Michael Scheurer and John Bolton or has-been literary stars like Umberto Eco, glistens with supposed insight. I'm not a WL supporter, but I'm worried that the effect it's having on public discourse may be bothering me even more than the underlying principles. PS: I'll concede the humor buried in the subtext of Eco making reference to Dan Brown.

elblanco 16y ago
> The State Department doesn't know anything you can't learn in the newspaper This is the bit that has me the most mystified...none of the released cables reveals anything particularly surprising (or at least not surprising to anybody who pays even minimal attention to world news)...yet the media is acting like these are huge revelations and it leaves me confused -- is the media reporting that wikileaks is leaking these completely obvious things? or are they reporting about these fantastic new completely obvious things?
- tptacek 16y ago
  To the media, each Wikileaks dump is just another lump of fuel for the attention-gathering machine. Everyone knows this, including Assange, who acknowledges it openly. One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate; it might, perish the thought!, be boring. Where would we find the persecuted elfin protoganist? What about the sex? The gossip? To whom would we sell the movie rights about a policy process story?
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    > One wonders whether a real impactful whistleblowing leak might be disadvantaged in this climate; This one is pretty real. For one we now have official confirmation that the Netherlands hosts a foreign countries nuclear weapons inspite of numerous politicians being on the record to the contrary and for that alone I thank Julian Assange. I'm pretty sure that there are lots of other bits and pieces that are relevant to various parties. One thing this all shows is that you really can't trust governments with any collection of data and that's another useful thing to know with direct application to everyday life.
    - roel_v 16y ago
      To the best of my knowledge the Dutch government, like the Belgian, never confirmed nor denied that US nuclear warheads were stored on Dutch resp. Belgian soil. Everybody knew for at least 25 years that they were there, and nobody was even coy about it - just that there was no 'official' confirmation. So it's not a new fact at all.

neilk 16y ago

I like Umberto Eco, but a lot of this is what I call "profundity by paradox". Technology goes backward as it advances! The real secret is that there is no secret! Etc.

borism 16y ago
this is philosophy you know, not everything is what it sounds like at first!
steadicat 16y ago
Sadly, I find this extremely common in Italian writing (I am Italian). I wouldn't be lying if I said that this kind of logic (or lack thereof) is one of the main reasons why I left the country.
ggchappell 16y ago
I'd have to agree. Also, that phrase "profundity by paradox" is a nice one. And remarkably little-used. Right now it gets just 3 Google hits (a 1993 book, a 2007 quote from that same book, and a 2009 philosophy discussion); perhaps we should see what we can do to increase that.

makmanalp 16y ago

>> "but (digital) CDs now only allow us quantum leaps from one chapter to another" They say to write what you know about ...

jacquesm 16y ago

Even though Umberto Eco probably does not realize that mr. Mannings activities do not really qualify as hacking he's right on the money in that any large trove of data will sooner or later become public. There is a ratchet action at work here which causes information to be disseminated even when you really don't want to. The mere existence of information that more than just a very few people have access to almost guarantees a leak and eventual publication, with some direct numerical link between the number of people that have access and the chances of the information being leaked. Those tasked with guarding our privacy are worried about all this precisely because they seem to be incapable of doing so, even when dealing with stuff that would never have seen daylight 20 years ago. With every advance in telecommunications technology, computing and storage the amount of information explodes further and avenues through which it may leak out multiply. Cellphones with cameras are one nice example of this effect. When you put together a 'list of sensitive installations' you need to realize the impact of just creating such a list. Once created you have to assume that eventually it will fall in to the hands of those that you don't want to have it (and what a banal list it is, is that the best they could do?). Spy novels have been preaching 'need to know' for a long time, and governments the world over have always struggled with finding the right balance between being able to do their jobs as well as not helping their perceived enemies or other parties to the information they so painstakingly collected. It looks to me as though the big lesson of this leak (besides a bunch of important details in the cables themselves) is that this process is currently failing.

poet 16y ago
Jacques your rhetoric on Wikileaks is quite frankly awful. Here are some specific pieces I take issue with: The mere existence of information that more than just a very few people have access to almost guarantees a leak and eventual publication Empirically not true. What percentage of classified information has been leaked in the course of history? It's infinitesimally small. With every advance in telecommunications technology, computing and storage the amount of information explodes further and avenues through which it may leak out multiply. Cellphones with cameras are one nice example of this effect. The government can control what technology they allow into secured facilities. Cellphones with cameras are irrelevant when they aren't allowed into secure locations. what a banal list it is, is that the best they could do?. Obviously not. Do you really think the list that was leaked is the only such list? More detailed lists would obviously be classified at TS. It looks to me as though the big lesson of this leak (besides a bunch of important details in the cables themselves) is that this process is currently failing. The stuff that's been leaked is relatively low level Secret stuff. To claim that recent events prove that the government's ability to protect classified information is failing is ridiculous. -- Why the standard of debate so low for this particular issue?