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The trick with intelligence agencies is that the general public only ever hears about a small number of operations. A large intelligence apparatus undertakes a
by Kalium 7y ago
The trick with intelligence agencies is that the general public only ever hears about a small number of operations. A large intelligence apparatus undertakes a great many, most of which succeed or fail in relative silence.
This makes it impossible to generalize fairly about "most of the operations". You're working from a data set so heavily filtered as to be useless for that.
- fit2rule 7y agoThe corruption of government starts with its secrets. A truly free people keep no secrets.
- EpicEng 7y agoThat is just not in any way practical.
- sneak 7y agoThe government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. Consent cannot be given if not informed. There is no way a government with a million people with Top Secret clearances is operating with the consent of the governed.
- EpicEng 7y agoSo, specifically, you think that literally all information maintained by the government should be public? At som point, your vague philosophical statement has to be turned into real policies.
- sneak 7y agoInformation is not maintained by the government. It is maintained by human beings working in a government capacity, and those human beings have no right to secrecy or privacy whilst working in that capacity. What I said was not vague.
- EpicEng 7y agoWell, that's one way to avoid answering. So what's your policy on classifying information as secret?
- fit2rule 7y agoIf your government is keeping secrets from you, you are not able to be informed about the actions that government is taking in your name and you therefore cannot inform yourself about your own governments activities - thus it is not enforcing your freedom with secrets, but rather guaranteeing your subjugation.
- EpicEng 7y agoOk. So how would you deal with information that would be dangerous if made public? Weapon specifications, names/locations of military or other clandestine operation personnel, the names of intelligence sources, records of ongoing investigations, etc etc etc?
- depr 7y agoThe ones we know about is enough