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I served on a submarine 20 years ago. Fire Control Technician... so fairly high clearance given what I had to operate, and against potentially whom. There are

I served on a submarine 20 years ago. Fire Control Technician... so fairly high clearance given what I had to operate, and against potentially whom. There are a wealth of things I don't know anymore... and no one else will ever hear them from me unless I am absolutely certain that it's been declassified and is in public access. While a system that can be abused to protect people from consequences will never be perfect, in general those of us who have to work with classified information understand that adversaries getting hold of it means more danger for our own people. I do not assume this, and if I had met anyone who expressed that kind of expectation, I would have mentioned it up the chain - they have self identified as a weak link.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago
There are orders of magnitude less submarine fire control techs than there are tank crew-members. I assure you, nobody "up the chain" who's deciding what does or doesn't go in a tank manual expects the material in it to remain secret more than temporarily. It's just not the kind of thing you can rely on when you're disseminating the document to thousands of people across hundreds of facilities. Basically they tell you boots to STFU. And then then they base the rest of their decisions on the reasonable assumption that given time some of you will fail at that. Classic "defense in depth".
duxup 5y ago
I wonder how many folks have access to a submarine fire control tech manual compared to a manual for a tank? I'm guessing simply based on the numbers the likelihood of a tank manual leaking in some fashion (even accidentally), for any reason, is much higher than a fire control technician manual. I would expect individual folks to do their job and not say 'well this will leak anyway'. But more generally I think expecting that 'this manual that we gave to thousands of people won't leak' would be absurd. That second part is what I was getting at.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

There are orders of magnitude less submarine fire control techs than there are tank crew-members. I assure you, nobody "up the chain" who's deciding what does or doesn't go in a tank manual expects the material in it to remain secret more than temporarily. It's just not the kind of thing you can rely on when you're disseminating the document to thousands of people across hundreds of facilities. Basically they tell you boots to STFU. And then then they base the rest of their decisions on the reasonable assumption that given time some of you will fail at that. Classic "defense in depth".

duxup 5y ago

I wonder how many folks have access to a submarine fire control tech manual compared to a manual for a tank? I'm guessing simply based on the numbers the likelihood of a tank manual leaking in some fashion (even accidentally), for any reason, is much higher than a fire control technician manual. I would expect individual folks to do their job and not say 'well this will leak anyway'. But more generally I think expecting that 'this manual that we gave to thousands of people won't leak' would be absurd. That second part is what I was getting at.