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> eventually legally declassified and discussed openly That's the idea, and by and large the system functions as intended. Critically, it's a "must take increa
by ethbr0 5y ago
> eventually legally declassified and discussed openly
That's the idea, and by and large the system functions as intended. Critically, it's a "must take increasingly burdensome measures to maintain classification" configuration. So default / inaction is declassification.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_United_States#Declassification https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_th...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- er4hn 5y agoExcept for nuclear secrets ;) Interesting caveat
- Gabriel_Martin 5y agoTo be fair, that obscurity is partially what keeps the balance of power intact.
- jldl805 5y agoMore states with nuclear weapons = safer planet with less war. Prove me wrong.
- paganel 5y agoIf Assad had had a nuclear weapon most probably it would have fallen in the hands os Islamists (ISIS, more likely) during the recent civil war in Syria, not a very bright perspective.
- Clubber 5y agoThe US has had quite a few proxy wars with nuclear armed countries. I think it prevents an all our war like WWI and WWII, but not war in general. Less war? Perhaps. We seem to be doing our damndest to have at least one going on at all times though.
- ethbr0 5y agoPresumably the nuclear arms would be the reason they were proxy wars.
- Shared404 5y agoEventually some idiot in some small country with nukes gets pissed and fires, and we have this generations Franz Ferdinand - except none of us live long enough to pick up a rifle. How about no.
- vkou 5y ago> Eventually some idiot in some small country with nukes gets pissed and fires, Some idiot in a big country can do the same.
- Shared404 5y agoBut if everyone has nukes it's a lot more likely - and wouldn't a smaller country be less likely to have processes in place to stop it from happening?
- chrononaut 5y agoThank you Stanislav Petrov. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alarm_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_alar...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- whatgoodisaroad 5y agoYou can be proven wrong distressingly easily. Hopefully nobody does.
- speed_spread 5y agoExcept when the crazies arrive. Then you get all the wars at once.
- skinkestek 5y agoWell, as that number goes up at a certain point it cannot invrease anymore without including: - Iran - Lebanon (ubstable) - North Korea (they already have the tech even if they don't have proper ICBMs yet) q.e.d?
- unfolding 5y agoIn principle I am against nuclear weapons. In practice I believe a deterrent state (at least two adversarial countries maintaining an active nuclear stockpile) is probably better than just one country maintaining an active stockpile. I always wonder what would have happened if it had taken the Soviets longer to develop atomic weapons (or never did). Would a hawkish US president be more likely to use nuclear weapons to assert foreign policy than they are now?
- ethbr0 5y agoIf the Incheon landings [0] had been a failure during the Korean War in 1950, it's hard to see how nuclear weapons wouldn't have been employed, especially as China was neither involved nor had their own. And if they'd been normalized in a second war, even at tactical scale, it makes you wonder how the rest of nuclear history would have unfolded. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Inchon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Inchon
- vkou 5y agoIt's easy to prove you wrong, but doing so requires accepting that MAD is a fool's errand.
- willis936 5y agoRoll a six-sided die. If it lands on a one everyone dies. Now give everyone in the room a six sided die. If anyone rolls a one everyone dies.
- Lammy 5y agoThis is also relevant because the need for Atomic Energy Intelligence was a major factor in the formation of the CIA. This is mentioned in e.g. https://foia.state.gov/DOCUMENTS/cia/3f0c.PDF#page=6 https://foia.state.gov/DOCUMENTS/cia/3f0c.PDF#page=6 "The Atomic Energy Commission is in a unique position in that it is perhaps the only permanent agency of the Government which has operational intelligence responsibilities comparable to that of the State, War, or Navy Departments. It is difficult at times to distinguish operational intelligence from actual operations and it is found that the Commission, without recognizing it as such, -----------------------------------------------------------------------"
- Haemm0r 5y agoso everything that should not show up later will be put as "nuclear secret": e.g. bulk collection of telephone data for nuclear safety, financial data bulk collection for nucear safety, etc. ;-)
- KennyBlanken 5y agoAs intended by the people in power? By the time this stuff comes out, everyone involved is retired or dead or past statute of limitations. This program operated under an executive order forty years ago, before many HNers were born, likely. The guy who signed that order died many years ago. How is this coming to light now serving any public good? Guarantee the Patriot Act, for example, does not get repealed. We also have no idea what hasn't been released, so it's impossible to say things are 'working', by design or otherwise.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago> Guarantee the Patriot Act, for example, does not get repealed. The Patriot Act expired in 2020
- yucky 5y agoOne of Trump's crowning (albeit accidental) achievements.
- TrispusAttucks 5y agoAccidental? He spoke out against it publicly and even threatened to veto should it make it through Congress. It was him speaking out against it (and the abuses of it by intelligence agencies) that discouraged both Democrats and Republicans from pushing it through. Trump didn't like the IAs and they didn't like him.
- amcoastal 5y agoThe Trump administration delivered a letter to Congress in August 2019 urging them to make permanent three surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act. The provisions included section 215, which enables domestic call-record collection as well as the collection of other types of business records.
- aksss 5y agoFrom Wiki - “On March 10, 2020, Jerry Nadler (D) proposed a bill to reauthorize the Patriot Act, and it was then approved by the majority of US House of Representatives after 152 Democrats joined the GOP in supporting the extension. The surveillance powers of the Patriot Act needed renewal by March 15, 2020, and after it expired, the U.S. Senate approved an amended version of the bill. After President Donald Trump threatened to veto the bill, the House of Representatives issued an indefinite postponement of the vote to pass the Senate version of the bill; as of December 2020, the Patriot Act remains expired.”
- coliveira 5y agoThe "funny" thing is how nobody goes to jail for breaking the law.
- SOMA_BOFH 5y ago100% this
- Godel_unicode 5y agoWhat law do you think was broken here?
- Thorrez 5y agoI believe coliveira is saying the government is keeping things classified longer than they legally are allowed to, and no one gets in trouble for that, but they should.
- hedora 5y agoWell, Snowden and Manning did, but that was for whistleblowing/journalism.
- Arubis 5y agoTangentially, that’d be a cool model for copyright.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYou just made me realize classified government secrets are more reasonable and accessible than copyrighted works. The insanity of copyright never ceases to impress.
- pooper 5y agoI like the 14 + 14 a lot better even though I think it is still too long. > The Copyright Act of 1790 was the first federal copyright act to be instituted in the United States, though most of the states had passed various legislation securing copyrights in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. The stated object of the act was the "encouragement of learning," and it achieved this by securing authors the "sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending" the copies of their "maps, charts, and books" for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14-year term should the copyright holder still be alive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790
- matheusmoreira 5y agoYes, that is much better. I still think that's way too much time but under that system everything I grew up with would already be public domain which is a fair outcome. These corporations have already made their fortunes several times over, there's absolutely no need for them to have a virtually perpetual monopoly on anything.
- wolverine876 5y ago>> eventually legally declassified and discussed openly > That's the idea, and by and large the system functions as intended. What makes you say it largely functions as intended? It sometimes functions, but that is different. Also, we don't know what we're missing.
- Godel_unicode 5y agoIt's important in this instance to distinguish how wolverine876 thinks the system should function and how the system is intended to function. It's possible for it to simultaneously be the case that you hate the system and that the system is working as intended. In the US the people elect a government, the government passes laws creating rules (or passes laws delegating rule-making authority which is functionally the same thing) for, among other things, how information gets declassified. That information then gets declassified or not in accordance with those rules. > we don't know what we're missing. That is literally always true, it's impossible to prove that the government isn't hiding something.
- toyg 5y ago> In the US the people elect a government Considering that voting rates are around 60%, eligibility rules are often a joke, and most of those votes are typically wiped out by FPP anyway, it's more like some people elect a government... This said, the US declassification system is as good as it gets. Most countries on the planet don't have anything comparable, and anything deemed a state secret will forever remain as such in those countries (at least officially, bar revolutions). Not even Western Europe is particularly good in that regard. Somewhat ironically, and particularly on Cold War matters, us Europeans are often keeping secrets that would otherwise embarrass the US government, which wouldn't be possible if US agencies kept them on their books.
- thatguy0900 5y agoIf the intention is for nothing to be done. Noone is punished and it's so late the public can't be bothered to care anymore.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- soraminazuki 5y agoIt took multiple whistleblowing attempts in the span of over a decade to get it widely accepted that the government is conducting illegal mass surveillance on an internet scale. That for sure keeps people from having faith in the current classification system, and for good reasons.
- faeyanpiraat 5y ago> “Once an MDR request has been submitted to an agency for the review of a particular document, the agency must respond either with an approval, a denial, or the inability to confirm or deny the existence or nonexistence of the requested document.” So you not only need to know the existence of some secret document you are interested in (how could you?), they basically have the option to simply deny it’s existence? Is it really how it supposed to work?
- ethbr0 5y agoThere's a national interest in maintaining the flexibility to refuse to confirm or deny national security issues. Otherwise, current classified programs could simply be confirmed by a brute force request of every possible program.