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Institutional memory and reverse smuggling (2011)
- dang 4y agoRelated: Institutional memory and reverse smuggling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3390719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3390719 - Dec 2011 (36 comments) Tell HN about: Institutional memory and reverse smuggling - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3311015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3311015 - Dec 2011 (9 comments)
- pyuser583 4y agoI remember a scandal at Guatanamo Bay - some of the translators working for the defense attorneys had previously been translators for the CIA where they interrogated the very terrorists they now were defending. The terrorists knew this. The translators knew this. But the defense attorneys weren’t allowed to know. The terrorists tried to inform their attorneys, but the attorneys weren’t “allowed to know” the identities of the original interrogators identities. So the clients were refused to cooperate, which made attorneys resign, etc.
- nonrandomstring 4y agoAmazing story of tragic absurdity. "as an external consultant, I'm not allowed to know some of the trade secrets in the documents. The internal side of the team needs to handle the sensitive process information, and be careful about how that information crosses boundaries when talking to the external consultants. Unfortunately, the internal team doesn't know what the secrets are, while I do. I even invented a few of them, and have my name on some related patents. Nonetheless, I need to smuggle these trade secrets back into the company, so that the internal side can handle them. They just have to make sure they don't accidentally repeat them back to me."