6 ms·

I totally understand that sentiment, but at the same time, the whole concept of classified information breaks down pretty quickly if you start saying it's okay

I totally understand that sentiment, but at the same time, the whole concept of classified information breaks down pretty quickly if you start saying it's okay for people to exercise their own judgement and break the rules. There are always paths to responsible disclosure. From what I understand, many of them are pretty badly broken, and we certainly need to fix that. But ultimately, you really don't want to set a precedent of "well, if you leak something and you really believe in your heart that it was morally justified, then we won't send you to jail." Anyway, I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion here, so I shall now let the sea of downvotes wash over me.

Torn 13y ago
It's a fair enough opinion, the problem is that there's no public input on whether leaking is justified - those in charge will say it isn't and that's that.
- jmduke 13y ago
  One of the main reasons the court system exists is to make sure public input isn't part of the process, no?
revelation 13y ago
What he leaked was available to 1.5+ million people in the USA. It is not by any reasonable meaning of the word classified, it is the proceedings of a seperate class of society.
- jmduke 13y ago
  1.5 million people is less than .5% of the population.
- vonmoltke 13y ago
  Where are you getting that number from?
  - GVIrish 13y ago
    Number of people with Top Secret clearances I believe.
- jws 13y ago
  Your assertion ignores the "need to know" aspect of classified information. Just having a clearance does not give you permission to access arbitrary secret data any more than having a driver's license lets you drive backwards down a highway.
  - revelation 13y ago
    That's nice, but obviously there was no oversight, no logging, not even simple rate monitoring. That is, after all, why Manning was able to wget this massive cache of data, and they would be none the wiser had he not revealed his involvement to people or systems he falsely deemed trustworthy.
    - vonmoltke 13y ago
      > That's nice, but obviously there was no oversight, no logging, not even simple rate monitoring. All of the above exists. In fact, it's required to exist, along with various access controls in the system depending on the protection level. All is specified in DCID 6/3.[1] That is not to say the requirements were implemented properly, or that the oversight was fully competent. It does, however, exist. [1] https://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/DCID_6-3_20Manual.htm https://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/DCID_6-3_20Manual.htm
    - jws 13y ago
      I suppose we could indent our conversation until people complain about us ruining the formatting and not agree here. (I spent too long on this, got an expired link, that's my signal to set noprocrast. Meanwhile vonmoltke has covered it in 1/10 the text volume. Someday I will learn to be concise.) no oversight – how about "insufficient oversight" no logging – I doubt this is true …rate monitoring – This gets into a huge, hairy, and probably unsolvable problem called "aggregation". Briefly, I might be allowed access to specific bits of classified information in order to do my job, and each one of these is within my clearance. But, if I were to collect together enough of these facts the collection as a whole would provide more information than the sum of its parts and would need to carry a higher classification marking. Consider, people working at an airport need to know when a cargo plane is going to take off or land, say to plow the snow off the runway. But if I take all the take off and landing data, now I know the material flow, and if I take it over time, I can see what the military is strategically planning. This is the kind of problem that is so complicated that after coming up and derailing a few design meetings the officers in charge will realize that the "pie in the sky" ideas from the contractor will probably cost more than the whole rest of the development and never provide a usable solution, so it gets shelved for later releases and some sort of fig leaf is put in place to cover the mandatory requirement. … able to wget this massive cache of data – I haven't looked at this specifically, but speaking from similar systems… There may be entities that access the data at high speed, especially reporting and analysis systems. (screen scraping is frighteningly common as a way to interconnect systems in the military) He may not have been an obvious outlier. Or maybe no one was watching. Or maybe he used wget's rate limiting options. …they would be none the wiser had he not… – This is where the auditing comes in. After fact A,Q, and U are released, someone would probably start processing logs and see who retrieved A, Q, and U. Manning's indiscriminate collection would make him likely the only person that retrieved the union, or at least the only human on a list with a bunch of automated systems. It is after the fact, and too late to prevent damage, but it is possible the auditing would have brought him to the attention of investigators.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
lucisferre 13y ago
I think you have to provide exceptions for exceptional circumstances. Uncovering serious war crimes from by a nation that purports to holds itself and others to a higher standard should qualify as exceptional and be treated as such. If those in power don't want to justify leaks and whistleblowers they should think harder about justifying and covering up murder and other crimes.
Amadou 13y ago
But ultimately, you really don't want to set a precedent of "well, if you leak something and you really believe in your heart that it was morally justified, then we won't send you to jail." The precedent would be, "Go ahead and break the law, if you think your cause is worth serving the time. Then when it is all over and done, we will judge if your cause was worth breaking the law. If your cause was worthy, then we won't send you to jail." It isn't about what he felt deep down inside, it is about what the result of his actions were. I'd hold guys like Dick Cheney to the same standard - he broke the law because he genuinely believed that terrorists were an existential threat to the US. But what he believed is irrelevant, the question is were terrorists really an existential threat? If not, he needs to do the time. But if he was correct, then walk free with our thanks for making the right call.
- kevincennis 13y ago
  I'm kind of divided on this. On the one hand, it's obviously horrible to think that someone who leaked only information about something as serious as war crimes, and only after exhausting all legal avenues, would go to jail. On the other hand, if we adopt a policy of exonerating people whose causes were found to be just, the number of people leaking things that really shouldn't have been leaked is pretty likely to increase. And we're talking about information that would possibly put lives at risk in the wrong hands. I really don't know what the right answer is. But I know it's not cut and dry.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Just a note, Manning didn't exhaust a single legal avenue, let alone all of them.
dkrich 13y ago
Anyway, I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion here, so I shall now let the sea of downvotes wash over me. I actually think this is the popular opinion. Most people don't believe the government shouldn't be able to keep certain things secret or that any agent with classified knowledge has carte blanche to share whatever they deem fit.
belorn 13y ago
> but at the same time, the whole concept of classified information breaks down pretty quickly if you start saying it's okay for people to exercise their own judgement and break the rules. Lawyers, priests, doctors, and psychologies who is all under strict confidentiality sometimes has to break that rule of secrecy when particular crimes is heard or observed. It doesn't matter how classified the conversation is, or the medical records. If they show child abuse, they must break the confidentiality and call the police. The system has not broken down yet, even if those people has to make their own judgement calls when to break confidentiality. It is enough that they just suspect that a child might be in danger. Shouldn't army personal who not only suspect, but can prove illegal activities be under the same scrutiny?
- lil_cain 13y ago
  Aiui, they are. But, like a lawyer, doctor, or psychologist (a priest is not allowed break the seal of the confessional under any circumstances), there's a way of reporting these crimes. And shockingly, like a lawyer, doctor, or psychologist, it's not by sending all secret data they have access to to the press.
- majelix 13y ago
  > If they show child abuse, they must break the confidentiality and call the police. The key point here is that they call the police, not blindly dump thousands of private documents onto the internet.
  - njharman 13y ago
    The people are the police of the government.
- gtCameron 13y ago
  If Manning had just released documents related to specific illegal activities this would be a different conversation. That's not what he did though, in your doctor analogy what he did would be releasing the medical files of all 200 of his patients because he saw evidence of child abuse in one of them.
moron4hire 13y ago
Well, that's kind of the point that the Mannings and Snowdens are trying to make, that the "paths to responsible disclosure" are at best ignored, at worst mined for reprisals as well.
- davidw 13y ago
  Didn't Manning just dump a vast amount of data pretty much indiscriminately? That's very different from what Snowden revealed, which feels much more like actual 'whistleblowing' to me. It does not seem unreasonable to me that diplomats need to communicate openly and frankly between one another, even as they say other things in public. In other words, just like we should be free of NSA spying, they ought to be reasonably sure their discussions don't get splashed over the internet unless it's to uncover some heinous or criminal activity. That would actually be whistleblowing. Maybe some of his data dump could be classified that way, but most likely most if it isn't. I admit to not knowing the details.
glesica 13y ago
> the whole concept of classified information breaks down pretty quickly if you start saying it's okay for people to exercise their own judgement and break the rules. Then let it break down! Information wants to be free and all that. I would MUCH, MUCH rather live in a world where government secrets are virtually impossible to keep than the world we currently live in. Government secrecy is a poison, anything that weakens it is good news as far as I'm concerned.
scotty79 13y ago
> the whole concept of classified information breaks down pretty quickly if you start saying it's okay for people to exercise their own judgement As it should. If something requires to be classified to work then it doesn't work.

Torn 13y ago

It's a fair enough opinion, the problem is that there's no public input on whether leaking is justified - those in charge will say it isn't and that's that.

jmduke 13y ago
One of the main reasons the court system exists is to make sure public input isn't part of the process, no?

revelation 13y ago

What he leaked was available to 1.5+ million people in the USA. It is not by any reasonable meaning of the word classified, it is the proceedings of a seperate class of society.

jmduke 13y ago
1.5 million people is less than .5% of the population.
vonmoltke 13y ago
Where are you getting that number from?
- GVIrish 13y ago
  Number of people with Top Secret clearances I believe.
jws 13y ago
Your assertion ignores the "need to know" aspect of classified information. Just having a clearance does not give you permission to access arbitrary secret data any more than having a driver's license lets you drive backwards down a highway.
- revelation 13y ago
  That's nice, but obviously there was no oversight, no logging, not even simple rate monitoring. That is, after all, why Manning was able to wget this massive cache of data, and they would be none the wiser had he not revealed his involvement to people or systems he falsely deemed trustworthy.
  - vonmoltke 13y ago
    > That's nice, but obviously there was no oversight, no logging, not even simple rate monitoring. All of the above exists. In fact, it's required to exist, along with various access controls in the system depending on the protection level. All is specified in DCID 6/3.[1] That is not to say the requirements were implemented properly, or that the oversight was fully competent. It does, however, exist. [1] https://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/DCID_6-3_20Manual.htm https://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/DCID_6-3_20Manual.htm
  - jws 13y ago
    I suppose we could indent our conversation until people complain about us ruining the formatting and not agree here. (I spent too long on this, got an expired link, that's my signal to set noprocrast. Meanwhile vonmoltke has covered it in 1/10 the text volume. Someday I will learn to be concise.) no oversight – how about "insufficient oversight" no logging – I doubt this is true …rate monitoring – This gets into a huge, hairy, and probably unsolvable problem called "aggregation". Briefly, I might be allowed access to specific bits of classified information in order to do my job, and each one of these is within my clearance. But, if I were to collect together enough of these facts the collection as a whole would provide more information than the sum of its parts and would need to carry a higher classification marking. Consider, people working at an airport need to know when a cargo plane is going to take off or land, say to plow the snow off the runway. But if I take all the take off and landing data, now I know the material flow, and if I take it over time, I can see what the military is strategically planning. This is the kind of problem that is so complicated that after coming up and derailing a few design meetings the officers in charge will realize that the "pie in the sky" ideas from the contractor will probably cost more than the whole rest of the development and never provide a usable solution, so it gets shelved for later releases and some sort of fig leaf is put in place to cover the mandatory requirement. … able to wget this massive cache of data – I haven't looked at this specifically, but speaking from similar systems… There may be entities that access the data at high speed, especially reporting and analysis systems. (screen scraping is frighteningly common as a way to interconnect systems in the military) He may not have been an obvious outlier. Or maybe no one was watching. Or maybe he used wget's rate limiting options. …they would be none the wiser had he not… – This is where the auditing comes in. After fact A,Q, and U are released, someone would probably start processing logs and see who retrieved A, Q, and U. Manning's indiscriminate collection would make him likely the only person that retrieved the union, or at least the only human on a list with a bunch of automated systems. It is after the fact, and too late to prevent damage, but it is possible the auditing would have brought him to the attention of investigators.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

lucisferre 13y ago

I think you have to provide exceptions for exceptional circumstances. Uncovering serious war crimes from by a nation that purports to holds itself and others to a higher standard should qualify as exceptional and be treated as such. If those in power don't want to justify leaks and whistleblowers they should think harder about justifying and covering up murder and other crimes.

Amadou 13y ago

But ultimately, you really don't want to set a precedent of "well, if you leak something and you really believe in your heart that it was morally justified, then we won't send you to jail." The precedent would be, "Go ahead and break the law, if you think your cause is worth serving the time. Then when it is all over and done, we will judge if your cause was worth breaking the law. If your cause was worthy, then we won't send you to jail." It isn't about what he felt deep down inside, it is about what the result of his actions were. I'd hold guys like Dick Cheney to the same standard - he broke the law because he genuinely believed that terrorists were an existential threat to the US. But what he believed is irrelevant, the question is were terrorists really an existential threat? If not, he needs to do the time. But if he was correct, then walk free with our thanks for making the right call.

kevincennis 13y ago
I'm kind of divided on this. On the one hand, it's obviously horrible to think that someone who leaked only information about something as serious as war crimes, and only after exhausting all legal avenues, would go to jail. On the other hand, if we adopt a policy of exonerating people whose causes were found to be just, the number of people leaking things that really shouldn't have been leaked is pretty likely to increase. And we're talking about information that would possibly put lives at risk in the wrong hands. I really don't know what the right answer is. But I know it's not cut and dry.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Just a note, Manning didn't exhaust a single legal avenue, let alone all of them.

dkrich 13y ago

Anyway, I know this is going to be an unpopular opinion here, so I shall now let the sea of downvotes wash over me. I actually think this is the popular opinion. Most people don't believe the government shouldn't be able to keep certain things secret or that any agent with classified knowledge has carte blanche to share whatever they deem fit.

belorn 13y ago

> but at the same time, the whole concept of classified information breaks down pretty quickly if you start saying it's okay for people to exercise their own judgement and break the rules. Lawyers, priests, doctors, and psychologies who is all under strict confidentiality sometimes has to break that rule of secrecy when particular crimes is heard or observed. It doesn't matter how classified the conversation is, or the medical records. If they show child abuse, they must break the confidentiality and call the police. The system has not broken down yet, even if those people has to make their own judgement calls when to break confidentiality. It is enough that they just suspect that a child might be in danger. Shouldn't army personal who not only suspect, but can prove illegal activities be under the same scrutiny?

lil_cain 13y ago
Aiui, they are. But, like a lawyer, doctor, or psychologist (a priest is not allowed break the seal of the confessional under any circumstances), there's a way of reporting these crimes. And shockingly, like a lawyer, doctor, or psychologist, it's not by sending all secret data they have access to to the press.
majelix 13y ago
> If they show child abuse, they must break the confidentiality and call the police. The key point here is that they call the police, not blindly dump thousands of private documents onto the internet.
- njharman 13y ago
  The people are the police of the government.
gtCameron 13y ago
If Manning had just released documents related to specific illegal activities this would be a different conversation. That's not what he did though, in your doctor analogy what he did would be releasing the medical files of all 200 of his patients because he saw evidence of child abuse in one of them.

moron4hire 13y ago

Well, that's kind of the point that the Mannings and Snowdens are trying to make, that the "paths to responsible disclosure" are at best ignored, at worst mined for reprisals as well.

davidw 13y ago
Didn't Manning just dump a vast amount of data pretty much indiscriminately? That's very different from what Snowden revealed, which feels much more like actual 'whistleblowing' to me. It does not seem unreasonable to me that diplomats need to communicate openly and frankly between one another, even as they say other things in public. In other words, just like we should be free of NSA spying, they ought to be reasonably sure their discussions don't get splashed over the internet unless it's to uncover some heinous or criminal activity. That would actually be whistleblowing. Maybe some of his data dump could be classified that way, but most likely most if it isn't. I admit to not knowing the details.

glesica 13y ago

> the whole concept of classified information breaks down pretty quickly if you start saying it's okay for people to exercise their own judgement and break the rules. Then let it break down! Information wants to be free and all that. I would MUCH, MUCH rather live in a world where government secrets are virtually impossible to keep than the world we currently live in. Government secrecy is a poison, anything that weakens it is good news as far as I'm concerned.

scotty79 13y ago

> the whole concept of classified information breaks down pretty quickly if you start saying it's okay for people to exercise their own judgement As it should. If something requires to be classified to work then it doesn't work.