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> Can democratic state do without any secret service at all? I don't mean not to have "operational" security. The secrecy there is in place today is all "opera

> Can democratic state do without any secret service at all? I don't mean not to have "operational" security. The secrecy there is in place today is all "operational", there are no other kinds. The problem is defining what constitutes as being within the scope of a legitimate operation, and especially the asymmetrical nature of defining it (only the people know a secret can reason about it, and they are rarely the best people to make the decision). > There should be no blank exceptions to free speech You're confusing "free speech" in the constitutional sense with something else, which seems to amount to outlawing private agreements to not divulge certain information. Your definition of free speech would cover my right to post the root password to my employers servers on 4chan and my employer having no recurse against me. Constitutional free speech exclusively concerns the governments right to decide what you can say. A newspaper or website deciding you can't "speak" on their property is not a free speech issue in the constitutional sense. > I envision a platform Your envisioned platform is essentially wikipedia. You have a somewhat naive notion of "truth" - the truth in any half-way juicy issue have a very high number of facets and nuances that frequently allows honest and well meaning people to disagree on fundamental issues, which means compromises will have to be struck where those disagreements can't reasonably co-exist. This is a feature, not a bug, in a pluralistic society.

jnbiche 13y ago
>The secrecy there is in place today is all "operational", there are no other kinds. Are you seriously saying that all of today's classified documents relate to ongoing operations? They still classify stuff from WWII. And huge amounts of material relating to technologies unrelated to any operations imaginable (like CRM systems) are classified. I urge you to read the Washington Post's series on government secrecy from a few years ago to learn about what kinds of things are classified in today's government: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/ http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/
- mseebach 13y ago
  No, I'm saying that the people who decide that things should be and/or remain classified will say that it's for operational reasons. WWII was definitely an operation, although it's a long time ago, and it's hard to imagine what might still be relevant to keep classified. If an intelligence organisation procures a CRM for keeping track of operations, and the public tender document says that it must be able to handle 250 operations a month, then they've leaked some potentially sensitive information. The definition certainly appears to be applied too broadly, but you're not going to achieve less secrecy by limiting secrecy to "operations".
  - asgard1024 13y ago
    "the public tender document says that it must be able to handle 250 operations a month, then they've leaked some potentially sensitive information" Maybe you could elaborate on how exactly this is sensitive? (Then we can have discussion about whether or not it's worth to divulge it publicly.) I mean, how does it help criminals to know that your police force has X million policemen? They will have to deal with it anyway. Unless you are in state of war, and have a single enemy, then such information is not of much help to anyone. However, it can show if the money are spent efficiently. We can look at cases resolved/worked on during the previous time period and compare it with spending. I claim savings due to these records being public will outweigh an advantage of any enemy knowing things like these. Just like democracies with all the public information about government spending economically beat dictatorships keeping these things secret.
asgard1024 13y ago
> The problem is defining what constitutes as being within the scope of a legitimate operation Of course, the final authority of interpretation should lie within the public. But it should be defined very narrowly. Basically, if public cannot reason about it, it shouldn't be a secret. Specific details can be a secret. In cryptography, this problem doesn't exist. There is a distinction between algorithm and key. I don't see why this shouldn't apply to accountability of government as well. > which seems to amount to outlawing private agreements to not divulge certain information Again, such private agreements should be very very narrow, and defined by what they can do, not by what they cannot do. In particular, they shouldn't prevent talking about events that happened to you. > Constitutional free speech exclusively concerns the governments right to decide what you can say Yes, and it shouldn't. Government is just another type of social institution. Just limiting government doesn't equate to freedom. Free speech, in my view, should cover all social institutions, including private companies and religious organizations. > Your envisioned platform is essentially wikipedia It isn't. First, I am talking about primary, not secondary sources of information. Second, Wikipedia isn't very anonymous. Third, there is no automated (or collective) assessment of trustworthiness of the sources. The disagreement problem can maybe be resolved, but in a different way than on Wikipedia. My thinking was that the system would have 2 types of information, sources (primary information) and edits (reviews of information drawn from sources). Sources would be optionally anonymous, while edits would be public. You would be able to "invest" your trust into an editor (producer of edits) in the system. Editing the information would be then redistribution of the trust. This would result in calculation of how much you should trust the primary sources, based on their reliability when reporting other things. This would allow you to get a "consistent" view of reality. I am not completely sure how such a system should work, and how secure it would be possible to make it. But it's not at all like a Wikipedia.

jnbiche 13y ago

>The secrecy there is in place today is all "operational", there are no other kinds. Are you seriously saying that all of today's classified documents relate to ongoing operations? They still classify stuff from WWII. And huge amounts of material relating to technologies unrelated to any operations imaginable (like CRM systems) are classified. I urge you to read the Washington Post's series on government secrecy from a few years ago to learn about what kinds of things are classified in today's government: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/ http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/

mseebach 13y ago
No, I'm saying that the people who decide that things should be and/or remain classified will say that it's for operational reasons. WWII was definitely an operation, although it's a long time ago, and it's hard to imagine what might still be relevant to keep classified. If an intelligence organisation procures a CRM for keeping track of operations, and the public tender document says that it must be able to handle 250 operations a month, then they've leaked some potentially sensitive information. The definition certainly appears to be applied too broadly, but you're not going to achieve less secrecy by limiting secrecy to "operations".
- asgard1024 13y ago
  "the public tender document says that it must be able to handle 250 operations a month, then they've leaked some potentially sensitive information" Maybe you could elaborate on how exactly this is sensitive? (Then we can have discussion about whether or not it's worth to divulge it publicly.) I mean, how does it help criminals to know that your police force has X million policemen? They will have to deal with it anyway. Unless you are in state of war, and have a single enemy, then such information is not of much help to anyone. However, it can show if the money are spent efficiently. We can look at cases resolved/worked on during the previous time period and compare it with spending. I claim savings due to these records being public will outweigh an advantage of any enemy knowing things like these. Just like democracies with all the public information about government spending economically beat dictatorships keeping these things secret.

asgard1024 13y ago

> The problem is defining what constitutes as being within the scope of a legitimate operation Of course, the final authority of interpretation should lie within the public. But it should be defined very narrowly. Basically, if public cannot reason about it, it shouldn't be a secret. Specific details can be a secret. In cryptography, this problem doesn't exist. There is a distinction between algorithm and key. I don't see why this shouldn't apply to accountability of government as well. > which seems to amount to outlawing private agreements to not divulge certain information Again, such private agreements should be very very narrow, and defined by what they can do, not by what they cannot do. In particular, they shouldn't prevent talking about events that happened to you. > Constitutional free speech exclusively concerns the governments right to decide what you can say Yes, and it shouldn't. Government is just another type of social institution. Just limiting government doesn't equate to freedom. Free speech, in my view, should cover all social institutions, including private companies and religious organizations. > Your envisioned platform is essentially wikipedia It isn't. First, I am talking about primary, not secondary sources of information. Second, Wikipedia isn't very anonymous. Third, there is no automated (or collective) assessment of trustworthiness of the sources. The disagreement problem can maybe be resolved, but in a different way than on Wikipedia. My thinking was that the system would have 2 types of information, sources (primary information) and edits (reviews of information drawn from sources). Sources would be optionally anonymous, while edits would be public. You would be able to "invest" your trust into an editor (producer of edits) in the system. Editing the information would be then redistribution of the trust. This would result in calculation of how much you should trust the primary sources, based on their reliability when reporting other things. This would allow you to get a "consistent" view of reality. I am not completely sure how such a system should work, and how secure it would be possible to make it. But it's not at all like a Wikipedia.