7 ms·

There is one very significant wrinkle, though: The difference between ongoing practices and hypothetical, emergency actions. In the former case--ongoing practi

by jarrett 13y ago

There is one very significant wrinkle, though: The difference between ongoing practices and hypothetical, emergency actions. In the former case--ongoing practices--it is hard to make a credible argument against oversight. Some details may need to be withheld from the public to protect basic operation security. For example, the identities of overseas informants ought not to be disclosed, lest they be immediately imprisoned or executed by their governments. Nor should there be a Twitter feed giving up-to-the-minute location data on US special forces teams. These examples seem farcical, but they illustrate the point that at least some operational details genuinely deserve secrecy. (Unless you reject the underlying premise that the United States should conduct intelligence and military operations overseas at all. But that's a very different discussion.) But even though specific details may need to be kept secret--for a reasonable amount of time, until they're no longer actionable by enemies--the nature of the government's ongoing practices ought to be disclosed. The latter case--wherein lower-level officials are permitted to make judgment calls in time-sensitive emergencies--is rather different. This is the situation contemplated by the White House during the Cold War. As the reasoning went, the American nuclear deterrent must be credible, or else the Soviets would seize the opportunity and launch an unprovoked attack on the US, Germany, or both. If a communication breakdown between the White House and the military could render the nuclear arsenal unusable, that would tend to diminish the credibility of the deterrent. On the other hand, the risk of a lower-level official making the wrong judgment call and starting a world war is appreciable. Given these considerations, reasonable people could disagree on what the optimal policy would be. It is not unreasonable or morally repugnant to conclude that certain trusted military officers should be granted the authority to make a judgment call when a) the situation is an emergency, and b) the chain of command has broken down. Again, the key distinction here is between ongoing practices and emergency measures in a hypothetical, worst-case scenario. That distinction must affect our moral judgment of the respective policies.

ctdonath 13y ago
Nor should there be a Twitter feed giving up-to-the-minute location data on US special forces teams. These examples seem farcical Prime real-world example: During the Munich Olympics hostage crisis, police prepared to raid the occupied rooms with overwhelming force (a la "SWAT team"). The raid was called off at the last minute when they realized reporters were broadcasting live video of the preparations & locations, and the terrorists were watching it on TV.
- jimktrains2 13y ago
  Shouldn't you always assume your opponent is expecting you in a situation like that?
  - Loughla 13y ago
    There is a difference between assuming that they are expecting you, and having your enemy know your every.single.move.as.you.make.it. EX: If I'm going to punch you in the back of the head, I'll sneak up behind you. You might know I'm there, you might not. Now, if I come up behind you at the same speed while yelling, "I'M COMING UP BEHIND YOU AND I'M GOING TO PUNCH YOU IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD," you'll definitely know I'm coming, and I should expect a countermeasure. That's pretty-well the difference there.
    - jimktrains2 13y ago
      If we're boxing, or another adversarial match, though wouldn't you become suspicious if I was seemingly unaware that you were behind me? This isn't a "suprise! we're here to check up on things" this is something the kidnappers should be expecting and planning for (what else do they think will happen).
      - pgeorgi 13y ago
        The difference was that they knew exactly where the team would break in. The difference between "there will probably be people trying to enter the room" and "I'll shoot that guy once he breaks the window over there"
      - awj 13y ago
        Boxing is kind of a great analogy here, but not in the way you think. Boxers have this concept called "telegraphing" to call out patterns of movement that indicate what they're about to do. It's one of the easiest ways to lose a fight because an opponent who can read your tells can react to them instead of to the move that they precede. Even though both participants know that the other is actively attempting to attack them, there's still a significant amount of strategic value in concealing the specifics of imminent activity.
jimktrains2 13y ago
I mean, why not though? Why is it OK for the government to have any secrets? Contrast to a person, the government is an entity that is representative of and responsible to the people it governs (at least it should be, here). How can it be responsible or representative if it has secrets. Maybe we shouldn't be sending out special forces teams or covert operatives. If there is something the government wants to keep secret, perhaps they shouldn't be doing it. > It is not unreasonable or morally repugnant to conclude that certain trusted military officers should be granted the authority to make a judgment call when a) the situation is an emergency, and b) the chain of command has broken down. Or perhaps systems should be built with redundancy and decentralization. It shouldn't be up to any one person to make the decision to launch a nuke, or any other attack. We have methods such as Shamir Secret Sharing that would require multiple people to agree to something before being able to provide something to authorize a use of force. > Again, the key distinction here is between ongoing practices and emergency measures in a hypothetical, worst-case scenario. That distinction must affect our moral judgment of the respective policies. Unless that "hypothetical, worst-case scenario" is the government going awry and surveying it's entire populace and killing its citizens without going through any process set down by the constitution of said country. In that "hypothetical, worst-case scenario" is it really OK to be giving the government more power and leeway while decreasing the transparency?
- jimktrains2 13y ago
  Perhaps instead of downvotes, friends, having a discussion about our differences in philosophy would be more useful to us and any potential readers.
- Loughla 13y ago
  I really don't understand the all or nothing argument. Can you genuinely not envision a situation in which we would need secrecy for at least a time? If for nothing else, to protect the people who are looking out for our interests overseas? Like it or not, covert operations and intelligence is important to the long-term operations of a sufficiently large entity. How else will we know what our enemies are planning? I would argue that your view of 'no secrets at all' is just as ridiculous as the government's current approach to our data. It's incredibly naive and comes across as sophomore-level debate. Saying that we can have no secrets is giving up embedded operatives dealing with people who genuinely have bad intentions. Saying that we can have no secrets would have dramatically changed the outcome of the landings at Normandy and WWII in general. That black and white style of argument is ridiculous; that's what I'm saying.
a3n 13y ago
> Nor should there be a Twitter feed giving up-to-the-minute location data on US special forces teams. These examples seem farcical, Ahem ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldo_Rivera#Fox_News_to_present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldo_Rivera#Fox_News_to_pre... "Controversy arose in early 2003, while Rivera was traveling with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. During a Fox News broadcast, Rivera began to disclose an upcoming operation, even going so far as to draw a map in the sand for his audience. The military immediately issued a firm denunciation of his actions, saying it put the operation at risk; Rivera was nearly expelled from Iraq. Two days later, he announced that he would be reporting on the Iraq conflict from Kuwait." Somewhere between the generality of Murphy's Law and the specificity of Rule 34 is an observation that states that an idiot will always arise to complete an idiotic possibility.
- aaronem 13y ago
  "If you make something idiot proof, someone will just make a better idiot."
mikeash 13y ago
In addition to that, I think it's also important to understand exactly what the realistic worst-case scenarios actually are for any given situation. For the nuclear deterrent, the worst-case scenario was basically the end of the world as we know it. Either the USSR takes over the world, or global civilization is entirely wrecked. I'm not sure which one would have been considered worse. Either way, hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, die. For counter-terrorism operations, the worst-case scenario is orders of magnitude smaller. There appears to be no credible threat of any terrorists obtaining WMD, so they're pretty much limited to casualties in the thousands. I think that much of our current woes come down to applying cold-war thinking to terrorism. The situations just aren't comparable. We were facing a true existential threat from a powerful enemy that outclassed us in many ways. Now, we're facing a minuscule threat that can, at most, kill a small number of our citizens from time to time. There were realistic scenarios that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by the USSR", but there are none that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by al Qaeda".
- nickpinkston 13y ago
  Most reasonable comment thus far
- rhizome 13y ago
  A lot of people who made their bones in the Cold War are in control of the government, so "if all you have is a hammer" becomes the plinth of US foreign policy.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    They always say that you prepare to fight the last war. In that case, it's only natural that we're still preparing to fight the Soviets.
    - rhizome 13y ago
      They also define PTSD as a state of mind oriented around preventing something that has already happened. Perhaps in this case, the end of the Cold War.
caf 13y ago
As the reasoning went, the American nuclear deterrent must be credible, or else the Soviets would seize the opportunity and launch an unprovoked attack on the US, Germany, or both. If a communication breakdown between the White House and the military could render the nuclear arsenal unusable, that would tend to diminish the credibility of the deterrent. If you wanted the pre-delegation of Presidential authority to increase the credibility of the deterrent though, the Soviets had to know about it. Which makes you wonder - did they strongly deny it to the public whilst quietly informing the Soviet Union about the true situation?

by jarrett 13y ago

ctdonath 13y ago

Nor should there be a Twitter feed giving up-to-the-minute location data on US special forces teams. These examples seem farcical Prime real-world example: During the Munich Olympics hostage crisis, police prepared to raid the occupied rooms with overwhelming force (a la "SWAT team"). The raid was called off at the last minute when they realized reporters were broadcasting live video of the preparations & locations, and the terrorists were watching it on TV.

jimktrains2 13y ago
Shouldn't you always assume your opponent is expecting you in a situation like that?
- Loughla 13y ago
  There is a difference between assuming that they are expecting you, and having your enemy know your every.single.move.as.you.make.it. EX: If I'm going to punch you in the back of the head, I'll sneak up behind you. You might know I'm there, you might not. Now, if I come up behind you at the same speed while yelling, "I'M COMING UP BEHIND YOU AND I'M GOING TO PUNCH YOU IN THE BACK OF THE HEAD," you'll definitely know I'm coming, and I should expect a countermeasure. That's pretty-well the difference there.
  - jimktrains2 13y ago
    If we're boxing, or another adversarial match, though wouldn't you become suspicious if I was seemingly unaware that you were behind me? This isn't a "suprise! we're here to check up on things" this is something the kidnappers should be expecting and planning for (what else do they think will happen).
    - pgeorgi 13y ago
      The difference was that they knew exactly where the team would break in. The difference between "there will probably be people trying to enter the room" and "I'll shoot that guy once he breaks the window over there"
    - awj 13y ago
      Boxing is kind of a great analogy here, but not in the way you think. Boxers have this concept called "telegraphing" to call out patterns of movement that indicate what they're about to do. It's one of the easiest ways to lose a fight because an opponent who can read your tells can react to them instead of to the move that they precede. Even though both participants know that the other is actively attempting to attack them, there's still a significant amount of strategic value in concealing the specifics of imminent activity.

jimktrains2 13y ago

I mean, why not though? Why is it OK for the government to have any secrets? Contrast to a person, the government is an entity that is representative of and responsible to the people it governs (at least it should be, here). How can it be responsible or representative if it has secrets. Maybe we shouldn't be sending out special forces teams or covert operatives. If there is something the government wants to keep secret, perhaps they shouldn't be doing it. > It is not unreasonable or morally repugnant to conclude that certain trusted military officers should be granted the authority to make a judgment call when a) the situation is an emergency, and b) the chain of command has broken down. Or perhaps systems should be built with redundancy and decentralization. It shouldn't be up to any one person to make the decision to launch a nuke, or any other attack. We have methods such as Shamir Secret Sharing that would require multiple people to agree to something before being able to provide something to authorize a use of force. > Again, the key distinction here is between ongoing practices and emergency measures in a hypothetical, worst-case scenario. That distinction must affect our moral judgment of the respective policies. Unless that "hypothetical, worst-case scenario" is the government going awry and surveying it's entire populace and killing its citizens without going through any process set down by the constitution of said country. In that "hypothetical, worst-case scenario" is it really OK to be giving the government more power and leeway while decreasing the transparency?

jimktrains2 13y ago
Perhaps instead of downvotes, friends, having a discussion about our differences in philosophy would be more useful to us and any potential readers.
Loughla 13y ago
I really don't understand the all or nothing argument. Can you genuinely not envision a situation in which we would need secrecy for at least a time? If for nothing else, to protect the people who are looking out for our interests overseas? Like it or not, covert operations and intelligence is important to the long-term operations of a sufficiently large entity. How else will we know what our enemies are planning? I would argue that your view of 'no secrets at all' is just as ridiculous as the government's current approach to our data. It's incredibly naive and comes across as sophomore-level debate. Saying that we can have no secrets is giving up embedded operatives dealing with people who genuinely have bad intentions. Saying that we can have no secrets would have dramatically changed the outcome of the landings at Normandy and WWII in general. That black and white style of argument is ridiculous; that's what I'm saying.

a3n 13y ago

> Nor should there be a Twitter feed giving up-to-the-minute location data on US special forces teams. These examples seem farcical, Ahem ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldo_Rivera#Fox_News_to_present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geraldo_Rivera#Fox_News_to_pre... "Controversy arose in early 2003, while Rivera was traveling with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq. During a Fox News broadcast, Rivera began to disclose an upcoming operation, even going so far as to draw a map in the sand for his audience. The military immediately issued a firm denunciation of his actions, saying it put the operation at risk; Rivera was nearly expelled from Iraq. Two days later, he announced that he would be reporting on the Iraq conflict from Kuwait." Somewhere between the generality of Murphy's Law and the specificity of Rule 34 is an observation that states that an idiot will always arise to complete an idiotic possibility.

aaronem 13y ago
"If you make something idiot proof, someone will just make a better idiot."

mikeash 13y ago

In addition to that, I think it's also important to understand exactly what the realistic worst-case scenarios actually are for any given situation. For the nuclear deterrent, the worst-case scenario was basically the end of the world as we know it. Either the USSR takes over the world, or global civilization is entirely wrecked. I'm not sure which one would have been considered worse. Either way, hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, die. For counter-terrorism operations, the worst-case scenario is orders of magnitude smaller. There appears to be no credible threat of any terrorists obtaining WMD, so they're pretty much limited to casualties in the thousands. I think that much of our current woes come down to applying cold-war thinking to terrorism. The situations just aren't comparable. We were facing a true existential threat from a powerful enemy that outclassed us in many ways. Now, we're facing a minuscule threat that can, at most, kill a small number of our citizens from time to time. There were realistic scenarios that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by the USSR", but there are none that end with, "and the US was destroyed/defeated by al Qaeda".

nickpinkston 13y ago
Most reasonable comment thus far
rhizome 13y ago
A lot of people who made their bones in the Cold War are in control of the government, so "if all you have is a hammer" becomes the plinth of US foreign policy.
- mikeash 13y ago
  They always say that you prepare to fight the last war. In that case, it's only natural that we're still preparing to fight the Soviets.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    They also define PTSD as a state of mind oriented around preventing something that has already happened. Perhaps in this case, the end of the Cold War.

caf 13y ago

As the reasoning went, the American nuclear deterrent must be credible, or else the Soviets would seize the opportunity and launch an unprovoked attack on the US, Germany, or both. If a communication breakdown between the White House and the military could render the nuclear arsenal unusable, that would tend to diminish the credibility of the deterrent. If you wanted the pre-delegation of Presidential authority to increase the credibility of the deterrent though, the Soviets had to know about it. Which makes you wonder - did they strongly deny it to the public whilst quietly informing the Soviet Union about the true situation?