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The "Surviving Secondary" document is several years out of date, and notes that it isn't designed to provide tactical advice. However, there are a lot of tidbit
by GabrielF00 12y ago
The "Surviving Secondary" document is several years out of date, and notes that it isn't designed to provide tactical advice. However, there are a lot of tidbits about screening procedures at specific airports, and this gives me pause. There are several concerns:
1) Does leaking this document give bad people information and tools that they might otherwise not have, that might allow them to travel undetected.
2) Does leaking this document compromise the people or the tools that provided this information. Should we be concerned if countries are less willing to discuss the security of international travel with each other? Should we be concerned that there are sources within these countries that could be compromised?
On balance, it's difficult to see the benefit to the public of releasing this information, and easy to see the risks.
- spacefight 12y agoOK I bite. The benefit is to know, that such organisations are present these days on european soil. Another benefit is to know, that certain biometric border checks do not only hassle regular travellers but also them.
- GabrielF00 12y agoThose are topics that could be discussed in a newspaper article without releasing the original documents, which contain all sorts of potentially problematic material. Here's a sample from the report: "In an operation to screen for Hizballah members traveling from Venezuela, the Mexican Center for Investigation and National Security (CISEN) planned to take into secondary screening Venezuelan passport holders without a mastery of Spanish." Casually disclosing what airport security officials know about the travel patterns of terrorist groups, and how they intend to watch for those groups is very troubling.
- spacefight 12y agoTroubling? Why? The docs are multiple years old.
- furyg3 12y agoScreening for people who do not have mastery of the primary language of their nationality seems like something so obvious that leaking it is of little consequence.
- GabrielF00 12y agoIt identifies Hezbollah operatives as using a specific country's passport (Venezuela) to travel to a third country (Mexico). It also says that Mexican security officials are on the lookout for Hezbollah operatives. Maybe these are obvious facts. I'm not sure that people on the Internet are in a position to assess that.
- mikeash 12y agoIf you don't think we're in a position to assess that, why did you start the discussion? This sure looks like you presented your amateur assessment, the when presented with disagreement you threw up your hands, did a 180, and declared it off limits.
- GabrielF00 12y agoBecause of the precautionary principle. It's plausible that releasing information about what airport security knows about the movement of members of terrorist groups could cause significant problems in detecting members of these groups. Given that risk, the burden should be on Wikileaks to demonstrate that releasing this information will not cause harm before they release it.
- mikeash 12y agoIt's also plausible that not releasing this information could cause problems, so the burden should be on the CIA to demonstrate that the info must be kept secret. How do you choose between your statement and mine?
- GabrielF00 12y ago
- codezero 12y agoOne interesting takeaway was the final anecdote, indicating that a CIA operative traveling with diplomatic credentials had their bag test positive for explosive residue. It seems implicit that they actually had been carrying explosives (not currently) and it was important for the agent to have a plausible and consistent cover story. So, US agents in Europe/Asia transporting explosives is of interest to the general public, I think.