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Of course, this information, if it existed, would be classified highly. Greenwald's rhetoric has had a declension from "nobody can prove that harm came from an

Of course, this information, if it existed, would be classified highly. Greenwald's rhetoric has had a declension from "nobody can prove that harm came from any leaks" down to "there was no harm that came from leaks." If known harm did come from leaks, that would (obviously) be valuable information for the people doing the harming. Disseminating it would be highly irresponsible.

cnvogel 11y ago
In general surely that will be valuable information. But we currently have a high lack of confidence in the truthfulness of what secret agencies claim, and the only thing being constantly spread out to the media is fear mongering about how terrible we all suffer, may it be because of Snowden's revelations or slight restriction on bulk data collections. In the end it should be the voting public that gives authority to these dubious agencies, and all over the place it seems that the classification/secrecy preserving methods of control of spies have utterly failed (the U.S. FISA court, or the parlamentary control commission we have in Germany[1] to supervise our secret services). So, in my oppinion it should become common practice to "sacrifice" one or a few operations (which anyhow are said to have failed and had to be abandoned because of Snowden leaks) to perform an as-public-as-feasible post-mortem analysis on how efficient, corresponding to regulations and laws, intrusive to constitutional rights... they have been pursued. [1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlamentarisches_Kontrollgremium http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlamentarisches_Kontrollgremi...
- foxhedgehog 11y ago
  I'm not sure that I follow. I was providing a reason why this information might be classified, and therefore never eligible for publication. You seem to be arguing a separate point: that, if it was published, it could not be taken seriously. The way that the present system is supposed to work is that there is oversight from Congress over the agencies, oftentimes in public, and that the President disseminates authority to all elements of the federal government. Last I checked, the President and Congress were supposed to be elected by the U.S. voting public. Are you arguing that government should be disintermediated entirely in this case? Aside from various interesting constitutional implications, this also would seem to be an argument against the existence of classified information at all. As for the question of "sacrificing" operations, who gets to make the decision of what to sacrifice?
- cnvogel 11y ago
  [foxhedgehog, I seem not to be allowed to reply to your last comment (too deeply nested?) so I'll put it here] You said "Disseminating [information about actual harm] would be highly irresponsible." And my claim is that disseminating of this information is necessary to reinstate trust on control of secret agencies, even if some harm is done by this additional disseminating.
  - foxhedgehog 11y ago
    Ok. My guess is that the institutions that be have made a cost-benefit decision on this and decided otherwise. In the case of WikiLeaks, specifically, I can't blame them: not giving material information to the Taliban is probably more important than any short-term PR boost that is going to be diluted with skepticism.

cnvogel 11y ago

In general surely that will be valuable information. But we currently have a high lack of confidence in the truthfulness of what secret agencies claim, and the only thing being constantly spread out to the media is fear mongering about how terrible we all suffer, may it be because of Snowden's revelations or slight restriction on bulk data collections. In the end it should be the voting public that gives authority to these dubious agencies, and all over the place it seems that the classification/secrecy preserving methods of control of spies have utterly failed (the U.S. FISA court, or the parlamentary control commission we have in Germany[1] to supervise our secret services). So, in my oppinion it should become common practice to "sacrifice" one or a few operations (which anyhow are said to have failed and had to be abandoned because of Snowden leaks) to perform an as-public-as-feasible post-mortem analysis on how efficient, corresponding to regulations and laws, intrusive to constitutional rights... they have been pursued. [1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlamentarisches_Kontrollgremium http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parlamentarisches_Kontrollgremi...

foxhedgehog 11y ago
I'm not sure that I follow. I was providing a reason why this information might be classified, and therefore never eligible for publication. You seem to be arguing a separate point: that, if it was published, it could not be taken seriously. The way that the present system is supposed to work is that there is oversight from Congress over the agencies, oftentimes in public, and that the President disseminates authority to all elements of the federal government. Last I checked, the President and Congress were supposed to be elected by the U.S. voting public. Are you arguing that government should be disintermediated entirely in this case? Aside from various interesting constitutional implications, this also would seem to be an argument against the existence of classified information at all. As for the question of "sacrificing" operations, who gets to make the decision of what to sacrifice?
cnvogel 11y ago
[foxhedgehog, I seem not to be allowed to reply to your last comment (too deeply nested?) so I'll put it here] You said "Disseminating [information about actual harm] would be highly irresponsible." And my claim is that disseminating of this information is necessary to reinstate trust on control of secret agencies, even if some harm is done by this additional disseminating.
- foxhedgehog 11y ago
  Ok. My guess is that the institutions that be have made a cost-benefit decision on this and decided otherwise. In the case of WikiLeaks, specifically, I can't blame them: not giving material information to the Taliban is probably more important than any short-term PR boost that is going to be diluted with skepticism.