> Secrecy critics also argue that there is something wrong when America’s adversaries have better information about the federal government’s actions than its own citizens.
That makes a good sound bite, but does it really make sense? Like if any ordinary citizen of a nation can access some information, isn't it pretty much a given that at least that much will be known to the nation's adversaries?
Lots of people who have never held a clearance don't seem to understand why state secrets exist, and why they're often a deadly serious matter. If intelligence sources and methods get revealed, that can sometimes result in someone ending up in the basement of a prison in some tinpot dictatorship with a pistol round in the back of their head. Or otherwise being literally taken out back and shot.
Some people's only frame of reference is that there's nothing "secret" that's of more import than that spreadsheet Katie from HR left out on her desk, and now OMG, everyone knows what everyone else makes, the horror . . .
Dont think there are state secrets, or dont think a state should have secrets? I know a few libertarians who honestly believe that a government should be totally open with its citizens. But none of them believe that the country's military planning should be shared with the enemy. None of them believe that weapon designs should be shared worldwide in the name of openness.
When people choose to go into that line of work knowing that's the risk they could take on (or outsource to someone else through dubious means), not sure why people have to be sympathetic to that compared to all those who don't go into such line of work and still get killed everyday. But hey, dress it up in a flag and declare it a secret, makes it all better...
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It's ok for people footing the bill in part to want know what exactly they are paying for, even if people may still keep dying? Good to know, I was starting to think people would be surprised...
When I worked at the Pentagon, the security briefing I got said that anything that was classified as Confidential should be assumed to be in the enemies hands immediately. Anything classified Secret should be assumed to be in their hands within six months. Anything classified Top Secret should be assumed to be in their hands in eighteen months.
I think that's why they invented compartments (Secure Compartmented Information), so that something could be classified at a lower level but compartmentalized, and that would make it take a lot longer to get into enemy hands. You weren't allowed to access something unless you had both the clearance level and had also been read onto that particular compartment, plus were able to show "need to know".
We were also told that just because something was printed in a newspaper, that doesn't mean it's unclassified. There were more than a few times when certain newspapers were banned in the building, because of an article that got printed that day.
That makes a good sound bite, but does it really make sense? Like if any ordinary citizen of a nation can access some information, isn't it pretty much a given that at least that much will be known to the nation's adversaries?