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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Dec 4, 2010 16:44:42 GMT
Do you welcome private diplomatic messages being put in the public domain, the implication being that those in government should never write down anything they would not want to see printed in the newspapers? Or should government officials be able to write freely in confidence that only the intended recipients will get to read it?
In general, is it in the public interest for secrets to be kept or for them to be known by all?
Does the Internet mean an end to all secrets? If so, is it a good or a bad thing?
Martin
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Post by blueshift on Dec 9, 2010 18:30:00 GMT
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Post by legios on Dec 9, 2010 21:13:10 GMT
Do you welcome private diplomatic messages being put in the public domain, the implication being that those in government should never write down anything they would not want to see printed in the newspapers? Or should government officials be able to write freely in confidence that only the intended recipients will get to read it? On a practical level I think it is extremely damaging for private diplomatic communications to be placed in the public domain. The business of diplomacy is very much built around a carefully crafted pretense between all parties involved. It is this consensual lie that everyone is all friends and we can all sit down and talk to each other that allows diplomacy to happen. If everybody knows what folk really think about them it makes that process that little bit harder and therefore makes the world a somewhat less stable place. Depends on the secret really. If the secret is "this is what we plan to do if some of our citizens are help prisoner unjustly by a foreign power" I'd think that the specific details of that sort of thing shouldn't be known to all and sundry. Likewise if it is a list of places that Britain, say, is dependent on then I would not be entirely sanguine about that information being known by people who may not be entirely well disposed to us. On the other hand, if a government had been deliberately exposing people to high levels of radiation without their knowledge or doping unknowing people with hallucinogens to see what would happen then that is the sort of thing that probably shouldn't remain secret. I'm not sure if there is a clear cut yes or no answer to this one. I really do feel that it depends. Nope, I don't think that the Internet by definition means an end to all secrets. It just means that when secrets are revealed the propagation of the information is much faster. Like any communication medium it acts as a method of transmission of information. In the case of secret information it remains necessary for some to breach secrecy and reveal that information in the first place. In essence I think the only difference between this matter and, say, the Aldrich Ames affair is that in this case a US Government employee has handed classified information to a non-state actor who chose to use that information by making it available to all and sundry, as opposed to a rival state actor which wanted to utilize that information by means of not revealing that it possessed it. I think what is often forgotten in this case is that at its root this is an incident of a government employee illegally divulging information. What makes it different is that we haven't really seen a non-state actor engaging in quite this flamboyant an act of informational warfare before. This sort of thing has been the province of nations in the past and the ground rules of the game have become slightly different. (For the record, I am not a believer in the Gibsonesque "Information wants to be free" that you see parroted around sometimes. Information doesn't want anything, anymore than a spade does. They are both tools that people use to achieve particular goals. The question that really should be asked of any particular piece of information is what goals do people want to use it to achieve.) I don't think that the existence of the Internet has led to the abolition of secrets. After all there doesn't seem to be the same volume of Russian or Israeli documentation out there as there is American. I think what the Internet does, just as the printing press did before it is aid in the dissemination of information once it is no longer secret. (By definition, once a piece of information is known to a person who is not supposed to know it then it is no longer a secret as far as I am concerned). And for the record, I think that a blanket abolition of secrecy is a terrible idea. I do think that some things should not be known by everybody, the problem lies in deciding which category any particular piece of information falls into. Yep, rambling now. I'll shut up and rock my rocking chair. Karl |
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Post by blueshift on Dec 9, 2010 21:16:41 GMT
In many ways, this isn't that different from newspapers leaking official stuff, which happens all the time.
I don't believe sensitive information should be leaked regardless. However wikileaks have been doing it in tandem with organisations and newspapers to ensure it is done safely and appropriately, so I applaud that. It has also already brought to light some absolutely disguisting governmental policies from around the world which would have remained secret.
At the end of the day, the rule of thumb in any organisation is if you don't want someone to discover what you are saying, DONT WRITE IT DOWN. In today's technology age, nothing is secret.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Dec 9, 2010 23:38:07 GMT
Nope, I don't think that the Internet by definition means an end to all secrets. It just means that when secrets are revealed the propagation of the information is much faster. I suppose I should have broadened the question to comupters in general rather than the Internet specifically. I doubt that the WikiLeaks documents could have been leaked in bulk in the pre-computer age, as it would involve collecting together several filing cabinets worth of paper documents from around government. As it was, the guy probably burnt it to a single CD with the click of a mouse and waltzed out with it. Individual secrets have always been leaked - but this is something of a different order. Martin |
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