Going beyond the classified
Abu Suleyman, you are spot on!:) Far more insidious than classification is the new twist on the old theme of "administrative protection" usually FOUO. We all understood pretty well tha FOUO was not a classification but was used to protect privacy or the government from running afoul of plagiarism charges and copyright violations. But now some idiot has come up with Sensitive But Unclassified - whatever the hell that means! By the EO that establishes US classification (see Wm's link for the ref) information is classified if its unauthorized diclosure will harm (classification guidance provides the terms for degree of harm that establish whether information is Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret) the security of the US. If the information doesn't fall into that category, it is unclassified - period! SBS is just what the las 2 letters say - BS, designed to protect the guilty!!!!!:eek: So much for my rant of the day.
Marc, when I was doing my dissertation on local politics in rural Peru (1966 -68) I followed the anthropological convention of disguising the names of my informants and the people under observation. At the time, we didn't assume a power relationship, rather it was simply to protect their privacy. Had my dissertation been translated into Spanish, anybody from my towns could easily have identified the people I was talking about. As to the English, since a couple of key players were Peace Corps Volunteers, it was a matter od peotecting their privacy and not much more. Again, any social science researcher could easily have discovered the identities of my informants and the people I observed - even if they didn't ask me. I would have been happy to have given them that information anyway.
Cheers
JohnT
Where do we go from here?
BLUF: The free flow of information is good, and we in this forum should educate ourselves, and those around us to ensure that information continues to flow.
I think that it is obvious that I have touched a nerve here, and the problem is far greater than I originally feared. The question, then, is where do we go from here.
As I see it, the problem is actually ignorance. (Isn't ignorance so often a part of the problem.) Of course there are three levels of ignorance:
1) On the part of the government and government officials there is ignorance on the actual policy and the role that classifications and caveats play.
2) On the part of academics there is ignorance about security clearances and procedures (and how to work with them, instead of against them).
3) On the part of everyone on the role that non-governmental people could play in 'fixing problems'. Basically, I don't know that there is any plan at all, outside of fits and starts like HTS.
Far from being helpless in this forum, there are many educated and connected people here. I think that if we do our homework, we could come up with enough information. I am looking into trying to find out what is already available, but if anyone knows of classes that you can take on classification procedures, that would be great.
I look to the recent past, when Fermi and Oppenheimer helped end WWII by building the nuclear bomb, and luminaries such as George Kennan shaped foreign policy. (In fairness, Kennan was a Statie at the time.) Now we have an 'Us vs. Them' mentality, where 'Us' is the government (to include some contractors) and 'Them' is the people.
I am not a Utopian who believes that state secrets should be out in the open. Nevertheless, there is already an abundance of information available which is not classified. I am also showing my political science colors when I say that I believe, even at the cost of sharing it with those who wish us in the West ill, we should make sure that information is more available rather than less. We cannot turn off the Internet, nor hide under a rock. It is far better that we talk about where we want to go and how to get there with as many people as possible to get as good an idea as possible.
Open the curtains and let the light shine in!
I don't refer to stuff that is classified already
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Entropy
As an intel guy I guess I'm of two minds on this issue and I've seen similar debates take place within the intelligence world. One of my jobs used to involve trying to get intelligence downgraded and/or released for the same reasons Cavguy lists for pushing info down to the unclass level - access.
Overclassification, and unnecessary classification are a seperate although related problem, and probably still on topic. However, what I am most concerned about is actually the taking of things that were never classified, and perhaps not even produced by the government and then classifying them.
Here's a counterfactual example: I have heard, but cannot confirm, that Tom Clancy's "Hunt for Red October" and he and Larry Bond's work in "Red Storm Rising" were so close to the real thing that intelligence agents for both countries initially believed that they had a security leak, but that in reality it was primarily conjecture and derived from information readily available in the public library at the time. (For the purpose of this example assume that the previous premise is true.) What if the government had classified "The Hunt for Red October"? That is what many people are concerned about; that if they work with the government or even study issues related to the government and security issues they may have they work classified even though the information it is based on remains in the public domain.
I agree that U.S. TTP's or current operations shouldn't be revealed. I don't think there is any value in hiding doctrinal manuals behind the AKO Electron Curtain, but it doesn't give me nearly as much heart burn. But plenty of people seem to believe that while two wrongs don't make a right, enough UNCLASS data compiled together can make a SECRET document, and that just strikes me as crazy.