Gypsy & Willy - The Original Libertarian Bloggers
How Can You Laugh at a Time Like This?
Gypsy & Willy
No. 388
Secrecy - Part II
June 24, 2002
Last week, in part I, we outlined reasons why we believe excess government secrecy is a bad thing for our country. As our government frequently advises us, secrecy is necessary to protect both our intelligence sources and our methods. But, is it really?
When Willy was a spy and later a "cleared" weapons researcher, it was obvious that the vast majority of classified information...that which only qualified eyes may see...is either routine...revealing nothing whatsoever either about its source or its method of retrieval. Worse, an additional amount was classified TOP SECRET in order to shelter the author from both criticism and review. Finally, contrary to the image passed on to the public, very little information is obtained from sources whose identities must be protected at all costs, either because they are double agents imbedded in the enemy organization, or because they might otherwise be in danger of their lives.
These justifications are as old as the game of spying itself and sound very plausible, especially in those times when secrets could actually be kept! But, what is the alternative? Here's a couple of clues.
Lawyers who litigate torts...what we laypersons call lawsuits...have a tactic which they use when dealing with a guilty client. That is, they use the disclosure rules to inundate opposing council with tons of documents and data, hoping to overwhelm them in terms of both time and money necessary to analyze it all, forcing either a withdrawal or a favorable settlement.
We all know the pitfalls of telling lies. Once you begin fabricating a story, you are forced to invent ever more details to shore up the original lie. Furthermore, if you get a reputation for telling whoppers, no one will ever believe anything you say...the "cry wolf" phenomenon. Contrariwise, if you almost never lie and have a reputation for honesty, when you DO have a good reason for lying, you WILL be believed.
We believe our intelligence agencies can put both of these principles to work by the simple expediency of flooding the Internet...via a World Wide Web site...with as much information as they can possibly release as fast as it can be put on the Web about their ongoing operations. This information should be as reliable and true as can be managed, perhaps with numerical estimates of these properties in the case that it is not certain. Here are some of the benefits...which you can weigh against the apparent drawbacks...of doing such a thing.
- First and foremost, it would draw thousands...if not millions...of concerned citizens into the game, many of whom would uncover patterns and important information overlooked by overworked intelligence analysts. What the Internet does best is form "communities." Making intelligence public property would create a worldwide super-community of spies, almost all...there would be "infiltrators" trying to pass off disinformation...working for the good of humanity.
- The Bad Guys would, of course, also have access to all this information, but like the opposing council in the lawsuits mentioned above, they would almost certainly lack the resources...and the available community of willing volunteers...to even begin to deal with the torrent of data. If not, then there is something wrong with our assumptions about who is and who is not the Bad Guys!
- If the pictures, places of last residence, descriptions, habits, etc. of Bad Guys were made publicly available, we can confidently assume that it will make them VERY nervous. Lacking the resources to discover the source of all the information, it would also increase paranoia within their organizations, wondering who might be a "traitor."
- One of the unique properties of the Internet is that if incorrect or inaccurate data is posted, it can be later corrected, and, after a few days to clear all the cached data existing around the Net, it is as though the error had never occurred! One of the tasks of the proposed public intelligence network would be to rapidly clear out old or invalid data from the site. Thus, for example, if it is uncertain which of several venues might be the current location of Bad Guys, publish them all and let the public determine which data is accurate, which not.
- The same effect can be put to good use by the professionals maintaining the site. When occasional disinformation is published, it will be believed...in sharp contrast to the situation today, when NOTHING they say is believed! Later, when the ruse has served its purpose, it can be corrected...then fade into the blowing sands of electronic information history.
- By creating such a super-agency, we would be once again establishing our credentials as a free and open society. If it works...and we are confident that it will...it will also spread the idea of the value of these principals to the entire world. It will totally revolutionize the notion of spying, putting the "intelligence" back into the oxymoronic "government intelligence agency."
Such a plan might not have stopped the 9-11 attacks...but it very well may have. We now know that there was a large amount of prior knowledge before those events. Each piece was insufficient either to predict or to stop the attacks, but the composite of the totality of that knowledge, when exposed to the entire population of the world, might very well have done just that.
Heck, it's worth a try, don't you think?
Talk to you later...
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