Comment by bediger
14 years ago
Well, this sure puts a different spin on the arrogance of the US Government. The new Aristocracy, those with "clearances", receive and can act on information that the rest of us can't be allowed to have. The Fed's "We just know better than you" attitude probably derives directly from this secret pool of knowledge.
But why would you divide up information into 15 or 20 categories? I bet that even at "Top Secret" levels, the narrowness of view is stultifying.
The reason to divide it up into many categories is to compartmentalize the information. The best example I've heard is take an NSA Cryptography expert. Their clearance level needs to be extremely high. Another extremely high level clearance would be for the engineer responsible for turning the key in a nuclear silo. While both of these people have a need to know extremely secretive things, there is no reason for them to know anything about the other's work. Thus the compartmentalization into 15-20 categories.
> why would you divide up information into 15 or 20 categories?
To protect the information it in case one invididual gets compromised.
> I bet that even at "Top Secret" levels, the narrowness of view is stultifying.
Yes and that often makes work seem pointless and unrewarding. Invididuals migth get to view a very thin slice of a large project. So they might be designing an algorithm or a widget without knowing how and where it fits in the big picture.
I am guessing for some projects this compartmentalization leads to the dilution of guilt. "Hey I only build detonators", "I only build the shell", "I build the remote control", "I only leave the device in a certain place without know what it is". But all these people could be making something that would hurt or kill someone.
There are a lot of things required to make a modern spy satellite that I know nothing about. Saying there is a special clearance related to that information is limiting but so is lacking the engineering knowledge to understand it even if someone where to tell it to me. Ditto, sonar, atomic bombs, jet engines, tank armor etc. But, I also lack the historic understanding of the middle east politics to understand a transcript of high level diplomatic talks. Toss in the classic military issue of troop movements etc which are just as meaningless to me but still dangerous. And you are left with a huge pile of information would be valuable to a wide range of institutions AND totally useless to most people out there.
So, while there are implications of need to know they are IMO less significant than capable of understanding.
Think of it like this: if one person only knows part of a system, they can only reveal so much about it. 15 people might know the entirety of one system, but individually they don't know enough to be a threat. This idea can be stretched out to cover entire levels of security clearance and information (as it does).
It also makes it more difficult for them to collaborate and conspire without the coordination of those above.
This.
The pyramid structure that seems to permeate all things //system// has the following salient feature. Say a system pawn is a node at level $L$ and his/her boss is at level $L+1$ and the boss' boss is at level $L+2$. Depending on social skills and intelligence, the pawn might have information about "what is going on" at level $L+1$ by talking to the boss, but for sure he/she has //no// information about what is going on at $L+2$. In a way secrecy (i.e. information non-awareness) is the //essence// of the pyramid.
Assange has this paper [1], which talks about information being the perfect way to choke the system.
[1] cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf [ abstract: Consider the Gonspiracy G = (V,E) where V is the set of conspirators and E is the set of inside information links. The conspiracy G is embedded in a larger graph, society, S. Let |G| be the power of the Gonspiracy. The 'good guys'[2] want |G| to be small, the bag guys want |G| to be large. Assange defines the total conspiratory power as
So to fight G, one must either cut edges e, or generally reduce the flow of information flowing on edges, by scaring the nodes {v \in V} that they might be found out. ]
[2] http://markpasc.org/blog/gems/athena.html
1 reply →
Let's flip that around: it makes it easier for "those above" in the hierarchy to deceive a whole pile of compartmentalized people into performing useless work, and thereby consuming lots and lots of government money.
4 replies →
I agree that the attitude is off-putting and the narrow view afforded to individuals is counterproductive.
There are, however, members of the intelligence community who have the breadth of view to make good judgment calls. Just not enough of them, and no accountability.
But isn't that what the Kissinger story was about? Getting the breadth of view, the knowledge, leads almost inevitably to (arguably) terrible arrogance about what you (the cleared) know vs what everyone else knows, and what you (the cleared) get to do about it.
I'm sorry, I've read your comment twice, and I have no idea what you're talking about. Perhaps you could write out your conspiracy theory in more easily digestible points?
You're having a hard time finding the conspiracy theory because there isn't one. bediger simply called the government arrogant, along with worries that people are making decisions without enough info.
You forgot the part where he felt the need to try to cast 'cleared' and 'uncleared' people into classes, insinuating a seething, out of site class warfare was part of the equation.