Hard News: Book review: 'Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy'
170 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 3 4 5 … 7 Newer→ Last
-
One of the obvious ones is commercial confidence. Companies will be loathe to tender on state contracts if they know that their pricing models and terms will be available to the competition, even if the competition didn’t bid on a given contract, through the simple expedient of an OIA or equivalent request.
If companies are of this opinion then they should not be bidding for tax payer funded work. My company is sometimes asked by govt. agencies if there is anything in the bid that should not be revealed under OIA. We always say "no".
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
Let’s just hope we’re not being primed for another Operation Leaf…
No, not that sort of story. Just grubby Sunday paper bizness.
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
A former colleague was a transparency absolutist, who believed that even tactical response plans to terrorist incidents should be public information. The problem with that is that terrorists will read the plans, adapt their plans accordingly, and their attacks will become vastly more successful through the expedient of hindering, if not killing, the responders.
Jon Stephenson pointed out to me an apparently innocuous piece of technical information relating to the NZ Afghan contingent that was revealed in the Afghan war diaries and expressed the view that it would be highly useful to anyone who wanted to attack the NZ troops with an IED -- in the event that it actually came to to attention of such people.
Both the war leaks diaries were, of course, a great and valuable thing on balance, but I found his point quite fascinating.
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
Jon Stephenson pointed out to me an apparently innocuous piece of technical information relating to the NZ Afghan contingent that was revealed in the Afghan war diaries and expressed the view that it would be highly useful to anyone who wanted to attack the NZ troops with an IED
A friend from high school did a tour as an Army medic in the '04 rotation to Afghanistan, and came back with a bunch of photos of the Hiluxes that NZ had kitted out for use. He said that, technically, he shouldn't have taken them because if they were to get into the wrong hands they could reveal details about the vehicles' configuration that would be useful in planning an attack.
This was also one of the concerns professed about the photos of Apiata in Afghanistan, that a viewer skilled in the art could determine capabilities based on fit-out. I don't quite buy it for the individual soldier level (for reasons which include the SAS's notoriety for non-conformance), but certainly once one gets to the abstraction level of vehicles the expectation of a standardised configuration becomes a risk. -
Russell Brown, in reply to
if they were to get into the wrong hands they could reveal details about the vehicles’ configuration that would be useful in planning an attack.
The information noted by Jon was of that order.
-
Simon Grigg, in reply to
It appears that the Guardian's redacting team may already have placed Morgan Tsvangirai in mortal peril by failing to remove his name from a diplomatic cable from Zimbabwe.
I found the commentary from Zimbabweans under the Op piece from the US DOD blogger (name escapes) who first attacked Wikileaks over this fairly interesting. I learned more about the complicated mechanisms of power in that land from the running discussion than I had in a decade of Western analysis and editorial. All parties however seemed to agree, for different reasons, that Tsvangirai was already in mortal danger, both extra judicial and from the Zimbabwean legal system, and that there was nothing in the cables that Mugabe didn't already know.
-
[Redacted - too speculative]
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
[Redacted – too speculative]
Oh, come on. We all know the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion are behind WL, pulling the puppet strings of the establishment press to ensure their nefarious control of the NWO is not revealed. That's why Assange was set up with trumped-up rape charges so he could be extradited on a plane that would have an "unfortunate accident", because he was getting too close to exposing the global reality.
No need to redact that, it's the truth!
Sorry, I'll go back to hiding under my bridge and scaring goats ;)
-
recordari, in reply to
Heh! That's not what I said. It was the coincidence of the release of the Afghan War Diaries and the terrible attack with an IED on New Zealand troops, for the record. They happened in chronological order, so at a biiiiig stretch, you could speculate on what Russell mentioned, but the stretch seemed to big, and also a bit uncomfortable.
You're just trying to get me into trouble.
-
Oh, come on. We all know the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion are behind WL, pulling the puppet strings of the establishment press to ensure their nefarious control of the NWO is not revealed.
I had a good laugh earlier today reading the rules of the New World Order party on Elections NZ. I would dearly love for somebody to "leak" those to, say, Glenn Beck.
-
There's a great deal that is done behind secrecy, in the name of security, that has more to do with preventing decisions having to be explained - both domestically and abroad.
There's nothing to say a country can't conduct almost entirely open and properly democratic foreign affairs. Not that I've seen, anyway.
Honesty in foreign policy. Now there's a thought.
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
Given that most of the vulnerabilities can be found by simple observation by a skilled person, and there's no shortage of willing observers, I wouldn't read (sorry, bridge, going) too much into the timing of the release of the diaries. As soon as vehicles or soldiers go on patrol they're at risk of being photographed by people whose intent is not innocent.
Publishing the photos means those people don't have to do the work themselves, but if a photo-journo can do it then so can the Taliban and al Qaeda. Let's not kid ourselves that only journalists are observing the comings and goings of military personnel.
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
Honesty in foreign policy. Now there’s a thought.
Be nice if MFAT announced that all treaty negotiations, starting with TPPA, were going to be conducted with absolute openness short of opening the meetings up to public attendance. Daily summaries, public input on talking points, public input on bottom-line negotiating positions, the whole works.
Never happen, but it's a nice dream.
-
Matthew, indeed. There's the trees, and then there's the entire conduct of a war. One has to do with the other, but secrecy is more than often wielded to avoided talking about both.
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
Honesty in foreign policy. Now there’s a thought.
A thought: which countries would top the Honesty in Foreign Policy Index?
-
Companies will be loathe to tender on state contracts if they know that their pricing models and terms will be available to the competition, even if the competition didn’t bid on a given contract, through the simple expedient of an OIA or equivalent request
They wouldn't tender? Just walk away and leave the money on the table? I doubt it.
I think they'd whinge a lot and still bid. Whether the government would get a better price if all pricing was transparent is an interesting question.
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
NZ has no good reason not to be completely open in treaty negotiations. We have precious little to give away in terms of trade barriers, and nothing to give away in strategic military commitments. We're not a nuclear power, bargaining away strategic advantage by reducing, however symbolically, our arsenal of ICBMs, and our farmers have been competing honestly and openly on the world stage for the best part of 30 years.
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
They wouldn’t tender? Just walk away and leave the money on the table? I doubt it.
I think it would depend on the tender. For a road or something equally boring, where your costs are labour and materials plus a spot of margin, just stumping up wouldn’t hurt too bad.
For “soft” deliverables, like a consultancy contract, they quite possibly would walk away. Pricing of professional services is a really delicate balance between getting a foot in the door and cutting off your nose to spite your face. Even though all the big players know the headline rates of their competitors, they don’t know for sure where their wincing point lies. Opening the tenders up to competitors for scrutiny would allow more-ruthless operators to know just where to pitch for any given deal.
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
I think they’d whinge a lot and still bid. Whether the government would get a better price if all pricing was transparent is an interesting question.
When you consider that government = us, it's a very interesting question. Can we get an economist up in here?
-
Matthew Poole, in reply to
I think they’d whinge a lot and still bid. Whether the government would get a better price if all pricing was transparent is an interesting question.
When you consider that government = us, it’s a very interesting question. Can we get an economist up in here?
From a purely economic dollars-and-cents headline cost perspective, probably. Would you get the best-quality work with lowest lifetime cost? Not necessarily.
A huge problem I have with the libertarian viewpoint that the private sector does it cheaper meaning the private sector does it better is that, often, the private sector's only looking to the end of the period. They have no long-term investment in the project, nothing on the line if it turns to custard in a decade's time. By that point they've made millions on government contracts, nobody remembers that they built the latest historical fuckup that's emerged, just that they've got a history of coming in on time and under budget and they've probably got several contracts in train that cannot be cancelled because of the penalties.Low cost, high quality, ready tomorrow; pick two.
-
Low cost, high quality, ready tomorrow; pick two.
Ready in time for the Rugby World ...?
-
Interesting interview with Peter Sunde (Swedish Pirate Bay Party) over on the Webstock blog.
we learned that the White House had pressured Sweden to take action or end up in being trade embargoed like Cuba(!). In Sweden it’s actually illegal for politicians to decide which individual cases the police or prosecutors should prioritise, but they did in ours. There’s been lots of wrong doing in the case, it’s all a big mess.
http://www.webstock.org.nz/blog/
(the more artistically minded can scroll through to the Amanda.Fucking.Palmer interview).
On the topic of government procurement. Of course it should be open. I say that as a vendor. The worst deals we pay for as taxpayers are the massive ones with huge multi-nationals that fall very short in terms of value and have zero transparency.
-
The worst deals we pay for as taxpayers are the massive ones with huge multi-nationals that fall very short in terms of value and have zero transparency.
At least NZ doesn't buy much in the way of military hardware. Secrecy upon secrecy - commercial confidence and "matters of state" - tends to produce unjustified expenditure. Massive cost overruns in the defence sector are pretty much par for the course, because there is little accountability to the nations which host these bodies.
-
A former colleague was a transparency absolutist, who believed that even tactical response plans to terrorist incidents should be public information. The problem with that is that terrorists will read the plans, adapt their plans accordingly, and their attacks will become vastly more successful through the expedient of hindering, if not killing, the responders.
In IT terms that's known as security by obscurity, and is considered poor practice. While the real world cannot be reduced to a cryptographic style problem. I think there is merit in the notion that you plan your actions as if your adversaries can see everything you are doing and planning.
To plan a response that relies on secret not only requires you to keep the secret but that your adversaries cannot consider what you would do and independently come up with information that is just as useful.
I thought about the idea of a totally open government a few years ago, it may have been around the time that Afghanistan was being set up with a new government. I tried to imagine a system that could maintain individual privacy but no government secrecy. That posed the questions "Could it be done?" and "Would it be better?". It is definitely a difficult problem considering the government needs to work with details about people. There may be a cryptographic solution with some form of ID hash where you can compare two hashes for equivalence but not in a manner where it is feasible to scan one list for a match with an entry from another list. A far easier to imagine method is to allow a minimum level of secrecy to allow private details for necessary activities.
The question of whether or not it would be better of course depends on better than what? I think it's a no brainer that it'd be better than governments with entrenched corruption, but at the other extreme is the ideal nation that Russell describes "if a great state was behaving entirely virtuously, and in accordance with its public positions...". I don't think they would need, in an absolute sense, to be able to speak in confidence. It could easily be beneficial however. I think that's the heart of the idea, the openness would cost you something, it would also gain you something. I think the benefits would outweigh the costs. A nation acting in accordance with its public positions is probably far more likely if people can see everything they do.
I can't see any way an existing government would transition to such a state of affairs though. That might have been why the ideas were flowing in my head when Afghanistan was becoming a new government. At least an open government would probably stop people taking $50M as carry on luggage to Dubai.
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
In IT terms that’s known as security by obscurity, and is considered poor practice. While the real world cannot be reduced to a cryptographic style problem. I think there is merit in the notion that you plan your actions as if your adversaries can see everything you are doing and planning.
I think it’s a very perilous comparison.
In the case of your terrorism tactical response plan, you have to prioritise resources somewhere, you have to use some agency, you have to use some technology.
You’ve hopefully made the best choices, but you’ve made choices – and if the bad guys know your choices, they have a significant advantage. Because you sure as hell don’t know theirs.
IT security, by contrast, enjoys “best choices” that work even when the bad guys know them – and probably don’t even pose an additional cost.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.