Posts by Matthew Poole
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Hard News: Book review: 'Wikileaks:…, in reply to recordari,
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.
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Hard News: Book review: 'Wikileaks:…, in reply to recordari,
[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 ;)
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Hard News: Book review: 'Wikileaks:…, in reply to Russell Brown,
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. -
Hard News: Book review: 'Wikileaks:…, in reply to Russell Brown,
because even a purely virtuous government would find it necessary to maintain some secrets, or to take advice in confidence.
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.
There’s also the safety of the population, and those whose duty it is to maintain that safety. 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.
Once one knows what the forces of goodness and light will do to respond to one’s forces of evil and darkness, one can make their lives dramatically more difficult right from the planning stages of one’s operation. Which is “a bad thing"[tm], unless one happens to be the aforementioned forces of evil and darkness.
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Hard News: Book review: 'Wikileaks:…, in reply to Idiot Savant,
And there’s a NZ example of this just today, with the government exposed as having lied to us (and potentially lied to Parliament) over its negotiating position on the Trans-Pacific Partnership FTA.
There's no proof that the government lied to us, merely that they didn't communicate the fullness of the threat to our national sovereignty. That may, as the release allows, simply have been Key misunderstanding the language. It's possible, though he shouldn't have shot his mouth off without knowing the full details.
Regardless, that's a scary development when we've got a bunch in power who would like nothing better than to hock off much of what remains of our taxpayer silver, and privatise ACC to boot. Rewind to 1999, where one of Labour's first acts was to reverse the competition element of ACC, and it would probably not happen again because the offshore insurers would scream bloody murder and collectively sue for billions in lost future profits.
Similarly, if Labour decide to revoke Toll's stranglehold on rail freight, that won't happen if Toll can demand massive compensation.
Free trade is one thing, but corporates should have no more rights to compensation offshore than they would have onshore. NZ insurers would have no right to sue if ACC were re-privatised, so why should foreigners?
I can see this making the corporate immunity situation worse, as companies engaging in politically-risky endeavours create foreign shells through which to conduct their business dealings. If the political climate sours, the shell company sues even though the truly-affected parent is housed in the jurisdiction where the offending change took place. NZ's already being dealt to in such a fashion through offshore ownership of many trading entities, but at least it's not done with a deliberate eye to future lawsuits should the political climate go south.
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Well, they’re informants,’ he said. ‘So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.’
*choke*
I wonder if he thought that one through before he spoke, because that’s calling death upon everyone who ever contributed anything to WL. Though I guess it’s possible that his disdain for those who made him famous extends as far as believing they all deserve to die. Probably in quite horrible ways.ETA: The comment certainly does absolutely nothing for my opinion of the man, I have to say.
if a great state was behaving entirely virtuously, and in accordance with its public positions, would its foreign service officials still sometimes need to speak in confidence
Of course they would, unless one considers it to be lacking in virtuosity to have in-private conversations with, say, Nelson Mandella in apartheid-era South Africa. If the only way to be entirely virtuous is to tread entirely within the bounds set by unjust, oppressive regimes, then, no, I guess maybe not.
Consider Falun Gong, whose members are persecuted in mainland China and who may find themselves subjected to unwanted official attention were their names to be mentioned in correspondence between FSO’s. Countries with religious freedom uphold the right, and would hopefully consider it virtuous to explore with FG members the extent of the persecution, but could certainly not find out except through official (and highly-sanitised) channels were their every word to be made public. -
OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to Sacha,
Much like our essential fire and ambulance services still rely on volunteers
Certainly for the fire service (much less so for ambulance, but don't get me started), the alternative is volunteers or nobody. The million dollars a year to run a permanently-staffed, single-appliance station doesn't magically appear. So when your community is too small to justify that kind of outlay (or even the few-hundred-thou for 0700-1700 Monday-Friday paid coverage), if you don't have volunteers you have to wait for the nearest centre that's big enough to have career staff to get a truck to you, which in the case of some parts of the country could be hours.
The airports could operate without the hospitality volunteers, no question (and many do), but they'd probably start paying people to fill the roles were the volunteers to throw their toys.
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Hard News: Hip in the Square, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
can I create a soundscape of the CBD i.e. something that tells me the noise will be X here if band/music/whatever plays at Y spot.
In theory, yes. If they can model hurricanes, they can definitely model sound behaviour in an urban environment.
The "theory" bit comes from environmental factors such as wind. I got treated to a fair whack of the BDO (to the point of needing to put in ear plugs to get to sleep) courtesy of gusty winds, despite living over 2km from the nearest boundary of the stadium complex. Wind drops, or changes direction, and the sound stops carrying to me.So your model could absolutely be done, but its accuracy would be very much a sometimes thing because weather impacts sound's behaviour to a significant extent. A sound that might ordinarily be inaudible could suddenly become highly intrusive based on a wind shift.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to giovanni tiso,
for what it's worth it's exactly the verb that the Herald has used
And with that, I think possibly some people need to get their homophobia-dars calibrated. If Key's lead cheerleader will put "mincing" in print to describe their hero's gait, I'd call it a verb, not a slur.
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OnPoint: Election 2011: GO!, in reply to recordari,
But the actions, and I’m talking about in Social Welfare and Law Reform, were not consistent or entirely predictable
Which actions? Trashing beneficiaries? Pandering to the McThicker vote? No, I’d call those entirely predictable based on pre-election mumblings from the National benches.
The policy positions taken pre-election were quite clear about where things were going. Attacks on "welfare dependence", attacks on parole, these were signalled way ahead of the election. They should not have surprised anyone who paid attention to what National was saying.