141–150 of 156 posts
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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.
Why would they do that?
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This is mainly why they killed Turing.
Turing died because his lifestyle was illegal and he was being punished for it, not because it was a secret.
Obviously it was more complicated than that, but I consider this to be the primary reason.
There's a flip side to this as well: as a voter, I don't know what information my elected leaders have when making decisions. In theory, with a small amount of secrecy needed to make diplomacy and security function, this makes sense. The problem is that it's not actually working in practice. There are so many un-elected people who have jobs for life and also the ability to classify broad swaths of information that th…
>There's a flip side to this as well: as a voter, I don't know what information my elected leaders have when making decisions. I once had a discussion with an Air Force officer who was involved with Homeland Security planning. I made points about warrantless wiretapping and other 4th amendment violations by DHS and TSA. He just shrugged and said I would probably feel differently if I knew all the things they had prev…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Why would they do that?
I can also think of a situation where a contractor might hire a mid-level manager's husband, wife or child. The mid-level manager would be able to crank up his or her headcount to get the relative a sizeable Christmas "bonus". I've heard tell that this sort of thing actually happens.
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> In theory, with a small amount of secrecy needed to make diplomacy and security function, this makes sense. It does not make sense to me. Perhaps you could explain to me how you reached this conclusion?
What part doesn't make sense? An example from WWII was when the Allies cracked the enigma code. Obviously the intelligence value goes down if the British brag about it to all the voters and the Germans stop using it.
You'd have to come up with something you could leak to prove that the code was broken, I suppose. But what about bragging about a code you've broken pretty thoroughly, and then giving really shoddy evidence that only arguably proves you've broken it? Sort of the opposite of Cryptonomicon's Unit 2702. You might make the enemy snort in derision, and believe that the cypher in question was still secure.
Do that a few times, and then suddenly reveal a lot of stuff that could only have come from one of the bragged-about-in-a-shoddy-fashion cyphers. Now all cyphers, especially the one's not bragged about come under suspicion.
Wow, this is a fun game!
There's a flip side to this as well: as a voter, I don't know what information my elected leaders have when making decisions. In theory, with a small amount of secrecy needed to make diplomacy and security function, this makes sense. The problem is that it's not actually working in practice. There are so many un-elected people who have jobs for life and also the ability to classify broad swaths of information that th…
It gets even worse when you start to think that this information is probably also used to achieve a political ends to a means. By that I mean, those in charge of classifying things, know who has what classification, and should they play favorites or the opposite therof for anyone in their bureaucracy, information will lay hidden to all, just to keep it away from a few, solely for personal gain.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/20...
I bet this sort of thing happens all the time.
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Turing died because his lifestyle was illegal and he was being punished for it, not because it was a secret.
Turing died because he had a head full of military secrets and consorted with gay prostitutes, and was therefore considered a security (blackmail) risk. Obviously it was more complicated than that, but I consider this to be the primary reason.
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Turing died because he had a head full of military secrets and consorted with gay prostitutes, and was therefore considered a security (blackmail) risk. Obviously it was more complicated than that, but I consider this to be the primary reason.
Interesting theory you've got there. Please explain why, if he was considered such a security risk, he was charged and tried publicly in a civilian court, and then allowed to roam freely for two years after his conviction.
When he was convicted for homosexuality, it would have come to the attention of various senior people in government. They would have wanted to make an example of him, being as he was a relatively well known figure at the time, much like what happened with Oscar Wilde.
They would have also had concerns about his homosexuality being used against him by britain's enemies, and also because of the recent uncovering of a ring of soviet spies who were all drawn from an intellectual set, all academics, and two of whom were gay.
What I am saying is, I find it likely that these government/military figures would have found it highly convenient for Turing to disappear, or at least have his life made extremely difficult for him. They couldn't have him executed for his sexuality, but they could apply chemical castration. They did offer him the choice between castration and prison, and I accept that this weakens my case. You might ask, if they were that concerned, why didn't they just have him conveniently die in a car crash? My answer would be that they weren't that concerned, it was an opportunistic thing.
Also to be honest I am not entirely convinced that his death by poisoned apple was necessarily suicide, but there is no evidence for that, and there never will be.
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Right, my out-of-the-ass estimate is probably very conservative. It's probably an even lower ratio in reality, 1:10, 1:15 maybe?
You guys aren't presenting real evidence, just making up numbers. 1:10 is absolutely ridiculous. If there are 4.2 million now (according to the Daily Mail article cited elsewhere), that's 1.36 percent. You're never going to get that to 10 percent, expecially since (as the DM article says) the currently high number is due to recent expansion of the number of people who have clearances (so you can't argue about tons of…
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I'm actually surprised by this. I work with a ton of people with foreign born wives (many not even green carded yet) -- soldiers tend to marry where they are first stationed. Also, I work with plenty of people with TS/SCIs who have used drugs in the past. The key is just being honest with the investigators. You are right that people with too much debt, gambling problems, current drug use, etc. don't get one. But that…
It could have been the particular agency that was doing the clearance in my case. With a military customer, I saw less issues, but with the customer I was referring to in my previous post, there were lots of denials. I think the location of foreign born wives is important in this case. The few cases I saw were countries we don't have good intelligence relationships with, in asia and the middle east.
Quite often it could be that the investigator could not ascertain the relationships on the wife's side and/or they don't have a citizenship yet.