Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

"Top Secret America": The Washington Post's contracting investigation

projects.washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 54 posts

Re: "Top Secret America": The Washington Post's contracting investigation

#31

Post by mkramlich »

Ardit20 wrote: post #21
david927 wrote: post #5

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society…

I am not sure. I think I would like the red button to be kept very secret.

i'd prefer no nuke weapons

Re: "Top Secret America": The Washington Post's contracting investigation

#32

Post by Tamerlin »

Robin_Message wrote: post #22
Charuru wrote: post #17

850,000 people have top secret clearance? It doesn't feel that secret...

Bear in mind that you have to have a "need to know" in addition to your clearance. We can speculate that there are also levels beyond top secret. In particular, eyes-only for the most sensitive stuff [1], and (what I have seen called but can't find a reference for) code-word secrecy for particular projects/operations. [1] Which is where the Bond film For Your Eyes Only gets its title.

The clearance levels that I can remember are: confidential secret top secret top secret ssbi -- "single scope background investigation" top secret sci -- "secured compartmentalized information" IIRC

There are probably others above that that I don't remember.

TS and TS/SSBI might be the same thing with different investigations. I'm not sure.

Re: "Top Secret America": The Washington Post's contracting investigation

#33

Post by anigbrowl »

Interesting though this is in terms of infographics and data accessibility, I am not very exercised about the 'secret' part of it. Of course I was not expecting to discover anything truly secret, but the presentation seems to inclusive that anything upwards of cafeteria supply to a federal government office counts as 'secret'.

I do like it as a way of browsing a large quantity of disparate tabular information. It would be good to have this sort of interface available for research on government or business in general - for example, I'd quiet like to have this interface available (and ideally, $ weighted) for learning more about my city & county government.

Re: "Top Secret America": The Washington Post's contracting investigation

#34

Post by mcantelon »

Charuru wrote: post #18
balding_n_tired wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See: Bay of Pigs, the unfortunate matter of the Diem family; etc.

I don't think this is the same thing. You're conflating a bureaucracy and expenditure problem with the CIA. I mean it's hard to say which one is the bigger problem, but they're very clearly 2 different issues. The problem with pointed out by the article is that there's a closed community within the security apparatus that has grown so big and extensive that it's difficult for the government to control, and could give…

>On the other hand I don't see how the CIA could work without secrecy. It's nuts.

Whether the CIA is a net benefit to society is debatable.

Re: "Top Secret America": The Washington Post's contracting investigation

#35

Post by bmm6o »

Ardit20 wrote: post #30
bmm6o wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this even mean? The existence of the button? If you're talking about "secret codes" for using it, that's just an implementation of an authentication/authorization scheme.

The quote and the circumstances in which the quote was made, seems to be advocating a complete ban in regards to secrets from our government. I was pointing out that there are very good reasons at times for keeping certain things secret, such as the "red button" which rather than being a code, is the so called button which send off all the nukes. I know that we as a society, civilisation even, are very adverse to sec…

> I was pointing out that there are very good reasons at times for keeping certain things secret, such as the "red button" [...].

I'm sorry, I still don't understand what you're suggesting. What would it mean for the "red button" to be secret? Do you consider it to be secret today? Why or why not?

Re: "Top Secret America": The Washington Post's contracting investigation

#37

Post by hugh3 »

bmm6o wrote: post #35
Ardit20 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote and the circumstances in which the quote was made, seems to be advocating a complete ban in regards to secrets from our government. I was pointing out that there are very good reasons at times for keeping certain things secret, such as the "red button" which rather than being a code, is the so called button which send off all the nukes. I know that we as a society, civilisation even, are very adverse to sec…

> I was pointing out that there are very good reasons at times for keeping certain things secret, such as the "red button" [...]. I'm sorry, I still don't understand what you're suggesting. What would it mean for the "red button" to be secret? Do you consider it to be secret today? Why or why not?

I assume that the OP was using "red button" as a synecdoche (wow, I finally found a use for that word) for the entire procedure by which the US nuclear arsenal is launched. Which may or may not involve an actual red button at some point. (If I were designing the system, it damn well would.)

Now, I assume that launching a nuclear missile is more difficult than ringing up NORAD and saying "Hi, this is the Preisdent, the launch code is XD8-3342-9982", but let's not take that chance, shall we?

(Man, I hope I didn't just guess a real launch code. That would be difficult to explain to the nice men in suits.)

Re: "Top Secret America": The Washington Post's contracting investigation

#38

Post by sesqu »

anigbrowl wrote: post #33

Interesting though this is in terms of infographics and data accessibility, I am not very exercised about the 'secret' part of it. Of course I was not expecting to discover anything truly secret, but the presentation seems to inclusive that anything upwards of cafeteria supply to a federal government office counts as 'secret'. I do like it as a way of browsing a large quantity of disparate tabular information. It wou…

The article states that they only considered top secret facilities, because they would get swamped even worse by the merely secret ones.
Post reply on HN