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Can the Government Keep Secrets in the Age of WikiLeaks and Shadow Brokers?

posted by n1 on Friday May 26 2017, @08:57PM   
from the see-what-I-did-there? dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

If millions of people know something, can it really be considered a secret anymore? That’s one of the questions at the heart of an ongoing debate in Washington about how much, and which, documents to classify in the age of Wikileaks, iPhones, and Edward Snowden.

The US government has found it increasingly difficult to secure the deluge of digitally-classified information on its systems – from personnel records to hacking tools.

That challenge, underscored by Mr. Snowden’s leaks of details exposing the National Security Agency’s top-secret surveillance programs, has given transparency experts new hope that they can help intelligence agencies take advantage of new thinking around classification to ensure that what needs to be secret stays secret.

“The calculation has changed recently, because a single individual, either out of negligence or malice or some other motive, can disclose whole libraries of records,” says Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “That’s something the government has not yet figured out how to deter or prevent.”

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Original Submission

• You're just agreeing with OP You're just agreeing with OP (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @11:23PM (2 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 26 2017, @11:23PM (#516187)

  As OP clearly said: 'The Government has secrets, because it is engaged in "private" business, which it shouldn't be.'

  Just as there is separation of church and state, there should probably also be a separation of business and state; as the OP suggests, if there must be a government, its role in society should be to ensure that contracts are enforced.

  Parent

• An analogy (Score: 2) by gidds on Saturday May 27 2017, @07:33PM

  by gidds (589) on Saturday May 27 2017, @07:33PM (#516507)

  if there must be a government, its role in society should be to ensure that contracts are enforced.

  (I assume from the context that you mean its only role should be contract enforcement.  Apols if not.)

  How to make this point in a way that SoylentNews readers are likely to understand at a deep level?  — Ah yes:

  Isn't it surprising how few small-government advocates are running a microkernel OS???

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  [sig redacted]

  Parent

• Re:You're just agreeing with OP (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @06:33PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29 2017, @06:33PM (#517256)

  That's the microkernel model of government. Everybody still wants the monolithic kernel.

  Parent