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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.
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.”
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 27 2017, @07:14PM
I think a tactic that's become increasingly prevalent is pure unadulterated mudslinging. In modern elections it's more and more just attacking the other candidate. There's no need focus on your own ideas or traits. Just attack the other candidate. Instead of there being any actual views or ideology, it's mostly just a sporting game where two sides rabidly support "their" team. The interesting thing is that while I think this has been effective, it could to a degree begin to explain the sharp increases in leaks. I think any sense of a national identity in America is falling apart and we're becoming more and more of a divided country of more self centered individuals. As a result of this people are happy to leak anything and everything that might damage who they see as the opposition - even if it amounts to throwing molotov cocktails at each other on a wooden ship.