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posted by janrinok on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:32AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-necessary,-but-is-it-right? dept.

Taco Cowboy writes about a consortium news article regarding the dilemma facing the US in that it must protect its intelligence sources whilst using that intelligence effectively:

"On the one hand, the Obama administration is demanding that Iran resolves past and present concerns about the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program as a condition for signing a comprehensive nuclear agreement with Tehran. On the other hand, the administration, in order to protect sensitive intelligence methods and sources, has refused to allow the IAEA to share documentary evidence that Iran has had a covert nuclear weapons program in the past, with Iran.

In the case against Iran, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, declared on Feb. 12, 'The authenticity of each allegation should be proven first, then the person who submitted it to the agency should give us the genuine document. When we are assured of the authenticity, then we can talk to the agency'. But a draft text of an agreement being negotiated between the IAEA and Iran dated Feb. 20, 2012, shows that the only difference between the two sides on resolving issues about allegations of Iranian nuclear weapons work was Iran's demand to have the documents on which the allegations are based."

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:40AM

    by frojack (1554) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:40AM (#11111) Journal

    the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, Ali Akbar Salehi, declared on Feb. 12, 'The authenticity of each allegation should be proven first, then the person who submitted it to the agency should give us the genuine document. When we are assured of the authenticity, then we can talk to the agency'.

    Yes, so tell us who your spys are inside our organization so we can get the "genuine documents" from them, along with their liver, large and small intestine, and assorted junk.

    --
    No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by drac on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:57AM

      by drac (1723) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:57AM (#11136) Journal

      There are points to both sides - on one hand, there is nothing to stop the accusing party (for the sake of argument, let's call this the US - although the EU has a large stake in this also) vastly exaggerating or inflating claims, or otherwise distorting information presented. This has happened before, and lest anyone needs a reminder - is how an invasion started some years back.

      On the other hand, there is your legitimate claim that presenting evidence of this nature will place sources in peril.

      the equitable compromise is to have a neutral third party assess the documents for authenticity (for the sake of this argument, I'm assuming that documents won't leak from said neutral third party, a forlorn hope).

      If the US is concerned about not burning assets on the ground, they should have waited to independently verify the information from other, less sensitive sources now that they know where to look.

      Thing is - I'm not happy about Iran building nuclear capable reactors or whatever either - but this "nyah nyah we have super secret information that says you are a pedophile, criminal and general kicker of puppies but WE CANT SHOW YOU" needs to stop. Which side do YOU fall on regarding placing people on no-fly lists without access to reason, the list itself or any recourse? The principle is exactly the same

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by tftp on Wednesday March 05 2014, @04:37AM

        by tftp (806) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @04:37AM (#11175) Homepage

        the equitable compromise is to have a neutral third party assess the documents for authenticity

        The 3rd party cannot do that. All it can do is to look at the paper and say "yes, this is the letterhead from the office of Iranian department of Nuclear Affairs, signed by Abdullah Ibrahim." The letterhead may or may not be genuine (in the age of color printers,) but only the department can say if the said Abdullah is indeed an important person, and not a janitor - if he even is a real person.

        • (Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday March 05 2014, @07:21AM

          by frojack (1554) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @07:21AM (#11201) Journal

          And when the funeral will be.

          --
          No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by tftp on Wednesday March 05 2014, @07:32AM

            by tftp (806) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @07:32AM (#11203) Homepage

            The problem is obvious. There is no solution, though. No country would ever allow a "neutral" (no such thing) 3rd party to know what it takes to judge validity of nuclear reports. The only exception is a weak country that has nothing to hide, and that has no pride. But such countries won't be accused of anything, since they are too poor to be a danger.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:19PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:19PM (#11307)

        the accusing party (for the sake of argument, let's call this the US - although the EU has a large stake in this also)

        The primary accusing party is and has always been Israel. Mossad has carried out both cyberattacks (e.g. Stuxnet) and assassinations of Iranian physicists because they believe Iran will have nukes soon.

        Both the Israeli government and a major faction within the US government want any diplomatic attempts to fail and are doing everything in their power to ensure that it does. You saw that shortly after the recent agreement was announced, when the US Congress nearly pushed through additional sanctions against Iran in direct violation of the agreement. This faction is looking for an excuse to do to Iran what the US did to Iraq not too long ago, and they're mad as hell that Obama isn't on board with that. They're also going to make stuff up, refuse to accept evidence that Iran is doing what they said they would do, and question any and all reports of third parties.

        By comparison, this same crowd doesn't seem to care that Syria's Assad government has been missing deadlines for its agreement to destroy its chemical weapons.

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:50AM

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:50AM (#11112) Homepage Journal

    It is commonly thought that Saddam Hussein was not really seeking weapons of Mass Destruction as both Presidents Bush claimed.

    However, the Israeli Defence Force quite a long time ago bombed the Iraqi Osirak Reactor after it was mostly constructed but before it could be fueled.

    (I read in the paper that they dropped a bomb through a door, down a stairwell and into its basement, but I can no longer find a citation. Maybe it was just urban legend, you know like the bombing of the Death Star.)

    I don't know whether Osirak was to be a light or heavy water reactor. I expect heavy water because the Iraqis did not have any Uranium enrichment facilities, however it could have been light water had they imported the fuel from a country that did.

    Heavy water reactors do not require enriched Uranium, and what's really great about them is that they produce quite a lot of Plutonium for your Fourth of July Celebration. But even light water reactors, that really are meant for peaceful energy production, do also make quite a lot of Plutonium.

    Scientific American, shortly after the first Persian Gulf War, had article about what arms inspectors had turned up in postwar Iraq.

    There was a photo of a Calutron that had been buried underground, powered by underground cables from power plants hundreds of miles away. The Calutrons were so far from the power plants so that satellite photos wouldn't find anything suspicious.

    The Calutron is a large mass spectrometer used to refine Uranium. The Manhattan Project used them in World War II, making them more efficient by borrowing the US Mint's entire stockpile of silver then drawing it into electromagnet wire. The Calutrons also used fully ten percent of the nation's supply of electricity, which is why Oak Ridge National Laboratory is in Tennesee - so as to be conveniently near the Tennesee Valley Authority hydroelectric.

    Calutrons are expensive to operate and do not work very well at all, however they are a lot easier to design and build than the far-more efficient Uranium Hexafluoride Gas Turbines that Iran, a nation up to its eyeballs in petroleum, claims to require for purely peaceful electricity generation.

    The icing on the cake is that, because the United States declassified all but one of the Manhattan Project's secrets in 1965, found all over Iraq were declassified US Patents, all about how to make Calutrons work better.

    Be careful lest you invent something really cool that could be used for warfare! You'll still obtain your patent, but it will be stamped Top Secret. You'll only be allowed to flog your wares to the military-industrial conference.

    Fer Christ's Sake, one can even purchase "The Los Alamos Primer", the textbook on nuclear weapons physics that was used to introduce newly-arrived Los Alamos staff to a-bomb design, for forty bucks from Fucking Amazon.com!

    A while back the North Koreans set off what is known as a "Squib Explosion". "Squib" is The Queen's English for "Firecracker", that is, a low-yield, subcritical nuclear detonation.

    The blast was readily observed by seismographs in Japan, but South Korea, perhaps being in an altered state of reality, bought into North Korea's quite reasonable explanation that it was just using conventional explosives to dig a sports stadium.

    NK's next two underground tests worked just fine.

    Remember how I pointed out that Kim Jong-il or -un or whatever likely bought his iMac at an Apple Store?

    I haven't actually checked, but I expect there is am amazon.cn that is completely cool with shipping its books to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

    WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Fluffeh on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:10AM

      by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:10AM (#11121) Journal

      WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

      Two things:

      Either your Caps Lock key got stuck towards the end of your post, or you decided to shout - which no-one will like here.

      Secondly, you end your, for the most part decently written post, in a question that is needless and detrimental to the rest of your post. It's like making a well constructed point in a conversation and finishing it with a Y'all know what I'm talkin 'bout right?.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Barrabas on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:27AM

      by Barrabas (22) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:27AM (#11126) Journal

      I haven't actually checked, but I expect there is am amazon.cn that is completely cool with shipping its books to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

      WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

      From your response, it appears that you are advocating censoring certain pieces of information, putting them out of reach so that the bad guys can't make use of it.

      The TSA states that there's a binary liquid explosive capable of taking down planes, which is why we can't bring our own liquids on the plane. Every chemist in the public sector has stated that this is not feasible, but the TSA won't release their documents to prove their claim.

      Businesses find security holes all the time; in fact, security researchers find holes and the businesses use legal means to silence them. The information is too dangerous to let the public know, because bad guys might make use of it.

      The president is certain that an American abroad is a terrorist, and wants to direct the military to assassinate him. We can't see the evidence against him, but he assures us that the threat is real.

      Funny thing about sequestering information - the same information that allows me to (for example) build a bomb allows me to judge whether political claims are accurate. Censoring information is firstly ineffective - since the bad guys already know, and secondly destructive - since it allows government and others to pull the wool over our eyes.

      What's wrong with your picture isn't the information.

      • (Score: -1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:35AM

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:35AM (#11130) Homepage Journal

        Google for "Any flavor but lemon", as well as "Refreshing Sports Drink".

        We often discuss any flavor of kool-ade mix other than lemon over at kuro5hin, so as to avoid explicitly posting the laboratory preparation of the Muslim Suicide Bomber's very favorite detonator explicitly on the Internet, as Wikipedia presently does with the VX Nerve Agent.

        While strictly speaking I don't think it's illegal to do so, I don't want to get hassled by Homeland Security.

        However a while back I dropped a dime to the Portland FBI office and spent about a half hour discussing Refreshing Sports Drink with the agent who answered the phone.

        This eventually led to him becoming completely overcome and saying "What can just one person do?"

        I didn't expect that from a Federal Law Enforcement Officer.

        That same day I also called the Secret Service. Their number is in the front of every telephone directory.

        I spoke to them for about a half hour two. Sorry I'd rather not say what we discussed, but I will tell you think I concluded with:

        "You'd know something was up, but you wouldn't be able to do a whole lot about it."

        Back in the day, some Kuron speculated about something that is a crime even to joke about, with the result that two secret service agents shortly visited him at his place of work.

        So despite that that secret service agent was happy, friendly and chatty, I did emphasize that I was one of the good guys, and that I was trying to help.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
      • (Score: -1) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:58AM

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:58AM (#11137) Homepage Journal

        Fuming nitric acid, concentrated sulfuric acid and glycerin.

        You can buy glycerin at any drug store and many grocery stores. It's good for your skin.

        One might arouse suspicion buying fuming nitric acid but it's not hard at all to make enough nitric acid to make enough nitroglycerin to do something I won't even speculate about on the series of tubes.

        Concentrated sulfuric acid is so commonly used by chemists that one would not arouse suspicion by purchasing it.

        I was once arrested for making any flavor but lemon of a certain refreshing sports drink in UC Santa Cruz's Porter College.

        "Where did you steal the explosives?" asked my arresting officer.

        "I bought them, at Bryant Labs in Berkeley. Here's my receipt!"

        It was that receipt that got me off with community service. I still have it in my scrapbook.

        The key ingredient in that Refreshing Sports Drink is the active ingredient in Ortho Snail and Slug Death.

        "Do you have hexamethylene tetramine? HMTA?"

        "It's more commonly known as Methenamine, that's what they call it when it's used for women's urinary tract infection. I can have our Los Angeles warehouse ship us up a five-kilo jar by tomorrow afternoon. It will set you back ten bucks."

        Five kilos of the primary ingredient for my favorite flavor other than lemon makes an awful lot of thirst quenching. I think that's why my arresting officer charged me with a half-dozen felonies, each of which had a three-year mandatory minimum sentence.

        He never came right out and said so, but I am DEAD CERTAIN that they sold a lot of Methenamine to the folks in The People's Republic of Berzerkely. This because he was damn near pissing himself laughing the whole time we were discussing a male college student's requirement for five kilos of ladies' urinary tract medicine.

        Actually, nitroglycerine really could be a binary explosive as one could premix the two acids. They are completely safe to handle in tightly sealed glass or teflon bottles.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 05 2014, @03:04AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 05 2014, @03:04AM (#11140)

          The new Cold Fjord, with added Kuro5hin. FSM help us all.

    • (Score: 1) by cheshire on Wednesday March 05 2014, @06:43PM

      by cheshire (1507) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @06:43PM (#11450)

      Looks like google found a pdf easily enough

      http://www.orau.org/ptp/Library/manhattanproject/l a1losalamosprimer.pdf [orau.org]

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:54AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 05 2014, @01:54AM (#11114)

    If you accuse someone you should present your evidence, accusing someone while refusing to present evidence you claim to have is just bullying and or slander.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nobuddy on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:00AM

      by Nobuddy (1626) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:00AM (#11118)

      The problem is the original documents can be traced back to the likely person that leaked them. You also take on a certain obligation and trust that you will do all you can to protect a source- more so when that source is in a country that has a habit of putting spies to horrific deaths.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:12AM (#11122)

        So they want to eat the cake and also have it. How is Iran supposed to defend itself if they aren't allowed to see the "evidence"?

        • (Score: 1) by monster on Wednesday March 05 2014, @10:48AM

          by monster (1260) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @10:48AM (#11257) Journal

          It isn't. That is the key here. It's just posturing "because we are the ol' good guys" and the others "are communists, terrorists or pedos".

          It would have worked some years ago (like it did with Irak). Not anymore, since almost all the goodwill towards USA is already spent in too many despicable actions, and that is the problem.

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:53AM

        by BsAtHome (889) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @02:53AM (#11135)

        That is using a double standard. If you are accused in the US and have to stand trail, then you are entitled to meet/see the accuser/evidence against you. Whether this is done consistently is a matter og heavy debate, but it is the way is is supposed to be.

        By denying the accused to see the evidence, you are simply saying "We know what you did, but we're not gonna tell you. You should believe us and tell us what you did and self-incriminate.".

        To that my answer would also be politely to say: "Go fuck yourself".

        • (Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Wednesday March 05 2014, @04:20AM

          by GeminiDomino (661) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @04:20AM (#11169)

          Oh well. Keep your secrets, guys. It's not like those nuclear agreements are important or anything.

          --
          "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
        • (Score: 1) by Jiro on Wednesday March 05 2014, @10:20AM

          by Jiro (3176) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @10:20AM (#11249)

          On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that if you were accused of some political crime in Iran and the government wanted to get you, *you* wouldn't have the right to see evidence against you either. If the US is being hypocritical by granting rights to its own citizens but not to Iran, then Iran is being hypocritical in the reverse direction by demanding rights for itself that it wouldn't grant to its own citizens.

          Anyway, Iran is not a person, and the decision to put sanctions on Iran is not a trial. International relations doesn't work that way. I can just imagine someone in the 1930's demanding that nothing be done about Nazi Germany until we had a trial to determine that Germany did not actually invade Poland in self-defense as it claimed. (Germany faked up a Polish attack on a radio station as an excuse to start the war. If international relations worked like you suggest, Germany would be able to say "Poland is accusing us of faking the attack. Show us Poland's secret military documents or retract the accusation that we faked anything.")

          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by monster on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:11AM

            by monster (1260) on Wednesday March 05 2014, @11:11AM (#11265) Journal

            Although you are right about international relations not working that way, they also have some "procedures" behind. It's usually along the following lines: Since "we know some of your dirty secrets" and "you know some of our dirty secrets", it usually revolves around "you know we are right. You know we could prove it, but we know you could make public some embarrassing things about us, so it's much better for everyone if we just make an agreement".

            The key here is not about being able to prove things, but that you use that proof as leverage. But in this case we have someone crying "wolf!" and someone who says "prove it!" (maybe because the charges aren't sound, maybe because they don't have anything to fight back with, or maybe because they value more to bust the information ring the USA has used to gather that data than the political fallout). And because it is "against the rules", US government doesn't seem to be able to get a good follow up.