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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to imagine scenarios where this continued classification could be appropriate. Remember, classification doesn't just attach to facts; it also attaches to how that information was obtained.

If, for example, the censored paragraph was "a US agent placed within the Soviet Communist Party participated in the design of Soviet ciphers and deliberately weakened them", and that agent continued working in the USSR for several decades, then it could only be declassified if everything that agent had ever been involved with was no longer sensitive.

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Perhaps but it's far easier to imagine it's the result of knee jerk over classification which is well understood to be a terrible problem through the organs of the body politic.

"Perhaps but it's far easier to imagine it's the result of knee jerk over classification which is well understood to be a terrible problem through the organs of the body politic."

It's the NSA. It's espionage.

These things tend to be classified by default.

So, I'm not suspicious it's some arbitrary thing, like the type of ham sandwiches agent Boy Scout was eating.

>These things tend to be classified by default.

"Classified by default" is semantically equivalent to "knee-jerk reaction". Nobody is claiming it's arbitrary. The claim is instead that it's systematic, and stupidly so to the point where it may well be the type of ham sandwiches agent Boy Scout was eating. Wouldn't be the first time...

I'd call it "a matter of principle" rather than "knee-jerk reaction".

There are more important principles. Needs of the many; for example.

And you'd be arguing semantics.

It's "classified by default" out of concern for a certain principle, ergo the act of classification is applied in a knee-jerk (i.e. thoughtless, reflexive) manner.

Semantic argument is semantic.

In my opinion, "classified by default" is not a thoughtless, reflexive policy when discussing espionage and counter-espionage work. It's a principle that you'll come up with after pondering the risks and benefits of other processes.

As a concept, it's similar to policies in corporate offices where doors are locked and guests can only walk in through a reception, accompanied by a trusted employee. Yes, you're applying a process that is unnecessary in 95 % of cases, but still it's one of the "best practices" in the business.

I didn't say it was. I said it precipitates the act of reflexive classification by the body politic of whatever three-letter agency we're talking about.

The process is as follows:

1) Rational, principled decision: "when in doubt, classify"

2) Conservative application: "I'll just classify everything to avoid 'misses'"

3) Everything gets classified because nobody ever got fired for classifying

Treat it as a signal detection problem. There's obvious incentive to avoid "misses" (i.e. not classifying things that should be classified) so people produce many false alarms (i.e. classifying things that should be public knowledge).

This hi-lights a problem with current doctrine: "classify by default" has unintended consequences, namely a creeping increase in non-transparency.

Further, and returning to the original point: since reflexive classification happens as a result of official doctrine, the two are semantically equivalent and this discussion is officially running around in circles.

> It's easy to imagine scenarios

Except, in the government's case, they are imagining scenarios for me, and my family, and my friends, etc. Their job is to protect us, not speculate wildly FOR us. We didn't elect them to do that, and it's not their job.

If someone is sitting there speaking for my speculations, I'd sure as shit like to know they aren't going to be doing it more than generationally. That's terribly concerning.

I'm not suggesting that they're sitting around speculating about possible scenarios. To the contrary, they know the exact details of why they decided to keep this paragraph classified.

My point is that since there are readily imaginable scenarios where it would be necessary to keep this classified, we shouldn't be sitting here accusing them of keeping secrets just for the sake of keeping secrets. The fact that we don't know why it should be kept secret doesn't imply that they don't have a good reason.

In fact, if we did know why it should be kept secret, then it wouldn't really be secret anymore!

> The fact that we don't know why it should be kept secret doesn't imply that they don't have a good reason.

True, but when Tom Blanton comes out and agrees that "90 percent" of it doesn't need to be classified, that more than implies they don't have a good reason.

Actually you said "imagine scenarios" which is basically visualizing scenarios that might happen. That's speculation, pure and simple, given the "screen" they are running these on are internal to the people running them.

"Readily imaginable" is just blaming based on prior history of the one being blamed. In some cases, the expansion of who can be blamed is easier than the not blaming part. Unfortunate.

And, FWIW, I'm not disagreeing with you here. Just trying to get us out of the knee deep rationalization pit of shit that is the government.

So you're saying that a 91 year old (I'm being conservative in assuming your hypothetical agent was at least one years old at the time of their mission) is a good reason to maintain the classification of state secrets that have most assuredly out-lived anyone else involved?

That 91 year old also likely had family, colleagues and other acquaintances who are still alive today. People at some distance from the 91 year old would be okay, but closer would be under suspicion, could have their lives disrupted, be deported etc.

Exactly and in the UK military (or military like structure), it's easy to get in if you have relatives in.

Also, just because the originator may be dead, it doesn't mean the work won't have knock on effects.

And finding a hole in security for old material may trigger a search through all newer ciphers - something I'm sure they don't want.

There are plenty of reasons, correct or not, why they may wish to keep this a secret.

If the methods were still in use, they might be, even if the agents were not. For example, that secret ink they give as an example might still be in use.

That said, there's plenty of reason to believe that some of the things they're still withholding are nonsense.

The statement is that that person could have also subverted other methods currently in use, not that that particular person would be impacted.

Methods from the pre-computer era, from well before the second world war, still in use nearly 100 years later? Is that really plausible?

Scenario: In 1925 an agent is deployed to Russia, infiltrates an intelligence agency, and does something cryptologically noteworthy. It is mentioned in this 'top secret umbra' document. In 1955, said agent, while still acting covertly in Russia, makes further cryptologic "contributions" to Russian intelligence agencies. In 1975 the ciphers from 1955 are still in use, and the USA intercepts information and identifies Soviet spies. In 1995, the USA feeds misleading information to those formerly Soviet spies. In 2016, the USA still cares about the misinformation provided in 1995 to spies identified in 1975 thanks to ciphers from 1955 which were broken by a long-dead agent who started work in 1925.

Seems plausible enough to me.

Now that's a great scenario! There's actually convoluted stuff like that in the non-fiction. They're also still trying to misdirect people on stuff decades old to justify current positions.

Plus it causes the Russians to continue to view others from the time period with possible suspicion. They can't go "oh, that happened 75 years ago and the Anericans have said nothing about it so we must be able to trust that guy and his work"

No the agent that did something 90 years ago, was still there and did something 60 years ago. Which influenced something 30 years ago, which led to something 5 years ago and is still in use.

It's a stretch, but there could be a chain of events that they want to remain hidden. They don't want to hide what happened 90 years ago, they want to hide who did it and what else he may have done in the future or had an effect on.

Okay I can buy that type of scenario. Something along the lines of cperciva's sibling comment. This could be such a case. But I still think it's a stretch. I wonder if they ever redact random things just to distract.

Yep one time pads are still in use and those where invented way before ww1

Hypothetical timeline: An agent born in 1904 tainted a Soviet cipher in 1926. That agent then recruited other assets before retiring in 1973. Unlikely? Sure. Outlandish? Nah.

More like that that agent, if they were involved in this 90-year-old crypto action, may later have been involved in something else (a mole in the Russian nuclear program, say) in such a way that their exposure as an American agent would compromise the result of that other thing as well (in my hypothetical example, maybe they'd embedded a remote kill switch in all Russian nuclear ICBMs, which would still be there today).

Or they just had a protege, another American agent. Think starting a 'dynasty'.

yes because you want your Intelligence officers to be able to say to agents they are recruiting today that we will look after you

Normally I lean towards the more cynical viewpoint with these matters. But I think you're right here, only in that the records still exist and are very old.

I wonder if it's a chain of secrets which leads to the present day? It would seem unlikely there'd be that long a continuity, but I don't know.

You are all over thinking this. It was almost certainly just a mistake. Very few things unrelated to current day-to-day operations need to be secret.

Democracy dies behind closed doors.

Any supposed advantage we gain by spending our resources and credibility flooding the world with spies is far less then what we lose by having our society, our rights, and our freedoms completely subverted by the primacy of "national security".

Yeah no this is knee jerk laziness on the part of the NSA. Snowden has probably already put everyone who could be into harms way.

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