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The Benedict Arnold comparison is absurd and the football analogy is very weak.

There is no 'other team' and the coach is paranoid. He keeps the playbook secret from his own team, suspecting any one of them may be playing for the other side, which does not exist. No games are scheduled anyway, but still he insists on spying on them and recording all the details of their private lives in his secret playbook.

One day one of the team finds the playbook and is horrified at what their coach has been doing behind their backs...

etc etc

I agree that the football analogy is weak. As an outsider looking in, it seems as though the 'secret plays' are secret just because that's the way it's become... not because it's the only way.

I mean, you just have to look at pretty much every other team sport out there: none of those have secret playbooks. The team is smart enough to work together to determine the best course of action, sometimes taking the advantage, sometimes responding to the loss of that advantage.

So what we have is one sport out of dozens that has a particular quirk, and then we use that weirdness to justify what the government is currently doing?

Odd.

Whether or not it's appropriate to be using sports analogies here, it's not true that football is unique in the secrecy of information. Plenty of sports have information that is known between teammates and not shared with the other team (baseball pitchers don't communicate what they're going to throw, basketball teams draw up plays, etc.).

The only thing that's unique about football is how much complexity they can factor into each play since they've got 11 players to work with and there's a stoppage before each play during which they can regroup and coordinate.

A better analogy from sports is Jerry Sandusky. Snowden is analogous to someone who had the fortitude to draw attention to obvious wrongdoing.

Our elected officials are analogous to Joe Paterno as they try to hide the truth and deny the wrongdoing.

Respect, both for governments and individuals, must be earned. Many Americans still do trust the US Government, but Snowden's revelations have caused many to question that trust. When we watch our leaders (Obama, tech leaders, etc.) deny responsibility and show no interest in doing anything about the actual crimes that the leaks revealed, we rightly lose trust and respect for our government.

So, there needs to be a system in place that helps keep secrets.

How about a simple workflow before marking something Top Secret?

1. Did we break the law?

-> Yes -> End: don't mark Top Secret; call the police and have responsible parties arrested.

-> No -> End: mark Top Secret.

-> Maybe -> End: don't mark Top Secret; call the police and have responsible parties arrested.

And we could use the same workflow for encountering already Top Secret docs. In fact, that's exactly what Snowden and Manning did. Not sure what the fuss is about: they're whistleblowers, so we should all be happy and all see a lot of DoJ guys in vests escorting NSA guys from datacenters in handcuffs (or gals).

You work flow is slightly askew. Let me fix this:

----- 1. Did we break the law?

-> Yes -> GOSUB Modify_Law_To_Make_This_Legal -> End: mark Top Secret. -----

You're welcome.

-> (Yes || Maybe) -> ...

Well, it is a fair comparison in that the crazy torture/interrogation state of Gilliam's "Brazil" was driven by the profit motive -- the victims of torture paid for their own interrogation.

This is eerily similar to the manner in which our own surveillance state is also driven by the profit motive - ordinary people paying for the profit-driven private companies that subject them to surveillance -- and in the process, keeping us all in a state of abject terror of the hidden dangers from which we are being "protected".

Hmmm... how much is it like a protection racket? Indeed, look at what happens to the people who want out?

> Imagine if every American football coach had to announce his play to the other team.

That actually does happen in most sports though. Football (Soccer) coaches announce the line up and formation. In fact in most team sports you know who's going to be playing and who's on the bench before the match starts. In F1, you know which cars are carrying more fuel or planning for more pit-stops. And even with sports popular for gambling (eg horse racing) you are given the history of horses races, it's trainer and the jockey riding it.

Sports are seldom played with any kind of secrecy - the only exception being games likes Chess or Poker and even in those cases, everyone is on a level playing field with access to the same information, it's only the individual players strategy and their bluffs that's kept secret.

I can understand and even agree with governments not announcing secret agents, what locations they're going to raid or even what specific information they've collected on genuine suspects. The problem is their entire operation is done in secret and they indiscriminately monitor the entire worlds population. This is more than just hiding your next move, this is a gross abuse of power and with the officials well aware that they're on legally dubious ground which is why they're so keen to keep even the general overview of their operations a secret. And ironically, in doing so they turn people into terrorists because any form of direct opposition to their operations - regardless of how reasonable the individual is being - and anyone who dares expose such activities are automatically added to the "naughty list". It's become a self fulfilling prophecy because they're now classifying innocent people as terrorists just to hide the fact that their operations have spun out of control.

Sports are seldom played with any kind of secrecy - the only exception being games likes Chess or Poker and even in those cases, everyone is on a level playing field with access to the same information, it's only the individual players strategy and their bluffs that's kept secret.

Maybe you are not familiar with American football; replace "players" with "coaches" and that's exactly how it works.

Maybe you're not familiar with every other sport, but seldom is secrecy used as a strategy.

That's preposterous, are you suggesting that government in Brazil isn't trying to do its job?

Jokes aside, I don't think comparisons to football game are apt. Most people are simply not interested in competing with people in other countries, at least not any more than in competing with their own elites in government and elsewhere. So it's not like we are all one happy team inside the state.

> The government isn't crazy like Deputy Minister Helpmann in Brazil.

Who said Helpmann was crazy? He's perfectly sane and rational, from his frame of reference. So are our governments. The issue arises when the subjective reality in which ones leaders reside and the subjective reality in which you reside are radically disconnected, which makes decisions and actions made by either side seem irrational and scary.

I'd argue that governmental secrecy is bad, in all its forms, as it always ends up being abused, from the perspective of the cit. I understand your point, but it's demonstrably the case that secrecy begets secrecy, which begets corruption.

I stand by my parallel of Brazil, for we do not exist under a brutal, evil, autocratic government, nor under a consciously designed society intended to be "better", but instead under a self-sustaining zombie bureaucracy that no longer connects to the world it governs, and in fact is attempting to reshape the subjective reality of others to suit its own ends - which are, in fact, none, other than perpetuation of the status quo and hegemonic systemisation of anything which conceivably can be - which was the crux of Brazil.

What I admire about Edward Snowden was that he leaked documents that revealed secrets that are important for the public to know. But most importantly, his leaks did not contain secrets about the whereabouts of American personnel. No one was put in immediate danger because of his leaks. And Mr Snowden has stated himself that was his intent; he had come across documents that revealed a far reaching system that he simply could not justify not revealing.

However, while Mr Snowden's conduct was admirable, there will be some people out there interested in state secrets, with the intent of malice. With the intent of doing harm to the government, the state, people working for the government/state or the people of that state.

I agree that secrecy is bad, but I feel we must at least have some secrecy, but clear and public requirements for when something can become (or remain) secret.

Funny that you should say that. I read HN every day and I don't know what's in the documents that Snowden leaked. Granted, I usually only skim these types of posts trying to glean any insightful comments.

Anyway, the point is that if I don't know what Snowden leaked, I bet most people don't know either.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/snowden-powerpoint/

Sweden has a relevant law to define a public requirement for when someone can become liable for publishing secrets¹. It demands evidence that shows that the information was correctly classified, and that some damage actually happened from the publishing. Simply having a seal on the document is not enough.

The precedent case for this law happened during the cold war, and was about a newspaper that published a counter-espionage report (Case: NJA 1988 s. 118²).

The military argued that the national safety was damaged by the publishing, but would not give any details because of the nature of doing national security work.

The court made two tests to decide the case. Did the information deserve to be classified under secrecy, and was the damages reported by the military believable. On the first, they said it was doubtful, and on the second they said a straight no. Case dismissed.

To me it sounds as very clear and public requirement, which would work fine in both Snowden's and Manning's cases.

1) Please note that this is only about publishing secrets. Breaking a contract or an oath can and is likely to be punished under different laws.

2) https://lagen.nu/dom/nja/1988s118

Was the law used in the 1988 ruling? Or was the law created following that ruling? I assume it is the former, as Sweden is a Civil Law countries and judgements don't make something enforceable.

But regardless, that is a decent enough requirement system. The military refusing to present evidence in the case also hurt their argument, which is how it should be.

Correct, the law(s) was made before the ruling. Sweden still use precedent cases as guides, but they don't decide the law.

I think the easy opt out here then is to say that governments shouldn't be secret, but the military can. But then you get to the strange point, as to whether the government can trust the military.

That's not a strange point. That's the way it should be. The military represent the people. The government represent the people. The police/law enforcement agencies represent the state-sanctioned violence of the government's legislative branch. Note that this does not mean that the military represent the government. This has come to be the case in many western democracies, but has not always been the case.

Military coups are the outcome of a disconnect. Whether that disconnect lies between the people and the government, or the government and the military, varies.

But fundamentally, no, the government should not trust the military, nor the military the government, as the two should be at odds, for otherwise the military have no distinction from the police - and the police no distinction from the military - and then you find yourselves in a scary place indeed.