Having spent quite a bit of time in the last three years living in countries where there is no free press or protection for critics of the government at all, I feel I can pretty confidently say that a completely unanswerable government is far more of a threat to its people than any outside terrorist threat could ever be. Without checks on government power, corruption is absolute.
If people that have been carefully vetted for security clearance are willing to risk their freedom and perhaps even their lives to bring to light abuses of government power we should protect them.
We all know this is a big word to make headlines and influence people to be in favor of extreme laws. No country has ever been destroyed by Terrorism. Terrorism is, before all, a political tool. That's why States finance terrorist actions (the archives are full of that) to reach political means.
It is worse than any terrorist threat. It is worse than any civilian threat in general. States wield the powers of money, authority, law, and they are the only bearer of a legal right to violence. The worst people can do is ruin their own lives - the worst states can do is ruin everyone elses.
“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
He argues that the release of this knowledge facilitates terrorism. I'm curious, has there actually been a leaked secret that could facilitate terrorism?
Perhaps in the accidental leaks back when the password for all those diplomatic cables leaked?
Or is the only way they facilitate terrorism that they make the public mistrust the authorities?
It would be hard to prove with the existing leaks, but there are certainly forms of information that could be considered very valuable to and likely to incite known terrorist groups, no? I'm thinking things like detailed floor plans for embassies, personal info about members of the special forces, confirmations of extralegal executions and details of the people who carried them out, etc.
So far it seems no-one who has leaked information has had the clearance to get to the truly painful stuff, but the psychological screening to get to those levels is specifically designed to keep potential Snowdens and Mannings out.
We are facing a troubling future as increasingly squeezed natural resources combine with the ever mounting public debt burden to create a toxic environment, perfectly suited to breed civil unrest, subversion, and anti-authoritarianism, terrorism and open revolt.
The stability and security of a well-ordered society demands conformance to certain social norms and limits on behaviour. These limits must be upheld even in the face of rising food insecurity, income inequality, and economic distress.
The protection of civil order requires the enforcement of conformance to behavioural norms, which in turn demands that that we crack down on destabilising influences, both in traditional and digital/distributed media.
Fortunately, modern digital tools allow the state to monitor and control discourse, behaviour and thought as never before. These tools must be exploited to their full potential, and dissent and nonconforming behaviour - in all it's forms, must be detected, isolated, and crushed immediately.
For example, forums such as this one are hotbeds of dissent - anarchic and destructive cess-pits of ideological filth that lead our vulnerable and easily influenced youth astray.
The state must identify the minority of subversive participants in these forums who are actively encouraging dissent -- and must silence them, for the good of a well-ordered society.
He claims the release of information facilitates terrorism, without sharing any argumentation: no examples, not even hypothetical scenarios, nothing.
He's asking to restrict the sharing of information, supposedly information on how "the government fights terrorism". He glosses over the fact that once law enforcement can persecute people for sharing some information, it is incredibly easy to persecute people for the sharing of _any_ information if it choses to. Power creep is a scary and dangerous thing, and it is very hard (impossible?) to guard against it.
This is from a person who persued the initiation of an illegal war. I was watching as Blair said "If you knew what I know, you would support [our war]" (paraphrasing). It turned out of course that he knew nothing that would justify a war. Why would we expect anything less than draconian measures from Blair on the issue of state secrets?
You are right. If this is acceptable, there isn't really anything to prevent restriction of any kind of knowledge, like even the pure scientific material, on the ground that it may somehow be used by the boogeyman. Lets imagine the consequences...
"I think there is going to have to be a look at what happens when somebody possesses material which is secret without having authority."
I think there is going to have to be a look at what happens when someone with a huge blindspot implies we should make a law about something they clearly don't understand.
"The peer insisted there was material the state had to keep secret, and powers had to be in place to protect it."
How does he propose that we keep a check on the state to make sure that it is not abusing its powers? Did he omit to mention this obvious flaw in his proposal, or is it an omission of the journalist reporting on what he said?
It seems like such statements by Lord Blair, insofar as they make people distrust the government, are "but of conduct which is likely to or capable of facilitating terrorism".
Or was it the journalists interviewing him? Or the guardian reposting it? Just arrest the lot and let the juries sort them out!
> we keep a check on the state to make sure that it is not abusing its powers
To the Statist, there is no such thing. A state's purpose is to exude power, for it is not a benevolent beast but it is a malevolent. The end-goal of a state will always be the curtailment of all other power that can be used to remove its power.
>"Did he omit to mention this obvious flaw in his proposal" //
Is it a "flaw". Surely it's impossible to have a system where the state retain information as secret that yet has third-party oversight and doesn't require the populous to trust a person in power (the third-party).
It seems more to be an outcome or corollary than a[n unexpected] error or "flaw".
What we actually need are laws that make it an offence for any government to cover up projects and operations that materially impact the lives and rights of their citizens. Whether a single citizen or all of them are affected it should be a punishable offence if higher ups cover up the actions of a government official.
What you should be learning from this is that there is no government that rules government - that laws, constitutions, and democracy exist only when and where those in power believe they ought to. I'm not arguing they're all amoral monsters. Often, it's their moral side that's the problem. They want a reasonable thing, such as protection from terrorism, and they sweep all impediments aside to obtain it, because they care, and they can.
This is getting very scary. Politicians who say something like this at any time, should be met with extreme outrage and make them lose whatever position they're holding immediately. Otherwise they'll get their way, rise to power, and attract more like him there.
What he's saying is unacceptable, but I fear many in the governments think like that right now, which why extreme outrage over this is so important.
This is getting very scary. Politicians who say something like this at any time, should be met with extreme outrage and make them lose whatever position they're holding immediately.
Ian Blair is a Life Peer, not a politician. The UK's House of Lords is not a democratic institution even in pretense.
Snowden did not leak the information he did because he felt that states should not have secrets. I think any reasonable person would agree that there is information states legitimately need or want to keep secret. What Snowden did was in response to abusive overreach in secret domestic surveillance, which (to me anyway) is quite different.
He warned there was a "new threat which is not of somebody personally intending to aid terrorism, but of conduct which is likely to or capable of facilitating terrorism".
We know we have a problem when transparency is largely demonized. Allegations of "terrorism" seems to be bringing much benefit to government. I saw a movie recently from the 1980's called "They Live!" I noticed that in the movie the word terrorism, allegations of terrorism or terrorists toward those who opposed them, was the weapon of control of the disguised, camelion totalitarian regime in power. Only those with special glasses could see them. It would seem as if this would be the playbook in protecting criminal government activity done under the auspices of law. Al Capone would have drooled for such type of power.
Top Secret should not be an excuse to undermine the law, the rights of individuals, and the Constitution of the United States. Those who witness such crimes have the duty to come forward to the public. By keeping quiet and turning a blind eye to crime, one partners with it.
Crime grows in the dark while the light of day exposes it. Freedom requires transparency. A war on whistle-blowers is really a type of barometer as to the amount of freedom that we really have.
So he is wanting a new law to cover people who haven't signed the Official Secrets Act from spreading information that is covered by that act?
Given how existing legislation is abused I would hate to see how that could be used. What if I've read something secret that I shouldn't have - would I be commiting Thought Crime?
Defenders of the State on this issue tend to answer the question they want to be asked - "should the state have secrets".
No-one (except maybe Julian Assange) is arguing that the State shouldn't have secrets - the recent leaks occurred not as a blow against secrecy but to expose State wrongdoing. That's why it's whistleblowing, and not just vandalism.
Guys like Blair like to pretend that they're fighting for the government's right to keep secrets, which no-one is seriously challenging; they run shy of addressing the specific secrets exposed - be it military misbehaviour against civilians, civil servants deceiving lawmakers and so on.
The root cause of all of this is really simple - our definition of terrorism, and the fact that we are at war with it. The solution is unfavorably not simple.
First thing's first, we need to redefine what constitutes terrorism, otherwise this situation will only get worse.
As often with powerful tools, what we miss is an effective counter-power to restore balance. In this case, I'd investigate:
* making it a crime for officials to use anti-terrorism provisions without a serious enough ground (this poses the problem of legally defining "serious enough")
* nullifying any legal procedure which uses anti-terrorist laws yet doesn't yield a terrorist indictment (Today, sticking a terrorist charge on an investigation just gives free super powers to judges and cops; with this caveat, making terrorist claims would become an all-or-nothing gamble, which would be used much more carefully)
From what I've seen in the US political and judicial system (I may be too cynical), I believe that the following would happen:
Point 1: The definition of what is "serious" would be so watered down and full of political rhetoric that anyone, at any time could be found to be a 'serious threat'.
Point 2: This would simply increase the amount of 'terrorism' convictions, and may actually lead to a quicker trials and harsher sentences --- surely the police and prosecution wouldn't bring a charge to MY court unless it was serious! Look at the new law that makes it so!
The issue is that the people using the powerful tools are also the same people allowed to write the checks and balances. . . .
Great, so the government would have laws that prevent us from ever knowing what they think is an acceptable level of surveillance of our daily lives. That has no potential for misuse.
I get that the leaks could potentially give an advantage to terrorists, but if they're so smart they're following the leaks with baited breath and reworking their tactics, the likelihood is they're probably already avoid using channels that they believe are compromised. If they're using channels that are compromised they're probably too ineffective to pull off a large scale terror attack.
Well, as for the bad guys, most of the public perception of them seems to be based on Holywood movies. In real life their sophistication seems to be absolute BS -- crude stuff that only works (sporadically at that) because a) it's simple to the point that nobody can prevent such stuff anyway, b) the agencies let it happen, c) the agencies are incompetent.
I don't believe they blocked any large scale stuff we don't know about. If they did, they would be shouting it on the rooftops, to show how effective and necessary they are.
If you want to see the largely-tamed press suddenly become rabidly anti-national security, go ahead guys.
The press is still massively powerful in the UK, and even more so in the United States, where the First Amendment still holds relatively strong. More importantly than any legal protection, civil society won't stand for it.
I think I've made clear through previous comments that, by HN standards, I'm slightly to the right of the Kaiser on SIGINT to prevent terrorism. Large scale persecution of the press would be enough to get even me to consider switching sides.
[+] [-] cageface|12 years ago|reply
If people that have been carefully vetted for security clearance are willing to risk their freedom and perhaps even their lives to bring to light abuses of government power we should protect them.
[+] [-] ekianjo|12 years ago|reply
We all know this is a big word to make headlines and influence people to be in favor of extreme laws. No country has ever been destroyed by Terrorism. Terrorism is, before all, a political tool. That's why States finance terrorist actions (the archives are full of that) to reach political means.
[+] [-] zanny|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fennecfoxen|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pwg|12 years ago|reply
George Orwell, 1984
[+] [-] tinco|12 years ago|reply
Perhaps in the accidental leaks back when the password for all those diplomatic cables leaked?
Or is the only way they facilitate terrorism that they make the public mistrust the authorities?
[+] [-] petercooper|12 years ago|reply
So far it seems no-one who has leaked information has had the clearance to get to the truly painful stuff, but the psychological screening to get to those levels is specifically designed to keep potential Snowdens and Mannings out.
[+] [-] w_t_payne|12 years ago|reply
The stability and security of a well-ordered society demands conformance to certain social norms and limits on behaviour. These limits must be upheld even in the face of rising food insecurity, income inequality, and economic distress.
The protection of civil order requires the enforcement of conformance to behavioural norms, which in turn demands that that we crack down on destabilising influences, both in traditional and digital/distributed media.
Fortunately, modern digital tools allow the state to monitor and control discourse, behaviour and thought as never before. These tools must be exploited to their full potential, and dissent and nonconforming behaviour - in all it's forms, must be detected, isolated, and crushed immediately.
For example, forums such as this one are hotbeds of dissent - anarchic and destructive cess-pits of ideological filth that lead our vulnerable and easily influenced youth astray.
The state must identify the minority of subversive participants in these forums who are actively encouraging dissent -- and must silence them, for the good of a well-ordered society.
[+] [-] sspiff|12 years ago|reply
He's asking to restrict the sharing of information, supposedly information on how "the government fights terrorism". He glosses over the fact that once law enforcement can persecute people for sharing some information, it is incredibly easy to persecute people for the sharing of _any_ information if it choses to. Power creep is a scary and dangerous thing, and it is very hard (impossible?) to guard against it.
[+] [-] bjelkeman-again|12 years ago|reply
Reference for illegality of the war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_the_Iraq_War
[+] [-] userulluipeste|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobbydavid|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hobs|12 years ago|reply
I think there is going to have to be a look at what happens when someone with a huge blindspot implies we should make a law about something they clearly don't understand.
[+] [-] rlpb|12 years ago|reply
How does he propose that we keep a check on the state to make sure that it is not abusing its powers? Did he omit to mention this obvious flaw in his proposal, or is it an omission of the journalist reporting on what he said?
[+] [-] einhverfr|12 years ago|reply
Or was it the journalists interviewing him? Or the guardian reposting it? Just arrest the lot and let the juries sort them out!
[+] [-] ihsw|12 years ago|reply
To the Statist, there is no such thing. A state's purpose is to exude power, for it is not a benevolent beast but it is a malevolent. The end-goal of a state will always be the curtailment of all other power that can be used to remove its power.
[+] [-] pbhjpbhj|12 years ago|reply
Is it a "flaw". Surely it's impossible to have a system where the state retain information as secret that yet has third-party oversight and doesn't require the populous to trust a person in power (the third-party).
It seems more to be an outcome or corollary than a[n unexpected] error or "flaw".
[+] [-] adaml_623|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JulianMorrison|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] einhverfr|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] devx|12 years ago|reply
What he's saying is unacceptable, but I fear many in the governments think like that right now, which why extreme outrage over this is so important.
[+] [-] throwaway_yy2Di|12 years ago|reply
Ian Blair is a Life Peer, not a politician. The UK's House of Lords is not a democratic institution even in pretense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ams6110|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] madaxe|12 years ago|reply
Such as? Why should the state have a higher expectation of privacy than its citizens, if it's representative of them?
[+] [-] 001sky|12 years ago|reply
== What. The. Fuck.
[+] [-] adamnemecek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guard-of-terra|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sthulbourn|12 years ago|reply
> Lord Blair told BBC Radio 4's Broadcasting House programme: "The state has to have secrets – that's how it operates against citizens.
[+] [-] toddnessa|12 years ago|reply
Top Secret should not be an excuse to undermine the law, the rights of individuals, and the Constitution of the United States. Those who witness such crimes have the duty to come forward to the public. By keeping quiet and turning a blind eye to crime, one partners with it.
Crime grows in the dark while the light of day exposes it. Freedom requires transparency. A war on whistle-blowers is really a type of barometer as to the amount of freedom that we really have.
[+] [-] spindritf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moocowduckquack|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arethuza|12 years ago|reply
Given how existing legislation is abused I would hate to see how that could be used. What if I've read something secret that I shouldn't have - would I be commiting Thought Crime?
[+] [-] ajb|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rwmj|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otikik|12 years ago|reply
Secrecy allows the state to do a lot of things.
[+] [-] rvkennedy|12 years ago|reply
No-one (except maybe Julian Assange) is arguing that the State shouldn't have secrets - the recent leaks occurred not as a blow against secrecy but to expose State wrongdoing. That's why it's whistleblowing, and not just vandalism.
Guys like Blair like to pretend that they're fighting for the government's right to keep secrets, which no-one is seriously challenging; they run shy of addressing the specific secrets exposed - be it military misbehaviour against civilians, civil servants deceiving lawmakers and so on.
[+] [-] mbesto|12 years ago|reply
First thing's first, we need to redefine what constitutes terrorism, otherwise this situation will only get worse.
[+] [-] fab13n|12 years ago|reply
* making it a crime for officials to use anti-terrorism provisions without a serious enough ground (this poses the problem of legally defining "serious enough")
* nullifying any legal procedure which uses anti-terrorist laws yet doesn't yield a terrorist indictment (Today, sticking a terrorist charge on an investigation just gives free super powers to judges and cops; with this caveat, making terrorist claims would become an all-or-nothing gamble, which would be used much more carefully)
[+] [-] Loughla|12 years ago|reply
Point 1: The definition of what is "serious" would be so watered down and full of political rhetoric that anyone, at any time could be found to be a 'serious threat'.
Point 2: This would simply increase the amount of 'terrorism' convictions, and may actually lead to a quicker trials and harsher sentences --- surely the police and prosecution wouldn't bring a charge to MY court unless it was serious! Look at the new law that makes it so!
The issue is that the people using the powerful tools are also the same people allowed to write the checks and balances. . . .
[+] [-] nicholassmith|12 years ago|reply
I get that the leaks could potentially give an advantage to terrorists, but if they're so smart they're following the leaks with baited breath and reworking their tactics, the likelihood is they're probably already avoid using channels that they believe are compromised. If they're using channels that are compromised they're probably too ineffective to pull off a large scale terror attack.
[+] [-] coldtea|12 years ago|reply
I don't believe they blocked any large scale stuff we don't know about. If they did, they would be shouting it on the rooftops, to show how effective and necessary they are.
[+] [-] s_q_b|12 years ago|reply
The press is still massively powerful in the UK, and even more so in the United States, where the First Amendment still holds relatively strong. More importantly than any legal protection, civil society won't stand for it.
I think I've made clear through previous comments that, by HN standards, I'm slightly to the right of the Kaiser on SIGINT to prevent terrorism. Large scale persecution of the press would be enough to get even me to consider switching sides.