Re: <nettime> Jay Rosen: Wikileaks, the World's First Stateless News Organization

[Karin Spaink <karin@spaink.net>]

On Aug 1, 2010, at 14:13 , James Wallbank wrote:

> I would suggest that the most significant issue around the Wikileaks
> situation is the question "How could Wikileaks get hold of so many
> classified documents?"


There's something else at work, too. If you look at the dossier that
The Washington Post compiled during their 2 year study of information
services (the Top Secret America files), you'll find that there are
850.000 people cleared to access 'top secret' information. The amount
of people cleared for 'mere 'secret' information might be five times
as much, or perhaps ten times: i.e. 4 million to 8,5 million.

With that amount of people being able to access 'secrets', it's
obvious that no secret can remain a secret for long. So actually I
think the question should be rephrased: how come it took so long for
so many documents to be released?

> Network Centric Operations suggests making intelligence and
> situational data available as widely as possible, empowering lower
> levels of command to request it, analyse it and respond to it
> appropriately.


The Washington Post files show otherwise. Agencies don't share
information. They all find / write / concoct it themselves, and nobody
uses other agencies' reports, unless indeed it's bottom-up, and thus,
in a sense, their own information.


- K -

-- 
Girls are never what they seem.
   - Philip Marlowe in The Singing Detective, e3




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