Ruled By Criminals Part 2: Your Papers, Please!

     Everyone has secrets, right? Everyone has done something he’d rather that others never know. And everyone has motives that are, on the odd occasion, less than perfectly praiseworthy.

     But ought we to allow high officials and government agencies to have secrets? To allow people with power over you to have secrets seems illimitably dangerous. Governments and those within them wield coercive force. They claim immunity from penalty for the use of that force, under a notion that goes back to the days of the absolute monarch: “sovereign immunity.”

     Of course, in the Land of the Formerly Free, that immunity vanishes if it turns out that the official had exceeded his authority, or had used it for venal purposes. Such instances expose the official to the same sort of indictment and trial that a commoner would face. However, as long as the official can credibly claim to have been honestly mistaken – perhaps misled by others with lower motives than his – he’ll get away with just about any infamy. The same goes for cops.

     What endangers the corrupt or tyrannical official beyond all else is his paper trail. If there are records that would expose his corruption or tyranny, he will take pains to conceal them – to destroy them, if it lies within his power. The possibility of having them officially classified as secrets is often his best defense.

     And what have we here?

     Joe Biden’s sexual assault accuser, Tara Reade, is calling for the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee and former senator to authorize the University of Delaware to release locked-away staff records pertaining to his 36 years in the Senate.

     In interviews this week, she said these records may contain the official complaint form she filed after Biden allegedly sexually assaulted her in 1993.

     “I’m calling for the release of the documents being held by the University of Delaware that contain Biden’s staff personnel records because I believe it will have my complaint form, as well as my separation letter and other documents,” she said Tuesday to Fox News.

     “Maybe if other staffers that have tried to file complaints would come to light — why are they under seal? And why won’t they be released to the public?”

     How can we permit evidence of a sexual assault – a United States Senator’s digital penetration of an unwilling woman! – to be “sealed away” for any reason? What’s the rationale for “sealing” paperwork that lodges complaints against powerful officials? Isn’t this the exact reverse of the rule of law?

     Yes, I’m laughing too.

---

     Of course, the antiquated notion that no one is above the law fell into desuetude some time ago. These days “the rule of law” is merely a bit of rhetoric one side of an argument occasionally finds useful as a bludgeon or a distraction. It has no real force when a member of the political elite comes under public scrutiny.

     Remember Barack Hussein Obama’s success at concealing all record of his years at Columbia University? Assuming he was ever there in reality, that is. No one who was there during his supposed years in attendance could remember him at all: not professors, not staffers, and not classmates. His matriculation records would have been of great interest to the public…but Columbia claimed it could not release them without Obama’s assent, which (of course) he withheld.

     Perhaps this only works in one direction. When Obama first ran for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, his initial Republican opponent was Jack Ryan, a man of many achievements and sterling character. However, Ryan had one weak point: he’d once been married to starlet Jeri Ryan, she of the impressive bosom and minimal acting talent. The two had gone through a contentious divorce. The records of that divorce were sealed by mutual consent under a judge’s order, to protect their children from a barrage of innuendo…but Obama’s handmaidens in the Illinois press persuaded a judge to open them. The consequences included Ryan’s withdrawal from the race and the unaccomplished and relatively unknown Obama’s election over emergency replacement Republican candidate Alan Keyes.

     It appears that some public figures have a right to conceal their records that others lack.

---

     The degree of evil that occurs under official seal cannot be accurately known. It can only be estimated from what manages to seep out through those seals. While that’s a greater amount today than ever before, we cannot reliably infer from it how much (or how serious) remains safely concealed. There may be little or there may be much.

     All of it, whatever its volume or magnitude, rests on the notion that a public official is allowed to keep secrets the rest of us could never manage to conceal. Under that scheme a man who was for 36 years a United States Senator, the chairman of several important committees including the Senate Judiciary Committee, and is now a major party’s nominee for the presidency, just might get away with rape. To thrust your fingers into the orifice of an unwilling woman is rape; be in no doubt about it. If records of Tara Reade’s complaint against Biden still exist, they would constitute nearly irreproachable confirmation of the event. But we are being denied all knowledge of them.

     Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee vacillates over whether it must offer the American electorate Joseph Biden as its candidate for the most powerful office in the world. Stay tuned.

     (For further criminality behind a veneer of public service, see this tale of the FBI’s deliberate entrapment of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, and the subsequent concealment of the evidence that would exonerate him.)

Classification Nation

     "Could you tell me a little about how the software is going to work? Not the tech stuff, just the kind of windy generalities a non-engineer could understand."
     Svenson squinted. "Why do you want to know, Ben?"
     "It might help me to be credible to the blue-suiters when we’re together in the trenches."
     The group leader shook his head. "They’re not expected to ask. In fact, they’re not allowed to know, both for the sake of an objective test and to protect OA’s proprietary technologies. And I wouldn’t use that trench idiom with an Air Force officer. Their hands never touch dirt."
     "Oh. Okay. But how about a little sop to a layman’s curiosity?"
     Svenson looked off for a moment. "Well, I could tell you..."
     Holloway leaned forward.
     "...but then I’d have to kill you." The group leader’s face twisted into a juvenile grin.
     Holloway groaned and smacked himself on the forehead. "I walked into that one, didn’t I?"
     "Yes, you did. Thanks. Now let’s get busy on your script."

     [From Chosen One]

     I worked in the defense sector for a very long time, and as such I had to become familiar with the classification scheme that applies to information the Department of Defense deems too important to bruit around casually. For those of us in the civilian part of that world, only the bottom three levels of the scheme were of regular importance:

1. Confidential: Some harm to U.S. interests would accrue from the dissemination of this information, but recovery is likely.
2. Secret: Serious harm to U.S. interests would accrue from the dissemination of this information. Recovery is uncertain.
3. Top Secret: Extremely grave harm to U.S. interests would accrue from the dissemination of this information. Recovery would be impossible in the foreseeable future.

     There are levels above those three, though how many there are and how they’re defined I cannot say. Suffice it to say that even at the Secret level, an unhallowed disclosure, whether deliberate or accidental, was regarded as a matter for significant discipline. In some cases it could lead to felony charges and imprisonment.

     When information is protected by law from dissemination, one of the consequences is the use of the classification scheme to hide secrets that have nothing to do with the national interest. So it has been in the past, and so it is today:

     Last Wednesday the intelligence community launched its first attack on Attorney General William Barr’s investigation into its illegal acts and abuses of power during the 2016 election. In a New York Times article entitled “Justice Department Seeks to Question CIA in its Own Russia Investigation,” the IC makes clear its fear of the results of Barr’s investigation of their spy operation on candidate Trump in 2016 that continued through his early presidency.

     The article, obviously written at the behest of its intelligence community sources — “current and former American officials” — is the first of many concerted attacks on Attorney General William Barr’s investigation of the joint CIA/FBI spy operation. Many other articles, based on carefully crafted leaks to the media and Congress, are sure to follow because current and former high-ranking officials of those agencies (and probably the NSA as well) have a lot to lose.

     John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut, is running the investigation under Barr’s direction. From the Times report, we can easily deduce the fact that those who ran the spy op — including CIA Director Gina Haspel — are running scared from the Durham investigation.

     It’s already become irrefutably clear to anyone paying attention that persons in the FBI, CIA, and DoJ did indeed violate the law in at least two ways: first, by the unwarranted wiretapping of Carter Page and others in the Trump for President campaign under a demonstrably fallacious rationale; second, by the “leak” of information to the press about investigations and other developments arising from those wiretaps, in violation of various elements of the United States Code.

     The CIA, in particular, is not pleased about being the subject of an investigation with potential criminal indictments in prospect:

     [T]he CIA isn’t going to cooperate. As the Times article says, [CIA Director Gina] Haspel has told her officials to cooperate but — and here’s the big catch — still work to protect “… critical pieces of intelligence whose disclosure could jeopardize sources, reveal collection methods or disclose information provided by allies, according to current and former American officials…”

     Either the CIA is going to cooperate — as the president ordered — or it isn’t. Clearly, it isn’t. There’s no limitation on the cooperation Trump ordered, but Haspel and her people are going to drag their feet, and probably hide evidence and lie to protect themselves from the investigators.

     That part of the Times story reveals the CIA’s attitude, which may be imputed to Haspel. Again, it says, “Senior agency officials have questioned why the CIA’s analytical work should be subjected to a federal prosecutor’s scrutiny.”

     That’s it in a nutshell: the CIA believes it should not be accountable for its misdeeds, even if laws have been broken.

     Surely if “the CIA’s analytical work” was within the parameters of the law, those involved have nothing to fear, right? Yet there is palpable fear in Langley over the Barr / Durham investigation – so much so that they recoil from having it called an “investigation:”

     [Disgraced former FBI Director] James Comey — probably at the behest of then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch — only referred to the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s felonious use of a private, unsecured email system as a “matter.” By doing so he tried to exclude the possibility that it was a criminal investigation despite the fact that it very much was one. So is the Barr/Durham investigation. It’s not a “review.” By definition, such an investigation is an investigation into possible criminal actions.

     And by Director Haspel’s own statements, the CIA will use the classification scheme, and the purported seriousness of the information it’s used to protect, to protect...itself.

---

     A nation cannot have a scheme for keeping secrets, violations to be punishable by law, without the possibility that that scheme will be abused. It’s simply not possible to keep villains from exploiting such a system. On the one hand, several of the most recent prosecutions for espionage have involved Classified Documents Control clerks: persons with blanket authority to handle even the most serious of the nation’s secrets. On the other, the use of classification to shield evidence of criminal wrongdoing against disclosure, with persons of unreviewable authority standing guard against penetration, is at the heart of the current controversy. So as with all items of power, how it will be used depends upon the motives and character of the persons who strive to use it.

     Could there be a better testament to the importance of Friedrich Hayek’s analysis of “Why The Worst Get On Top” — ? Could any consideration better outline the importance of restricting the classification system and its uses as severely as possible – perhaps even to its total elimination?

     It has been observed by many commentators that the preservation of a “secret” is best effected by discretion: that is, by simply not talking about it, nor writing it where others will read about it, nor otherwise making it available to ill-chosen eyes and minds. As the old saying goes, “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” Robert A. Heinlein noted how this might apply to another of our national muddles: the poor protection of patentable and copyrightable materials:

     "Danny Boy, you are not going to patent the gadget. What would it get you? Seventeen years at the most... and no years at all in three fourths of the world. If you did patent or try to, Edison, and P. G. and E., and Standard would tie you up with injunctions and law suits and claimed infringements and I don't know what all. But you said yourself that you could put one of your gadgets in a room with the best research team G.A. has to offer and the best they could do would be to melt it down and the worst would be that they would blow themselves up. You said that. Did you mean it?"
     "Certainly. If they don't know how I insert the—"
     "Hush! I don't want to know. And walls have ears. We don't make any fancy announcements; we simply start manufacturing. Wherever power is cheapest today. Where is that?"

     [From Friday]

     Even if “the gadget” wouldn’t melt down or blow you up, getting out ahead of the pack and running like the wind provides the best form of security for most important information. After all, it’s the exploitation that matters, not the mere abstract knowledge. But all that is for another tirade.

     What ought to concern Us the People is that the Omnipotent State has contrived a protective method for the violation of our rights that effectively shields the perpetrators from all consequences – and that that method has been used in an attempt to unseat a legitimately elected president. Above all the faux outrages of our day, this one deserves proper scrutiny. Let’s make sure it gets it.

Classification Nation

     “Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” – Author unknown

     Lately we’ve been hearing a lot about classified information, levels thereof, exposures of sources and methods, and so forth, mostly as the recent “dueling memos” skirmishes relate to those subjects. As I have some acquaintance with the subject, it seemed an appropriate time to drop a few thoughts into the mill.

     First and foremost: the aim of classification is simple: to restrict access to a qualified item of information to a group of trustworthy persons with a need to know it. The qualifications are fairly simple: if a datum pertains to some strategic or tactical capability, intention, or knowledge of a potential enemy’s capabilities or intentions, it’s a candidate for classification. We don’t classify data that lacks those qualifications; there’s no point.

     When I was introduced to classified material, I was often surprised at the sort of data that fell into that bag. For example: at one point I learned that the size of a particular field in a communications stream – i.e., the number of bits required to convey it from the sender to the receiver – was classified Secret. I asked why. My tutor in these matters told me that knowing the required number of bits facilitates the deduction of the range and fineness of the relevant capability. It struck me as obscure, until I realized that knowledge of the associated enemy capability, when combined with knowledge of the field size, would provide exactly that – and the enemy surely knew his own capability.

     Persons who originate classifications must be able to think in that fashion.

     Second, classification levels are based on how severe the damage would be if an enemy were to obtain the classified datum. The three bottom levels are:

1. Confidential: Some damage, probably recoverable.
2. Secret: More severe damage, unknown probability of recovery.
3. Top Secret: Extremely severe damage, recovery highly unlikely.

     There are levels above those three, but they’re reserved for matters we who labor in the defense industry have no need to know.

     Third, a datum’s classification level is not a permanent characteristic. The classification level of some datum will often decrease over time, for example due to technological advances or the disclosure of related data in the course of a war. Rarely will a datum’s classification level increase as time passes, though it has happened now and then.

     At every classification level, the criteria for access are personal trustworthiness and need to know.

---

     There are some problems with the classification system. I’ve droned on about them in the past, but a reprise seems appropriate.

     First, classification itself points a big red arrow at the datum. If the enemy knows that Datum X is Top Secret, he knows what to look for. As the storage requirements for TS data are explicit and very strict, he also knows where to find it. If the datum is that sensitive, there’s no help for this except extreme care and vigilance in handling it.

     Second, need to know is a somewhat nebulous thing. For one thing, need to know will usually expire at some point – but there’s no way to remove the knowledge from those who’ve had access to it. Indeed, over time one who knows a given classified datum can forget that it’s classified. For another, there are many classified items that are routinely shared with “foreign nationals:” usually the citizens of nations that are partners in an alliance with the United States. It’s more difficult for our Defense Investigative Service (DIS) to determine the need to know of such a person than to make the equivalent determination for a “U.S. person.” Yet certain collaborative projects, including some that go on for years or decades, make it unavoidable.

     Third and last for now, classification can be used to conceal information that ought not to be hidden. A classification authority with something to hide is a terrible thing, a potentially fatal wound in the nation. I have no idea what sort of qualification procedure applies to persons with classification authority. We can only hope that it’s stringent about character and personal vulnerabilities.

     However, at this time these are enduring problems without known solutions.

---

     Probably the most interesting aspect of classification is the need to protect “sources and methods:” i.e., how we learned what we know about the capabilities and intentions of potential enemies. Time was, this pertained solely to intelligence gathered by human beings. Today it encompasses a great many non-human devices and techniques.

     You can easily see how this ties into the classified aspects of our own technology. One reason to keep some technical capability secret is what it allows us to learn about others. For example, the National Security Agency has a considerable range of capabilities to intercept electronic communications. Some of them are kept classified so that potential enemies against which they’re being employed won’t change their methods of communication to something the NSA hasn’t yet cracked.

     There are sometimes wheels within the wheels. Some parts of our own communications are easily monitored; others are more closely encrypted. One way to feed a potential enemy false information is to deploy – secretly, of course – a new communications technique that uses a previously unknown encryption method, while continuing to “use” a technique we know the enemy has cracked. This can be used to misdirect the enemy nation about our intentions, provided he doesn’t discover the new communications method. Of course, the enemy can use the same method to mislead us, which makes it a subject to which a fair amount of brainpower is dedicated.

---

     Nag? Are you there?
     Always, Christine.
     Oh, good. You’ve been so quiet most of the day that I was getting worried.
     Is something the matter other than that, Christine?
     You can see this hill full of oaks through my eyes, right? Am I right to be worried about it, or am I being paranoid?
     How would you expect me to know?
     Well...
     You know far more about violence and combat than I. Trust your own judgment. I can’t improve on it.
     I’m just worried that I’m being...well...
     Insecure?
     Yeah.
     That’s the best of all mindsets for a security operative, wouldn’t you say?
     Hm. Good point.

     [From Shadow Of A Sword]

     A good security officer – i.e., one who is tasked with the protection of some collection of classified information and is serious about it – will never completely relax. He’s subliminally aware that efforts to penetrate that which he has been charged with protecting are never-ending. It tends to make him guarded about everything he says or does, even among family and friends.

     It’s a thankless job. It’s a wonder that anyone ever accepts it. It’s a greater wonder that anyone in such a position ever admits to it. And that, too, is a pressure point against the classification system. People like to talk about their work. To be inhibited against doing so is a source of considerable internal tension.

     Sometimes external tension, too. Time was, I would have laughed at the following brief exchange. I would have assumed it was fictional:

     Wife: How was work today, sweetie?
     Husband: You have no need to know.

     Unfortunately, it isn’t.

The Secrecy Syndrome

     To gauge from the Liberty’s Torch email-bag, something I wrote yesterday has struck a nerve, specifically this:

     Just as governments strive to do everything in secret, they strive with equal fervor to eliminate the privacy of their subjects.

     One correspondent pointed me to this article:

     Rather than ameliorate the situation, those in power have doubled down on the stupid. In what only can be described as a move of sheer brilliance, the Virginia Senate has already passed a bill to keep police officer’s names confidential. To my knowledge there is no state or national precedent for this, at least here in the U.S. Clearly precedents exist in such democratic strongholds such as East Germany, pre-1945 Germany, post-Czar Russia, Democratic Republic of China, Iran, and virtually every African country since the 1950’s.

     The issues are obvious. The potential for abuse becomes astronomically higher. It very nearly incentivizes lawless behavior from law enforcement....Becoming an anonymous badge removes an important impetus for morality and legal behavior. The Milgram experiment makes this point abundantly clear. Make the individual anonymous, put them in a room with an authority figure, and watch the magic happen. I have no doubt this correlates closely with the various threats and cries for the identity of Levoy Finicum’s shooter in Oregon. Like all things, it will be done in the name of safety, ‘for the children’ and wives of law enforcement and take us yet one step closer to the gaping maw of tyranny.

     Even in states without such legislation on the books, it can be extremely difficult to determine the identities of the badge holders. Indeed, as governments at all levels strain to expand their coercive powers – often by arming bureaucrats – they intensify their efforts to “protect” the identities of those who are sent out to wield “lawful authority.”

     Ponder that for a moment while I fetch more coffee.

---

     The attack on citizens’ privacy has been a headline item for quite some time. The Snowden revelations about the NSA’s wide-spectrum capture of cell phone and Internet traffic were only the most dramatic of the lot. The “Stingray” cell phone interceptor disclosures have commanded quite a bit of attention, as have the FBI’s recent efforts to coerce Apple into unlocking cell phones.

     The ATF’s “Fast and Furious” operation was intended to compel gun dealers to report multiple-gun transactions, in the name of preventing “straw purchases” of firearms for illegal purposes. Look how well that worked out. Several states now require the reporting of anyone who makes a bulk purchase of ammunition, under a similar rationale.

     Being married to an accountant makes me privy to certain other invasions of our privacy. We all know that financial institutions are compelled by law and regulation to report all the details on cash transactions above $5000, but did you know that the IRS requires professional tax return preparers who file electronically to register their computers with the IRS?

     Mind you, the IRS requires this in the name of “protecting taxpayer information.” But who – or what – has been responsible for the illegal disclosure of taxpayer information? Wasn’t it the IRS itself?

     For those of us who employ gold and silver as inflation hedges, the news is equally disturbing: Coin and bullion dealers must report all transactions over certain thresholds. Your hard-asset hoard might not be as private as you’ve thought.

     Remarkable how the government can screw up royally, then lay the penalties for the screwup on wholly uninvolved private citizens, isn’t it?

---

     Low intentions go hand in hand with a desire for secrecy. That’s so obvious it doesn’t require an explanation. The desire to penetrate the privacy of others kicks in when the holder of those low intentions is a government agency.

     Many are the areas of human activity where governments seek to pierce our privacy. However, their concentration will always be on those things that support the free action of private citizens:

• Weaponry;
• Communications;
• Money.

     The citizenry can resist State coercion, if it has the resources with which to educate itself, acquire arms, and organize for resistance. But to be effective, resistance must be directed at the proper targets: i.e., those that seek to shackle us. A spirit of resistance that remains merely a targetless desire not to be coerced has very little prospect for success over the long term. As the saying goes, no one ever won a war by playing defense.

     When the State succeeds in penetrating the privacy of the citizen, it forearms itself against efforts to resist it. If it can shield the identities and activities of its own agents, it is largely immunized against counterattack. Under a regime that succeeds at both those things, there is very little prospect for freedom.

     The 88,000 governments – federal, state, county, municipal, and local – in these United States have proved adept at both tasks. In aggregate, they employ many millions of persons and spend more than $6 trillion per year. The most important details of our lives are laid bare to them. Yet, except for the half-million officials we elect to those governments, we know almost nothing about those who claim to act under their authority.

     It’s appallingly clear that a secret law is an instrument of tyranny, intolerable on its face. Why isn’t it equally clear that secret law enforcers are tyrants in their own right?

     Think about it.