I would have agreed with you until the very recent Snowden revelations. Snowden seems to have revealed secrets that a huge number of people had access to (over a million?), showing its possible for a vast number of people to keep secrets. I have a much higher probability that 1,000 or so people could keep a really good secret than I did before.
Snowden seems to have revealed secrets that a huge number of people had access to (over a million?)
Snowden was a contract sysadmin for NSA. Surely there aren’t anywhere near a million such people? Where are you getting that number from? Are you talking about the 4 million people having “top secret” security clearance? I’m pretty sure the vast majority of them did not have access to the particular secrets that Snowden is revealing, i.e., there are other controls besides the clearance level that prevented them from accessing those secrets.
showing its possible for a vast number of people to keep secrets.
If there really were a huge number of people who had access to the secrets, it seems likely that foreign intelligence agencies already knew them. Do you have a reason to think otherwise? (In other words, given that we don’t know whether they really were kept secret rather than merely not publicly known, why are you updating towards secrets being more easily kept?)
Yes, “knowledgeable people” are saying that Snowden has damaged U.S. security.
I think what they meant is that the typical terrorist did not know about the NSA programs, not that foreign intelligence agencies didn’t know. (If they actually had good evidence that foreign intelligence agencies did not know, that would also reflect badly on people’s abilities to keep secrets in general.)
I would have agreed with you until the very recent Snowden revelations. Snowden seems to have revealed secrets that a huge number of people had access to (over a million?), showing its possible for a vast number of people to keep secrets. I have a much higher probability that 1,000 or so people could keep a really good secret than I did before.
Snowden was a contract sysadmin for NSA. Surely there aren’t anywhere near a million such people? Where are you getting that number from? Are you talking about the 4 million people having “top secret” security clearance? I’m pretty sure the vast majority of them did not have access to the particular secrets that Snowden is revealing, i.e., there are other controls besides the clearance level that prevented them from accessing those secrets.
If there really were a huge number of people who had access to the secrets, it seems likely that foreign intelligence agencies already knew them. Do you have a reason to think otherwise? (In other words, given that we don’t know whether they really were kept secret rather than merely not publicly known, why are you updating towards secrets being more easily kept?)
I’ve heard the million number in the media but I’m not sure about it, hence the ”?”.
Yes, “knowledgeable people” are saying that Snowden has damaged U.S. security.
I think what they meant is that the typical terrorist did not know about the NSA programs, not that foreign intelligence agencies didn’t know. (If they actually had good evidence that foreign intelligence agencies did not know, that would also reflect badly on people’s abilities to keep secrets in general.)