Posted by
glen ropella on
Jun 10, 2013; 7:36pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/The-AP-kerfuffle-tp7583146p7583218.html
I had to go back and reexamine my analysis for the AP leak versus the
PRISM leak, just to see if my attitude has changed. It hasn't. Delete
now or forever hold your peace. ;-)
To be clear upfront, from the video I watched of Snowden talking about
why he leaked, my "bullsh!t" detectors were dinging like mad. Snowden
seems disingenuous in a way I can't put my finger on. But, then again,
reading the "violate a sacred trust" response by Clapper was worse than
disingenuous. Clapper's response is, to use his own words, profoundly
offensive. Rather than consider _why_ someone would violate such a
sacred trust, Clapper just assumes the sanctity of secrecy and
immediately moves to condemn.
In any case, the problem still seems to be one of motivation and
incentive. The people I've known who were poised to climb the
government secrecy ladder all wore their patriotism and "duty, honor,
respect" badges on their sleeves. OTOH, most of the sysadmins and many
of the systems engineers I've known, perhaps by virtue of their need to
wear many hats, tended to be more libertarian and/or anarchist. You
would think the white hat hackers in our government would have found
methodology for dovetailing these cultures, particularly by ensuring
that employee's motivations lined up with the objectives of any given
project, if not the agencies' missions.
I know we had such policies at lockheed when I worked there. One of my
mentors had made it quite clear to his bosses that he would only work on
defensive weapons systems. And, believe it or not, they honored his
ethic, though without making promises that they wouldn't lay him off
when/if they ran out of FTEs in defensive weapons jobs.
But, perhaps Snowden's position as a _contractor_ is relevant? Our
recent acceleration in the amount of responsibility we (particularly the
military, but I'm sure intelligence has the same problem) we take out of
employees' hands and put into contractors' hands is great for those of
us convinced of the power of decentralized systems. But, you have to
admit that it's more difficult to verify or ensure a stable, coherent,
common purpose to the members of a decentralized collective. I suppose
documented evidence of which hierarchies through which Snowden _tried_
to express his concerns would shed some light on whether his status as a
contractor, rather than an employee, had a significant impact on the
conflict between his motivation and the objectives of his client.
glen wrote at 05/15/2013 01:49 PM:
> The issue is less about danger to any given group and more about the
> confusion between motivation and incentive. Do our soldiers enlist and
> do what they do because of the response of the civilians? No. Do the
> inventors, movers, and shakers of society do what they do because they
> want to get rich and make lots of money? No. Would that putative CIA
> employee do what they would because of the artificial incentive
> scaffolding nearby? No.
>
> The real danger is conflating incentive with motive.
--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Gather all around the young ones
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