Item — HN Reader

> Aren't these comments themselves probably unauthorized disclosures to the news media?

Offically, yes. In practice, no. My understanding is that government orgs need some amount of non-official contact with journalists in order to get information out to the public. That is partly so they can make favorable information disclosures without it seeming official.

One could view the comment you quoted as an attempt to slightly improve the image of the Justice Dept and intelligence community without risking those entities appearing to be "soft on crime" (which is what would likely happen if they issued an official statment).

2 comments

Whoa whoa whoa! Now we're getting deep into what used to be called "Kremlinology". Back in the depths of the Cold War (and even today, from North Korea) the Soviet government would issue "news" that was blatantly untrue manure, and nothing else. So people would try to divine real meaning from arcane aspects of the untrue manure.

If they need to "make favorable information disclosures without it seeming official", and they need to improve their image without appearing to be "soft on crime", they should just say so, rather than making unofficial official statements and jumping through flaming semantics hoops like linguistic circus lions. We know those TLAs are rogue, but if we need to apply Kremlinology to understand them, they've lost their moral and linguistic anchors as well.

The main goals of these "hints" is to

1) Release the information to the public.

2) Not be on the official record of releasing such information.

Maybe Justice Dept. doesn't want to be on the record about not towing the party line or not being "tough" on leakers, but at the same time, it perceives the public is getting a little fed up with these NSA shenanigans. So they don't want to make it official, as it would seem as the executive branch is devided in its public stance.

So they test the waters by releaseing an "anonymous" hint like that and then see what happens.

This also, interestingly, can serve as a hint-hint to the NSA management to tone it down a bit, as Obama is getting some bad rap about this and so on. Sometimes the most direct message is not a direct message but through an anonymous hint like this. (Directed both at media, people but also government agencies as well).

This is nothing new and is tried and true PR technique.

Are there any ongoing efforts to disrupt PR schemes like this? I'd like to see the public less easily manipulated but I'm not sure where to start. (And, technically, not sure that I'm not also being manipulated.)

I don't think this amounts to manipulation of the public, since it's an attempt to get truthful information out into the public. Rather it's politics--like getting your friend to ask someone else's friend if she likes you.

People on HN tend to frown on this sort of politics. I'd posit that such attitudes are counter-productive. If you forced Americans to choose between two black or white options: security or liberty, you might very well not like the outcome. Sympathy towards people who leak national security information is not such a popular position that an agency can shout it from the rooftops. If you make more subtle disclosures untenable, the outcome might not work out in your favor.

Sorry, I should have clarified: Any tool or technique can (will?) be employed by either side.

I moreso wanted to know: when the security > liberty fanatics employ it against us, how can we best disrupt it?

There's also a problem with hardline Conservatives who see Snowden as a out-and-out traitor, don't see a major problem with a heavily police-friendly state, and are generally looking for any means to bash the President for not being "tough enough" with "the bad guys".

This can be a good way of saying what lot of people need and want to hear without giving the poo-flinging trolls a clear target for their displeasure.

Except that leaks to the press as a way of trying to control a story (or to simply play bureaucratic knife fights) is a DC art as old as time. Such things happen in other countries including Russia, though the Kremlin promulgating "blatantly untrue" material isn't quite the same as leaking stories to the press...

Except that these unofficial official leaks are now in the Sacred Homeland Security arena! Think of the children! Terrorist must not triumph! If you give them an inch they'll abuse a mile of it right into the ground!

Seriously, off the record stuff about unemployment statistics is one thing. Leaking stuff about drones and TSA and so forth is entirely another, or so we're told. Isn't James Risen in the doghouse over exactly that sort of thing?

"White House Kremlinology" is a phrase I first ran into a decade ago; you can google it. I hate that this is the state of things, but it is.

I was not justifying their method (or even saying that the unofficial/unauthorized leaks were truthful), merely offering a possible explanation of why they are allowed to happen (or, likely, encouraged).

When I said "favorable information disclosures", I meant favorable to the agency involved, not necessarily to anybody else.

> they've lost their moral and linguistic anchors as well.

Whoa whoa whoa, I thought the intelligence apparatus was a benevolent entity!

assuming that the comments are those that the directors of the nsa or cia like, then it's an authorized disclosure. Only the delusional would view either org as soft on leakers.