Day: November 29, 2010

Throwing Stones

John Kampfner makes some excellent points about the media’s own docility in the face of institutional power being what’s ultimately behind their suspicion of and outright derision towards Wikileaks:

All governments have a legitimate right to protect national security. This should be a specific, and closely scrutinised, area of policy. Most of our secrecy rules are designed merely to protect politicians and officials from embarrassment. Documents are habitually over-classified for this purpose.

[…]

Rather than throwing stones, newspapers should be asking themselves why they did not have the wherewithal to hold truth to power.

Throwing Stones

A Waste of Money and Time

Bruce Schneier gives a cogent opinion:

Exactly two things have made airplane travel safer since 9/11: reinforcing the cockpit door, and convincing passengers they need to fight back. Everything else has been a waste of money. Add screening of checked bags and airport workers and we’re done. Take all the rest of the money and spend it on investigation and intelligence.

This is exactly right, though it clearly elides the cesspool that our investigation and intelligence apparatus currently is, a critical problem that the government shows zero interest in taking on.
The 9/11 Commission pointed it out and the reaction has been to add another layer or two of middle managers and most definitely not to drain the swamp and rebuild a reactive and reasonably transparent national intelligence apparatus. Easier just to scan our junk, I guess. Kick all other cans down the road and then roundly blame the other party when the next big (but plainly avoidable) intelligence failure happens.

A Waste of Money and Time

It’s like eating a spoonful of Drano: Sure, it’ll clean you out, but it’ll leave you hollow inside.

Sergeant Frank Drebin, Detective Lieutenant Police Squad, better known as Leslie Nielsen.

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation […] want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. […] Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

Frederick Douglass, 1857.
Maximum yep.