DoD Paper Proposes National Security Through a Culture of Restraint (and Stigma) 310
decora writes "An SAIC analyst has written a paper [PDF] calling for the 'stigmatization' of the 'unattractive' types who tend to discuss government secrets in public. The plan, described in the Naval Postgraduate School Homeland Security Affairs journal, is to promote self-censorship as a 'civic duty'. Who needs to censor themselves? Amateur enthusiasts who describe satellite orbits, scientists who describe threats to the food supply, graduate students mapping the internet, the Government Accountability Office, which publishes failure reports on the TSA, the US Geologic Survey, which publishes surface water information, newspapers (the New York Times), TV shows, journalism websites, anti-secrecy websites, and even security author Bruce Schneier, to name a few."
Turn the tables on them! (Score:5, Interesting)
How about a culture where attempting to stigmatize people for your own gain is looked on as bad?
Or one where openness and freedom of speech is looked upon as helpful?
Does anyone with more than a room temperature IQ think the "bad guys" don't know the satellite orbits?
Re:Is this for real? (Score:5, Interesting)
What choice do you have? The machinery of aristocracy and control is well beyond the need for your support. They're self-sustaining and the level of corruption in all aspects of government and politics so unbelievably extensive and deep and convoluted that there is no way to simply excise the foreign tissue by itself.
Naomi Wolf does a great job of describing the process that seems to be occurring right now (including this event) in her book "The End of America".
I mean, we live in a country where our president's (last president) family did extensive business with the family of the man that killed thousands of Americans. We live in a country where government officials who are employees of Goldman Sachs take a trillion dollars from the tax payers to bail out Goldman Sachs. We live in a country where our president appoints Ken Lay as energy advisor to deregulate his own industry on his own terms. We live in a country where we allow our government to pass bills that allow the president to point at a citizen and make them disappear. Off to gitmo for torture, if he wants. Without representation or a trial. We live in a country where judges are paid off in millions of dollars by the private prison industry to fuel their business by unfairly punishing minor juvenile violators with many months in juvenile detention (google it - in Pennsylvania).
It's probably not too late to force change, but by the time you could ever even remotely possibly convince enough of the population to give a flying fuck and get their heads out of their Bible and Twilight or their "durr durr abortion" and "durr durr immigration" and "durr durr religion" bullshit to actually do something about the real problems facing us, it'll definitely be too fucking late.
Re:Sounds rather un-american (Score:2, Interesting)
It's been done before.....
LIPS SEALED! [plakaty.ru]
The Soviet version translates roughly as "Be on the alert. In days like these, the walls listen. It's a fine line between chatter/gossip and betrayal. KEEP YOUR LIPS SEALED!"
Re:Why is the US so paranoid? (Score:4, Interesting)
It makes no sense to me. You have by far the strongest military in the world. The USSR is gone. Ok, so there's China, but so far they have not made any seriously threatening moves. Who is left that is any threat?
The problem isn't so much the degree to which the threat is or isn't real. If they wanted to fabricate unreal threats, they could certainly do a better
The problem is that there exists a truly massive security-industrial complex. For example, a huge percentage of the population within commuting distance of Washington DC have some kind of security clearance, and their employment depends on it, it's part of their social group, etc. Often these people have lived a relatively sheltered "whitebread" life, except for commonly military service in some place like Iraq. Their biggest worry is that they'll accidentally be friends with someone who'll be busted for pot and that will complicate up their security paperwork for the rest of their life. Sadly, these people are hard-pressed to understand America's freedoms, having renounced much of it for themselves.
Large, highly profitable industries have arisen to service this part of the Federal budget. So they hire people and more people to fill more and more funded positions with names like "Analyst". They write papers which sometimes come out like this.
Personally, I think this is one of the stupidest, most short-sighted, bits of analysis I've ever read. But it's important to contemplate how these things emerge from a process in which most or all of the people involved consider themselves to be doing the right thing for their country, career, employer, social circuit, etc..
Re:Why is the US so paranoid? (Score:4, Interesting)
It makes no sense to me. You have by far the strongest military in the world. The USSR is gone. Ok, so there's China, but so far they have not made any seriously threatening moves. Who is left that is any threat?
I know 9/11 left some big scars on the collective psyche but seriously, it's been 10 years, you invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, killed Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Surely there's been enough restitution?
I worry that one day the rest of the world is going to have to unite against the US as you decide to pacify or nuke us all since we are deemed a threat to national security.
The answer to your question is explained in a book I am currently reading called Jesus Wants to Save Christians [amazon.com] by Rob Bell. It's geared towards a religious audience, so if you aren't interested in that sort of thing, then you'll have to wade through a lot of writing that's off-topic for you. The gist of the answer is this: 1) America has more than enough. 2) When you have more than enough, you start building ways to protect what you have, lest someone else take it from you. 3) When you start fearing that others might take away what you have, you begin to divide the world into an "Us" and "Them." 4) You then begin to fear all of the "Thems" and begin oppressing them. FWIW, I think Bell is right, and it deeply disturbs me. I just don't know how much I can do to stop it. And, you are exactly on target about the fear we have in this nation, and how illogical it is. I wish I could get the rest of the U.S. to understand that.