Topic: Constitutional Issues
Freedom of the Press A likelihood analysis of the concept of national secrets. How does Seymour Hersh get this stuff?by Jack Galway
(libertarian)
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
In response to a military friend's lament about Seymour Hersh's sincerity as an American, and his further despair over the apparent "treason" of insiders of the military-industrial monolith:
Damn that pesky freedom of the press! Who ever heard of such a thing in a free country?
Sounds to me, sir, that you are saying that the problem is a function of the military-intelligence community. There must be some mathematical verity that when an organism reaches a tipping point in communication channels it loses its ability to keep information secure.
The combinations of channels of communication among 2 units are 2, among 5 are 120.
By the time you reach 10 communicators there are nearly 4 million!
At 13, you are looking at over 6 billion, add 2 more and there are a trillion!
So if the leak rate is 1 in 1,000,000 messages, a communication web of 25 would produce 1.55112E+19 leaks.
As Fox Mulder said, "Trust No One."
So, not only can we not keep a secret, but we should be able to learn any other given organization's secrets, just by sitting in Grand Central Station (or its equivalent) long enough*.
* This is modeled on the idea that if you sit in GCS long enough, you will encounter someone you know. As a matter of practical information, I cannot recall a time, in 65 years, that I have been in GCS long enough to change subway trains that I haven't run into someone I know -- and I live in KY!
Please, no critiques of my mathematics. I'm just considering the boundaries. If it makes you more comfortable cut everything in half! If you still don't get the point, go play sudoku.
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