[Ronn_Bman]

Originally posted by Djinn Raffo: Debunked! Ok the audio/video/recon sources.. why do they need to be protected, i am generally curious and would like to know? Yeah these images of Mustafa Bin TerrorG came from the camera of a spyplane. where is the protection there? If Mustafa Bin TerrorG doesn't know that we know his location, or that we are keeping a particularly close eye on him, he certainly will after pictures of him are made public won't he? Think he might change some of the things he's doing? Should we tell him he's being an idiot and that he needs to act more covertly if he's going to be a long-lived international terrorist? Are we suppose to help him out? Don't you think other terrorists might just start avoiding Mustafa because he's a security risk? Maybe his operation will be shut down and/or transferred somewhere else, and we'll have wasted the last X number of years tracking him and have to start all over again. And all for what? To tell the public he is at location X, while giving him ample notice to vacate location X, so that the public will say your info must have been wrong when location X is visited? "Oh no this means that their are planes taking pictures hovering around up there!!!" Everyone already knows that. Someone pointed a whisper 2000 into the desert and picked up a soundbyte... we can't tell anyone that. The cel phone tapping: well anyone can have a scanner and listen to other peoples cel conversations.. a friend of mine has one and does it all the time.. unless the phone itself was literally bugged with a device. In which case that falls under the category of human spy. And that man/womans identity is in danger of being exposed by the small number of people theory.. What about a cell conversation they have encrypted, but we've broken? It happened all the time during the cold war both ways. You think your information is safe, so you talk allot thinking it's safe. Do you tell the other guy you broke his code? Of course lots of people pick up cell conversations, and people have been warned, but they still talk on them in the civilian world despite the warnings. Do you beat the enemy over the head with a stick and say stop telling secrets because we're listening, or do you let idiots do what idiots do? You keep falling back on the premise of the spy as an individual person, and not a network that touches many people along the information chain. You can believe that for every one person in a super sensitive group there are hundreds of people along the chain of information as it is transferred back and forth. Those people along the line probably work with more than one agent and exposing them exposes all. You can think it's a hat trick if you want, but highly coveted information gained through time consuming and costly espionage activities isn't something you give up for the nightly news. Of course Night Stalker i understand that intel communities dont want to reveal their sources be they human or technological. And that's great, that goes without saying. They dont have to reveal their sources. But they could reveal the information. ah.. but that would let others know about the sources, their data collection practices, and their processing of information procedures. Only if it was a human involved wouldn't it? If the information is revealed the enemy will know where the leak came from. To me that means it is a human on the other end. The enemy can't do anything about it if the info is coming from satelite reconassaince.. and it if it comes from satelite or spyplane images.. well.. it wouldnt be the first time and i dont know how that reveals anything about data analysis or collection? Believe it or not, it's your choice. How did the west know that Usama Bin Laden was in Afghanistan? It couldn't have been 'common knowledge'. Why in that instance was the information revealed and not in this one. After all both are dealing with Al Queda? Al-Queta training camps in the Middle East weren't exactly a big secret, and in the case of Afghanistan, the intent was to say we know you have him and you'd better turn him over. Since that government knew he was there and was hiding him in exchange for cash, alot of people knew, and if Osama wanted to kill everyone with the information, he would have needed to start with the One-Eyed Mullah who ran Afghanistan and worked his way down. I generally think that their is some inconsistency here with revealing intelligence and it is troubling imo if that is cassus belli. It is a paradox. IMO No human life is worth more than another. But either way if the info is valid and revealed or valid and not revealed.. it leads to war. And alot more people are going to die. If allot more people are going to die then it would sit more comfortably if we knew the truth of the matter. What exactly is troubling about you, as a private citizen, not being given complete and total access to the information you want to see? Governments are given the evidence and make their decisions based on it. Do you think there should be a referendum? George Bush said in his state of the union: "The history of the world will be determined by free men." To me that means the history of the world will NOT be decided behind closed doors. Really? You think you should have access to everything? The US government pays for Medicare with my tax dollars. Do I deserve to see each patients private medical records, so I, as a tax paying citizen, can decide if they get treatment or not? Does it matter what the doctor thinks? Why? Does it matter if the majority of doctors agree, but a few disagree? Shouldn't I get to make the final decision?

[ 02-13-2003, 04:35 PM: Message edited by: Ronn_Bman ]