Leaked Secrets

The leaking of thousands of confidential messages by WikiLeaks has caused dismay in the diplomatic world, despite the soothing words of foreign policy observers and journalists who observe that there is actually little in these revelations that is really new. Official anger is considerable, with the US government taking the predictable line that the leaking of its secret puts lives at risk. At first sight that claim is neither strong nor very credible: Most of the published information is at worst embarrassing. However, one of the main goals of diplomacy is to avoid war; and it is certainly arguable that diplomacy must often be confidential to be effective.

The cause of the leak is also interesting. Apparently all this "secret" information was found in a computer system that is accessible to, depending on the source, anywhere between 2.5 and 3 million members of the American administration and military. The system was created after 9/11 to collect data that could be mined for information about possible terrorist actions, at first sight a commendable goal. Apparently it is trivially easy to extract data from it and burn those files on a DVD, a circumstance that seems less than commendable from a security point of view. It all appears rather amateurish.

However, it is as well to keep in mind that the first step to data security is to decide what data should be secured, and at what level. It is important to make distinctions and gradations in this, because there should be a link between the value of the information and the level of protection that is applied. The most secure system should be used infrequently and by a small group of people, and it should contain only information that is really highly important. In the case of the famous German Enigma cryptography system which was attacked so effectively by Allied cryptographers during the Second World War, the work of cryptanalysts was greatly simplified by the fact that the same system was used for both valuable strategic information and for trivial, stereotypical weather forecasts.

On the gliding scale of secrecy, it is difficult to argue that diplomatic observations that the Italian prime minister parties too much and a British prince behaved tactlessly and foolishly, can or should be rated Galactic Top Secret. Embarrassing as such comments may be, there seems not much of a case for rating them more than Confidential, and a pretty moderate confidentiality at that. The loutish arrogance of many comments made by US ambassadors should remind us of the sad reality that few of these men are professional diplomats. One becomes US ambassadors by having distinguished looks, a high level of tolerance for cocktail parties, and being a generous donor to a successful presidential election campaign. The latter characteristic is undeniably the most decisive one. These are not the criteria for producing brilliant diplomatic insights.

Putting such information in a data mining system that is widely accessible does not appear to be particularly objectionable from a security point of view. On the other hand, as information it is so low-grade that one should seriously challenge its inclusion in a data mining system, where it is just noise. Given that many US ambassadors are awarded there prestigious posts as a reward for their generous financial support in presidential election campaign, we should perhaps not be surprised to find this kind of gossip here. One hopes that communications from professional US diplomats have a bit more meat on the bone.

The question is what more information is in there, besides the juicy bits for the press. There have been reports that since 9/11, high security level clearances have been issued to a very large group of people: A practice that suggests that too much information has been declared to be secret, with a too high level of secrecy, and which is likely to have the ironic results that the real secrets are no longer very secure.