John Kelsey writes: | I think a bigger issue here is a sort of rational (to the bureaucrat) risk a | versity: if he declassifies something and it turns out he's leaked somethin | g valuable (in the eyes of his boss), he's in trouble. As long as there's | no cost to stamping "secret" or "FOUO" on every document his office produce | s, this is safer for him than any other course of action. Along with this | , going through a document to make sure there's nothing secret in there is | a lot more work than just classifying it. The same logic works in the priv | ate world--how much of the stuff you've seen under NDA was genuinely going | to cause a problem to the company that produced it, if someone just posted | it to their website?
Exactly correct. It is the same reason that no corporate general counsel will allow data on successful intrusions to be shared; the downside risk is well understood and the upside benefit is vague, delayed, and does not accrue to the releasing party. Cf. mandatory reporting of communicable diseases where, presumably, few patients or private docs would ever voluntarily report that there's a case of Plague in the house were it not for compelled disclosure.[1] --dan [1] sample state list, to which you can add gunshot wounds ====================================================== Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) Amebiasis Anthrax Botulism Brucellosis Campylobacteriosis Cancer Chancroid Chickenpox Chlamydial Infections Cholera Coccidioidomycosis Colorado Tick Fever Diphtheria Echinococcosis Encephalitis (post-infectious, arthropod-borne, and unspecified) Food-borne Illness, including food poisoning Giardiasis Gonococcal Ophthalmia Neonatorum Gonorrhea Granuloma Inguinale Hemophilus Influenza, Invasive Disease (all serotypes) Hepatitis A Hepatitis B, cases and carriers Hepatitis, other Viral: Type C Influenza Legionellosis Leprosy Leptospirosis Lymphogranuloma Venereum Malaria Meningitis, Aseptic and Bacterial Meningococcemia Mumps Pelvic Inflammatory Disease Pertussis Plague Poliomyelitis Q-fever Rabies (Human and Animal) Relapsing Fever (tick-borne and louse borne) Rheumatic Fever Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever Rubella Rubella, Congenital Syndrome Rubeola Salmonellosis Shigellosis Staphylococcal Diseases Syphilis Tetanus Toxic Shock Syndrome Trichinosis Tuberculosis Tularemia Typhoid Typhus Yellow Fever --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
