Excellent points. Would you like to see a separate blog thread about this, or can it stay among the squirrelly secret agents?

In any collaborative effort which allows for semi-anonymity of its users, there is a point when the user-base reaches a critical mass, and its stability is likely to spin out of control.

Very true. In my experience, which goes back before the Internet was the Internet, there was little problem on ARPANET, or the early Internet and USENET where one needed both personal connection to a sponsor, and a relatively high level of technical skill to even use the medium. When AOL started providing more general access to USENET, it never really recovered. The change in social dynamic was, I believe that the pre-AOL USENET was essential non-anonymous, but, coupled with a desire to keep one's reputation, it was also an extremely tolerant community. I can think of one expert in linguistics, respected both in his technical areas, and in his social groups, where he self-identified as a radical queer dominant sadistic leatherman with a cigar fetish. The greatest objections to him were from those of us that find cigars a violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention; the rest were simply personal choices.

Part of the problem can attributed to wikipedia's worship of a democratic-based commons as an ends, not a means. Democracy without very stringent controls that limit its ability to negatively affect minorities is rule by a mob that is itself ruled by the vicissitudes of public opinion.

As you may know, I have never been enthusiastic about anonymity on the Internet. I am not opposed to pseudonymity, which there are some technical ways to make valid. I'm most prone to accept anonymity in social support groups, but, even there, irresponsible individuals will use the shield of anonymity to hurt people at their most vulnerable.

I am still evaluating the Wikimedia dynamics, at least in my areas of interest there, which I don't consider "political" in the usual sense. My experience has been in phases.

First, I contributed a good deal in computer networking, including on subjects where I had been directly involved in their development. There was one phenomenon of certain editors objecting to my contributions, because they contradicted some material already there; it was acceptable to have both views, but, when I made thoroughly sourced comments that showed some of the existing material wrong, I got some support and some fight. It did help to be able to cite peer-reviewed scientific publications, even if I was an author or coauthor.

Some of the most common technical errors were very understandable, as they perpetuated oversimplifications variously from some texts and vendor sales information; I ran into the same errors frequently when I was teaching. I have a sense of fewer and fewer such errors, but, frankly, I got tired of correcting the same objective errors, again and again, frequently arguing with students that said they must be right because their textbook said so. These issues related to rigorous network standards, where there are formal definitions, which are authoritative no matter what a textbook said.

I don't get as involved in networking, but I also don't see as many errors made. Did I have something to do with that? Honestly, I have no idea. I suspect there will be a burst of errors at each semester start.

My next area of contribution was in strategic intelligence, communications intelligence, and related, principally technical disciplines. That's been a rather productive collaboration, but the material may simply not be noticed by nonspecialists.

In the last month or two, however, I've started editing CIA and related materials. First, there was relatively minor squabbling over taking apart some tinfoil hat claims. In the first sub-phase, there was reluctant acceptance from most, but not all, participated, when I pointed out they were blaming the CIA for things that happened before it was created, or at least while the clandestine services were autonomous.

In some cases, it was difficult to refute something on pure logic, but my knowledge came from things that are not available. For example, there were some claims about US biological warfare during the Korean War. Years back, I had some fairly substantial classified access. I know that the references I have in mind have now automatically declassified after 12 years, but they aren't online, or routinely in libraries, so it's hard to cite them.

In the last week or so, there was a major explosion when I created an extensive set of spinoff articles which typically went through all CIA activities -- not just regime change or other covert action, but intelligence collection, intelligence analysis and estimates, and also the White House level orders that various actions be taken. In no way was I whitewashing the CIA, because, in some cases, looking at all the activities showed a pattern of failures in both intelligence and covert action. Nevertheless, I was not going to accept some of the conspiracy theories, especially when I knew some of them -- not necessarily through public sources -- were false.

I have the sense now that some of the conspiracy theorists may be open to some compromise, after both steady appeals and reasonable compromise proposals, and also some fools who did try to whitewash. It will be more clear in a few weeks. Meanwhile, I am keeping my contributions on my own computer; maybe there's a book or website there.

In general, I think, Wikipedia is most apt to be accurate on subjects technical enough that one needs some knowledge even to start on the subject, but subjects not so obscure that there isn't anyone to crosscheck.

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Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

To some extent, my target audience varies with the article. When dealing with such things as intelligence community organization, the idea that covert operations are usually approved by a White House level committee and the CIA isn't constantly running rogue should be understood. When dealing with some of the technical methods of intelligence collection, there may be a point where the reader has to have some relevant scientific knowledge.

Sort of apropos of the latter,the House committee that has oversight over export controls had great posturing over the sale of some biological cultures to Saddam. Eventually, I started looking at the actual list of organisms, and I suppose the first one I saw was offensive to Muslims, as it was a very good Belgian beer yeast. Yes, there were anthrax and other potential biological agents on it, but one of the places discussion tends to break down is that getting the organisms is the easiest part of a biological warfare program. Mass cultivation, then putting them in a weapon, can be quite hard, because they are living organisms. If you try to disperse them with an explosive, the heat can kill them.

When it comes to such things as the NSA surveillance, there are some reasonable expert guesses from outside about what they were actually collecting. My sense is that it was the records of who called whom, rather than the contents of calls. In theory, you can get patterns from that, although you need to both lucky and in possession of a lot of computing power -- and also have an adversary that doesn't know much about concealing his communications.

A legal case can actually be made that call records aren't especially protected. There is a provision in the Communications Act of 1934 where collecting them can be done without a warrant, but with the certification of the Attorney General that it's a lawful process. In Smith vs. Maryland, the Supreme Court said there is no expectation of privacy for these records.

On the other hand, all of these statutes and precedents assumed that an individual was being targeted -- a mass surveillance just wasn't being considered.

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Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]