Slashdot Mirror
Incomplete PDF Redaction Leaks Data From UK MoD
An anonymous reader writes "The UK Ministry of Defence has been left with egg on its face, after a supposedly redacted PDF detailing secrets related to air defence radar systems was published on a parliamentary website. The problem? Whoever did the redacting simply changed the sensitive text to black on a black background, making it possible for anyone to access the information simply by cutting-and-pasting. The incident is particularly embarrassing for the Ministry, as six months ago precisely the same security screw-up occurred — that time related to sensitive information about nuclear submarines."
At least they are consistent in hiring incompetent amateurs to do important work.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
rookie mistake
Seriously, this exact mistake seems to occur at least a couple times a year. You would think that anyone with enough security clearance to make redactions would, I don't know, take a 4 hour training course on how to use MS Word? Do they hand this job off to interns, or what?
Where is the document? I call BS.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The only safe way to redact sensitive PDFs or Word (or other word-processing doc) is to black out the data, print it out, and rescan a hard-copy "original".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Really guys. Maybe you should outsource this.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It takes 30 seconds searching help to find the correct way to redact text. Amazing how lazy people are sometimes.
Blacking out the secrets clearly isn't a good strategy.
Next time, they should just put whiteout on the screen to cover up the secret parts.
If the editor needs a new gig, I'm sure there's room for them at Slashdot!
There are types of information that every sane person thins should be classified. For example, the engineering details of how to make nuclear weapons should probably be classified. There's a limit to how much of that can be practically classified because those secret are so old, but a similar remark about hydrogen bombs would apply. Similarly, if one country has a high ranking spy in another country's government (say for example the Brits having a North Korean colonel giving them information from the inside), wanting to keep that information secret is reasonable. These are but two of the more clear cut examples. There's a lot of information about the specs of military hardware that could give an enemy advantages if they knew about it. Radar used in defense systems (which is what was leaked in this context) is exactly that sort of thing.
There are examples where governments try to classify things that they shouldn't. Sometimes they use that as a way of disguising violations of their citizens rights. Other times they use it as a way of covering their asses after they do something incompetent. But it is a mistake to look at the examples where governments have abused their ability to classify things and then conclude that all classification is bad.
Actual secrets of military technology are legitimate secrets, as long as the military secrets are being overseen by competent people with power independent of the military - who are themselves catchable when they're corrupt.
But the problem isn't this secret. It's the vast abundance of secrets in governments like the UK's. Some percentage of secrets are going to be divulged when they shouldn't. Having millions of secrets means that percentage results in a lot of divulged secrets.
Perhaps the large number of secrets that are worthless, or are secret only to protect someone who did something wrong rather than to protect the country, means that most divulged secrets harm no one - or harm people who did wrong. But the large number of secrets makes the percentage divulged increase. Especially when the worthless ones divulged get everyone used to divulging secrets. Then the percentage goes way up. And the secrets worth keeping do a lot of damage.
Proper management calls for reducing the amount of secrets to the minimum. This is a fundamental principle known to any competent info security professional, and to many amateurs - in any field. But governments keep increasing their trove of secrets. Mostly because governments keep increasing the number of things they do wrong. And keeping too many secrets, many (if not most) of them worthless or even beneficial to reveal, is just one of the things they're doing wrong.
It's the worst kept secret in the secrecy business.
--
make install -not war
You could say the same about most any technology.
The simple fact is most people don't care how most things work, and in reality they shouldn't have to care. Computers are now a commodity appliance, not much different in concept than a toaster or TV, and should 'just work' until they die and then get replaced.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Information wants to be leaked.
Really, who can tell if they didn't want this to be leaked? This is probably a disinformation gig, because such screw up it's just too lame to have happened on a such level, I mean, you can do it like it should be done in effing MS paint.
Consider "Redacting with Confidence: How to Safely Publish Sanitized Reports Converted From Word 2007 to PDF" at http://www.nsa.gov/ia/_files/support/I733-028R-2008.pdf
Isn't this like the third or forth time this has happened? I seem to recall both the FBI and TSA making the same mistake somewhat recently. At least within the last couple of years. I guess people can't learn from others mistakes after all...
Our secret service is just one big trailer for the forthcoming Johnny English sequel.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
The toaster or TV analogy only works for computers that are restricted to walled gardens, such as the iPad. A real computer is more analogous to a car. You have to know how to drive it in order to use it safely. You have to build up experience in order to use it effectively.
>and in reality they shouldn't have to care.
Having a working knowledge of how a car works sometimes means the difference between a thinner wallet and an empty wallet when dealing with a mechanic.
There is no excuse for stuff like this, and your assertion is stupid.
--
BMO
They already exist. So not creating them isn't an option obiously. But don't let that stop you being retarded.
Having worked in the classified world (pre 9/11), it was surprising how little military information was classified. The front-line military view of secrecy is that secrecy is a short-term thing. "Where the ship was last week is unclassified. Where the ship was yesterday is confidential. Where the ship is now is secret. Where the ship will be tomorrow is top secret." Sooner or later, if it matters, the enemy will find out what you're up to. Preferably when your attack hits them.
On the other hand, what your troops, ships and planes can do is generally well known. Too many people have to know. Secret capabilities do exist, but, again, they're time-sensitive. Eventually you have to use the secret weapon, after which it's no longer secret.
Vulnerabilities are more of a problem. The U.S. Army tried to keep secret the vulnerable spots on a M-1 Abrams tank. But once Iraqi insurgents had found the places on the turret ring to aim at, trying to suppress the pictures of the damage was sort of stupid.
When planning proposals, we estimated that running a project at SECRET doubled the cost, and running at TOP SECRET quadrupled it. (The clearance process takes many months, the physical security is expensive and slows you down, and worst of all, the people who spend too much time in classified tanks get out of touch technically.) The intel community was willing to pay that price - the military, not so much.
Christian "crusades"
As opposed to the Muslim invasions of the Palestine, Egypt, whatever the rest of North Africa was called 1300 years ago, Iberia, France, Babylon, Persia, Afghanistan, India, etc, etc, etc?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Yes! And then we can all ride rainbow unicorns to the land at the end of the rainbow and eat candy and play with kittens! I think you should run for President of the World, Mr. tech4; your intellect is so brilliant, your insight so stunning, you just made me spunk.
Driving and understanding how it works for maintaining are 2 different things. Most take it somewhere to do the maintenance. By taking it to the 'service guy' you assume the car is mechanically safe to drive. The same should go for the computer.
You can safely drive a car and not even know how to put gas in it, let alone something more esoteric like a head gasket replacement.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Screws up pagination, image location, etc. That's my guess.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Very true ... people are not taught how to use the computers, it is kind of assumed that they know. So they mess up. The MOD would never get someone to drive a truck without first sending them on an appropriate driving course, so why are computers that different ?
Unless you TEACH people how to use the tools that you give them - you must expect them to use them poorly and occasionally screw up big time.
This is a management problem, but, as ever, they will blame it on some lowly paid, under trained minion and sack them. The real cuplrits much further up the management chain will get away scott free.
How does the existence Christian crusaders negate the existence of Muslim crusaders, or any other type of crusaders for that matter? History is filled with religiously motivated war, regardless of religion.
I mean really. Adobe Acrobat has an easy to use Redaction tool specifically designed for this sort of thing. Not only does it properly black out and remove the text underneath, it can also scrub the removed data from the PDF so that some smart fellow cannot undelete the contents. It's really not hard at all... unless of course you're paying peanuts to someone who doesn't give a shit about doing things correctly and instead just wants to give the impression of having done the job.
To all newcomers - people here are very close-minded and can't handle complaints about Linux. Keep this in mind.
Yes, and? "Redacting" a PDF by changing the text colors is not a computer maintenance issue, it's a basic failure to understand the fundamentals of using a computer. It's the equivalent of driving into a house because you don't know how the steering wheel works.
How does the existence Christian crusaders negate the existence of Muslim crusaders
Who says I did?
But I do know that while in school the evils of the Christian Crusaders was repeated many times, while even the very *fact* that Muslims invaded Holy Land was *completely* glossed over as if they had always been there. And this was 35 years ago in a sectarian school with no Anti-Christian bias.
Likewise the Eeeevils of the Iberian Reconquista.
Thus, I'm betting that most everyone else in the US was not taught the same things.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
This is probably a disinformation gig, because such screw up it's just too lame to have happened on a such level
The higher the level, the stupidest the screwup, specially a tech one. That's because the higher level, the higher n00bness.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
In this respect, the problem comes down to incompetence at some point in the chain of command, and (by transitive closure) lack of effective oversight at all points above that one. But that's not an excuse, just a description of the pathology.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
But I do know that while in school the evils of the Christian Crusaders was repeated many times, while even the very *fact* that Muslims invaded Holy Land was *completely* glossed over as if they had always been there. And this was 35 years ago in a sectarian school with no Anti-Christian bias.
What you are describing is actually a pro-christian bias.
Since pretty much everything the muslims did is left out of high-school history courses that really shouldn't be much of a surprise.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Right, because spies only kill people. There is no way they could be monitoring hostile countries to ensure *they* aren't planning to kill people. And while we're at it, let's just publish the full list of names and locations of everyone in witness protection, they're all criminals anyways. As a show of good faith, why don't you post you full name, date of birth, mother's maiden name, current place of residence, credit card number and annual income? It's not like the government is keeping any of THAT data secret for you.
I find it absolutely stupid when people chant "Secrets are bad, mmmkay" while using an online pseudonym.
What you are describing is actually a pro-christian bias.
Eurocentric, not pro-Christian.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
What's so hard about just... deleting the sensitive words?
The trouble is if you simply delete text from a word processor document you are likely to change the formatting and pagination. This can be an issue for two reasons
1: Page numbers are often used to make references to a document and therefore it may be important that they match between the unredacted and the redacted versions.
2: Depending on how the original author formatted images, tables etc they may end up in a jumbled mess when the word processor reflows the text.
So people black stuff out rather than removing it. This was fine in the days when the document released to the public was a printed document but when the document released to the public is a pdf the original text can remain under the blacking out..
The correct thing to do of course is to remove the unwanted information and fix up the formatting and pagination (either by inserting dummy stuff or otherwise). Then as a second line of defense run the tool in acrobat to check for "hidden text".
The difficult bit is explaing to non-technical users WHY this effort is necessary and making sure that they actually do it. Especially when PDF has built-in protection features that give people a false sense of security.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Well, I'd ask you to enumerate what other technologies are as central to daily life as computers, but you already did it. That saves time.
Next time I'm searching for a job I'll make sure to put "toaster expertize" in my CV.
Rethinking email
We learn from our mistakes. That way when we make them again, we'll recognize them.
Have gnu, will travel.
That's perhaps one of the most naive things I've ever heard. If it came from a child, it would be adorable.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Would you have been happier if American soldiers in the Pacific were having to gut little kids and ended up shell shocked? try looking up "The World At War: Japan 1941-45" and see for yourself, they have film footage of the Japanese training little girls with bamboo spears and it is pretty common knowledge that even AFTER dropping two bombs upon them the high command had to broadcast the surrender in BOTH English AND Morse Code because there were a couple of Army Generals that tried to take over the radio station and broadcast they were gonna fight to the last Japanese!
The US has a lot of things they did wrong but I'd say dropping the bombs is not among them. look at the footage of Saipan, of Iwo jima, when there was NO hope of victory, no hope of even a draw they still fought on.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
It just shows that these secrets are used for evil and bad things, for murdering people.
Secrets are important for defense as well. Even if the US were to completely abandon a foreign intelligence service, there would still need to be counter-intelligence services. And those activities and such would be necessarily secret. Or forget foreign interaction altogether. An ongoing corruption investigation needs to be secret. Wiretapping of a mob boss needs to be secret. The President's schedule details often need to be secret. Many, many, completely legitimate government functions need to be secret.
At least Buddhism teaches real things, real values and there's no imaginary persons, as Buddha himself has actually lived.
Right, and Buddhists have never fought any wars. And they don't keep secrets. And they never get all authoritarian or anything like that. BTW, Jesus was also a real guy. So was Mohammad. Buddha may have "actually lived", but the first written account of his life seems to have occurred hundreds of years after his death. And this written account includes Buddha being advised by invisible men.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Poor receptionist is all I can say. She was trying to do her best but didn't know any better! Shame on them!
http://www.gibby.net.au
Only the Pro version of Acrobat has a redaction tool. I have the standard version and it's $150 more just to get the redaction tool.
This seems such an elementary mistake that I tend to believe it isn't a mistake. Most people like to believe that their governments and security agencies are incompitent so they easily believe the obvious explanation as it fits their view of the world. Maybe someone in the MOD wanted this information known. What was in the hidden information anyway?
exactly true. I graduated highschool in 2003, and I remember all we were taught was the ottoman empire took over alot of land. It took research on my own to find out that the ottoman empire was the muslim crusaders. However they always pointed out the evils of the christian crusaders without hesitation.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The real cuplrits much further up the management chain will get away scott free.
*facepalm* The phrase you're looking for is 'Scot-free'.
They can produce cheaper imitations, but their contraptions will never command this level of devotion.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Your pedestal opinion of Buddhism will change once you've been in a country with 90+% Buddhists for any length of time. They're no better then Christians, even with pushing their faith on others regardless of the intent of the religion.
Adobe Acrobat has a REDACTION feature built specifically to address issues like this.
It's not hard to use - arguably it's even easier than trying to find the text and putting a black background behind it.
It not only removes the text (or other objects) on the page that you are redacting, but it provides a very easy interface to use.
It also removes additional metadata (full text indexes, other personalised information such as document creator etc) and you can do a search and redact to redact specific strings.
It's not a new feature, it's been in Acrobat for years now and it works very, very well.
I can not believe that in places where this matters, people don't use it - it should be part of the job requirements, if they're redacting information they have to be trained on the workflow to do so - and I could train someone to do this within a couple of hours even if they've never used Acrobat before.
It would be one thing if they were using a format other than PDF - redacting a Word document is possibly quite a bit harder, but if the end result is a PDF that's been redacted, there's no reason at all to not use Acrobat to do it properly, especially if you're a government department as you get Acrobat for a fraction of the street price.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
What you are describing is actually a pro-christian bias.
Eurocentric, not pro-Christian.
and christian-centric, which is defensible since the church probably had a huge influence on history and in Europe there was not much else. However, the few times 'other' people come into focus, it's as "invaders" who did nothing more than occupy some land until the good guys finally restored order and threw them out.
History education has changed since I last had it at high school and I'm sure we teach our kids a little bit more and a little less biased. Don't know if we've come to the point where we no longer speak of the Moorish invasion of Spain but may actually see the the greater Umayyad culture.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."
look at the footage of Saipan, of Iwo jima, when there was NO hope of victory, no hope of even a draw they still fought on.
ok. Saipan was overrun Jun 1944, Iwo Jima Feb 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated Aug 1945, directly causing the death of 150.000 - 250.000 civilians. A nuclear bomb is a weapon specifically designed to blow up entire cities. There is no imaginable military target for which such a device could be considered effective or even suitable. US invested billions of dollars employing more than 150.000 people for 7 years, to design and implement such an atrocity. And then they used it. Against civilians, of course, as was intended. Twice.
The US has a lot of things they did wrong but I'd bullshit dropping the bombs is not among them.
FTFY
A few years ago I also found I needed to redact text from a document. I do most of my document processing in LaTeX, and found that the following works nicely. It replaces (not overprints) all text inside \redact{...} with a black bar, and copes well with wrapping across lines and pages.
\RequirePackage{soul,color}
\sethlcolor{black}
\makeatletter
\def\phantom@SOUL@ulunderline#1{{%
\setbox\z@\hbox{#1}%
\dimen@=\wd\z@
\dimen@i=\SOUL@uloverlap
\advance\dimen@2\dimen@i
\rlap{%
\null
\kern-\dimen@i
\SOUL@ulcolor{\SOUL@ulleaders\hskip\dimen@}%
}%
\phantom{\unhcopy\z@}% \phantom added here
}}
\DeclareRobustCommand\redact[1]{\begingroup
\let\SOUL@ulunderline\phantom@SOUL@ulunderline
\hl{#1}%
\endgroup}
\makeatother
Surely it's 'copying-and-pasting'?!
However, the few times 'other' people come into focus, it's as "invaders" who did nothing more than occupy some land until the good guys finally restored order and threw them out.
I was taught back in the 1970s that the Spaniards were brutish to conquer the Moors and the Aztecs and the Christians were downright Evil to invade the Holy Land. Maybe an anti-Catholic bias?
Nothing about how others were temporary invaders.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
*facepalm* The phrase you're looking for is 'Scot-free'.
Thank you, although it might have been useful if you had provided a reference. I did a search and found that the hyphen is often not used, but yes I should have only put one letter 't'. It seems that 'Scot' is Scandinavian word for tax or payment..
At least Buddhism teaches real things, real values and there's no imaginary persons, as Buddha himself has actually lived. And he said to think and evaluate things with your own brains, instead of following some stupid book.
But history also is replete with episodes of Buddhist polities fighting and invading one another and inflicting the usual horrors of war on entire populations. Consider the many internal wars and mutual invasions of Burma and Thailand, for example, both being Buddhist for many centuries.
Religion, of any form, is a tool for control of populations by their rulers. Any attempts to demonstrate the falsehood of the local religion will be fiercely resisted - and likely punished by the authorities as much as by the credulous zealots. It has always been thus.
"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." - Ira Cardiff (he attributed the statement to Lucretius).
"The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful." - Edward Gibbon (possibly loosely translating from a work of Seneca the Younger).
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
If govt/nsa scientists have create scientific break throughs decades ahead of the real world, they have to publish it.
Imagine if the govt found antigravity or real alien tech 1000 years ahead.
They should free it, not keep it secret for 100 years and make trillions of dollars profit out of the tips of the iceberg.
Imagine if the telescope was kept secret for 100 years before the official 'invented date'. Oh yeah, the British did.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
The military-industrial complex would much prefer to operate with no oversight at all.
We have a perverse system where such oversight is acceptable only if it does not compromise security (rather than the other way around.)
So by screwing this up on purpose, the military can plead security concerns and never publish anything at all, because any public oversight whatsoever will be too risky.
Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence? Well, malice exists, even though incompetence is so powerful it can explain anything.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Some people cherry pick the good parts of a religion and live their lives accordingly.
Some people cherry pick parts of a religion to justify being an asshat.
As far as I can tell, no major religion has a monopoly on people in either category, and every major religion has a lot of people from both. It seems that the teachings of the religion are largely irrelevant.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
1) Both Nagasaki and Hiroshima had military industries, which were legitimate targets.
2) It's probably still not widely known that both Nagasaki and Hiroshima were removed from conventional bombing target lists at the beginning of the war (among other cities) specifically because they were suitable for evaluating the funtionality of atomic bombs, assuming such weapons could be built. So both those cities (and several others) were NOT bombed into ruin for four years.
3) And it's also not terribly widely known that BOTH atomic bombings combined caused fewer casualties than the conventional bombings of Tokyo did. In point of fact, there were individual fire-bombing raids on Tokyo that caused more casualties than either atomic bombing. And Tokyo suffered through rather more than two fire-bombing raids, as well as numerous conventional HE bombing raids.
4) Finally, it should be pointed out that the alternative to the atomic bombings of Japan was an invasion of Japan. Which was tentatively scheduled for later in 1945. Which was expected to cause rather more American casualties than we suffered in the rest of WW2 combined, as well as millions of Japanese casualties. Note that there were not millions of Japanese killed by the atomic bombings.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's Moops.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
Aside from that, it is not unreasonable given the alternatives to believe the bombings shortened the war and saved more lives (civilian and military) than they cost. That is no consolation at all to the people who died prolongued, agonizing deaths or suffered the rest of their lives with horrible burns or other effects. But it's still the likely result of using them.
So I am not really surprised that the US sought to drop them, or convinced by the moral arguments that they shouldn't have given the situation they were in.
rofl
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
I know one should'nt attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence but I can't prevent myself to think that if I wanted to leak fake informations, I would use exactly that kind of procedures.
Western governments jumped late in the infowar bandwagon but they are going there. Fake leaks are doomed to happen.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Maybe next we can see people prosecuted for "hacking" for copying and pasting the text so they can read it. If truncating or guessing an URL can be considered hacking, surely this can be too.
If you want to redact in the electronic age and be "just as good as" the old days, one "cheap" way to do it is to emulate the old days.
"Print" to a bitmapped-graphics format. "Black out" the text to be redacted. You can stop here if you don't need search-ability.
If you need search capability, OCR what's left.
This is very easy to automate and if done right will leak no more information than a printed copy that someone else scanned in for searching.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Horseshit, complete and utter horseshit. We are talking fanatics here, my late uncle was in the pacific at both Saipan and Okinawa and I got to here of the horror first hand from him. He said they'd get a bunker surrounded then broadcast in Japanese "If you don't come out we are gonna have no choice but to call in the flamethrowers, we'll give you food, treat your injuries, and take you to safety if you'll just come out and surrender" and instead they would strap grenades on their chests and banzai charge the lines. he said the bodies were literally piled up like cordwood, the stench of death was beyond belief, yet they still came. He also watched women throw infants off the cliffs rather than surrender their children, that kind of shit haunted him for years, hearing the screams of babies as they fell to their deaths.
So sincerely fuck your bleeding heart bullshit. as Truman said "I can tell you how many Americans were saved by the dropping of those bombs" and in a time of war THAT is what matters. Either you give 100% or you go the fuck home, that's it. I would remind you we had already killed more than the atomics in Tokyo alone and as I said even AFTER TWO BOMBS They had to broadcast the surrender from multiple sites because several general took over a radio tower and was broadcasting they were gonna fight to the last man.
While you may think it would have been cool for Americans to line up and just grind little kids into fucking hamburger with the 50cals I can tell you thanks to the stories of my family who fought in both theaters (grandfather in Europe liberating one of the camps, great uncle in the pacific as a marine) that having to kill little kids because its you or them? NOT good on the soldiers. Killing a soldier is one thing, killing an 8 year old girl because she is going kamikaze with a grenade tied to the end of a bamboo spear? totally different ball game.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I understand your points, but I didn't intend to debate if the bombing was moral/reasonable/whatever. I just made its particular significance very clear: a government of a democratic country (by any standards) deliberately and autonomously built a wmd and used it against civilians and in an undisclosed way, as "tech4" pointed out. A hard fact that "hairyfeet" blurred by displaying his moral stance towards the issue which is, at least, debatable. So much less an issue that should be kept undisclosed to citizens, methinks.
Of course a majority of US citizens could have favored the wmd development and even the bombings. But who knows ... nobody asked them! They weren't even told about until it was done (and lots of information has ben held back until very recently)
I'm not look(ing) at the examples where governments have abused their ability to classify things and then conclude(ing) that all classification is bad.. The point is that while there is the mere possibility that (democratic) governments classify and hide any such farreaching activities (and Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not possibilities but proof) then democracy is at the end of very limited use. Maybe that's why it is more of a mockery, today. My view is that there should not be information classification whatsoever.
Horseshit, complete and utter horseshit.
plain, succint and verifiable facts (no, you don't need a veteran father to verify that).
We are talking fanatics here, my late uncle was in the pacific at both Saipan and Okinawa and I got to here of the horror first hand from him. He said they'd get a bunker surrounded then broadcast in Japanese "If you don't come out we are gonna have no choice but to call in the flamethrowers, we'll give you food, treat your injuries, and take you to safety if you'll just come out and surrender" and instead they would strap grenades on their chests and banzai charge the lines. he said the bodies were literally piled up like cordwood, the stench of death was beyond belief, yet they still came. He also watched women throw infants off the cliffs rather than surrender their children, that kind of shit haunted him for years, hearing the screams of babies as they fell to their deaths.
So sincerely fuck your bleeding heart bullshit. as Truman said "I can tell you how many Americans were saved by the dropping of those bombs" and in a time of war THAT is what matters. Either you give 100% or you go the fuck home, that's it. I would remind you we had already killed more than the atomics in Tokyo alone and as I said even AFTER TWO BOMBS They had to broadcast the surrender from multiple sites because several general took over a radio tower and was broadcasting they were gonna fight to the last man.
While you may think it would have been cool for Americans to line up and just grind little kids into fucking hamburger with the 50cals I can tell you thanks to the stories of my family who fought in both theaters (grandfather in Europe liberating one of the camps, great uncle in the pacific as a marine) that having to kill little kids because its you or them? NOT good on the soldiers. Killing a soldier is one thing, killing an 8 year old girl because she is going kamikaze with a grenade tied to the end of a bamboo spear? totally different ball game.
This could indeed qualify as fanatism. I recommend you broaden your views somewhat beyond of your (most respectable, no doubt) father's war impressions. No matter the horror, the savagery, there is always more to it (usually expresable in plain and cold money). We're talking about governments and information, here. And remember, Mahattan project started long before a single marine put a foot on any japanese shore. So much for your baby kamikaze horror stories.
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"property, the whole thing is about property" (1st Sgt. Edward Welsh, "The thin red line").
Maybe YOU should pull your head out your ass and try learning a little history. try watching "The World At War: Japan 41-45" which just to make you happy was NOT made by the American but by the BBC, which are known for their impartiality. There you will get to see with your own two eyes Japanese training videos showing 8 and 9 year old kids being taught to use bamboo spears, which were to have grenades strapped to them.
Maybe you can read, perhaps you'd like to explain this? Look at the bottom, see the girls being trained as suicide attackers? Now what did you think we should do, hit them with flamethrowers? grind them up with the 50cals? or do you think we should have surrendered, because from your tone I have to seriously wonder if that isn't what you would have done. With just the attacks up to that point suicide attackers killed over 3000 Americans and wounded another 6000. Tell me did you think those Americans "deserved it"?
Whether you like it or not it is pretty well documented the USA was looking at 350,000 to 500,000 dead if we invaded the home islands. Would you have preferred that? Would you have cheered? Like it or not friend too damned many on BOTH sides were killed by Japanese fanaticism. Maybe this quote from the first link will help you to see clearly " Teenaged boys and girls were taught how to use grenades and spears. Civilians, including woman armed with spears, made attacks on Okinawa, 21April, and Ie Shima. 23April. Unable to provide uniforms, they were equipped with a patch. One million people on Kyushu were eligible. Chance of their survival improved after Hiroshima." Those folks lived because we dropped the bomb. If we hadn't? They'd have been given a stick, a grenade to tie to it, and been pointed AT US. Or do you think those American soldiers shouldn't have defended themselves?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Tell me did you think those Americans "deserved it"?
they were soldiers, not civilians. a good chance of death is what a soldier buys the very moment he enlists.
Those folks lived because we dropped the bomb
you can't possibly know that. even if you did it still wouldn't be a valid reason to build a wmd and throwing it at the population.
the USA was looking at 350,000 to 500,000 dead if we invaded the home islands
the forecast was actually higher. roosevelt throwed around figures that even tripled that. so what? who said invasion was the only option, or was a reasonable option at all? it would still not be a valid reason to build a wmd and throw it at the population.
Teenaged boys and girls were taught how to use grenades and spears.
you should stop spraying that crap, really. it is well known that japanese were very crude and fanatic. that, you could reasonably expect from a culture that had jumped out from feudal middle age just a few decades earlier. you can't by any means be implying that the only way to deal with this kind of people is .... build a wmd and throw it at the population.
besides ... your father sure did tell you that the guys in his company were all honorable brothers in arms, straight and enduring hearts. that's maybe because your father only told you the shit he wanted you to believe ... or wanted himself to remember. if not, and if he'd served in irak, he could have told you about girls being raped by marines (always good buddies) right in front of their just executed family, being burned alive afterwards. if that family had known beforehand, they might as well have throwed themselves at the troops with their pants stuffed with explosives. even your family might do the same in a similar situation. (wait, you're american, why in heaven would you be in such a situation?)
your father may have been a good or a bad soldier, but he couldn't have built a wmd and throwed it at popuilation, himself. that's a different story, hairy feet. governments do such things, because they can. and they do that on their own record in total disregard to public opinion (this was the topic, bytheway :D). and if needed they are eager to manipulate public opinion to spread the belief that there may exist any utterly bizarre argument for ... building a wmd and throwing it at people.
Those folks lived because we dropped the bomb.
this is more than a really sick excuse out of the blue. it is awfully perverse to me.
American soldiers shouldn't have defended themselves?
I still don't get the association between "american soldiers defending themselves" and "build a wmd and throw it at the population".
"No imaginable military target", huh? Just because you say it doesn't make it true. A nuke would do a pretty severe amount of damage to just about any military installation. Anywhere a lot of military facilities were built close together is a good military target for a nuke. So is anywhere a large number of troops are massed.
It so happens that the last few war the US has been involved in have been against asymmetric guerilla opponents. Nukes are largely useless against relatively small groups of people hiding in plain sight. But that doesn't mean there's no military application for nukes. To the contrary - if it ever had come to nuclear war against the Russians, the Pentagon would have been one of the first places they blew up. That's a classic military target. For an enormous list of other military targets, see this list of US military bases.