Sure, but the same arguments can be made for people donating blood. You might want to check out what actually happens when you pay people for blood rather than leave it as a civic duty some people feel compelled to do.
For example, see this NIH study talking about the effects on blood donation. It includes the following quote "There is a serious concern over using incentives in blood donations even on a temporary basis. That concern is based on the findings that using incentives may attract at-risk donors, and worse undermine the motivation to donate blood."
and also
Using incentives for blood donation may undermine the altruistic motivation to donate blood. This concern has always existed after Titmuss study in 1971. He believed that commercializing the altruistic setting in blood donation has crowding-out effect on the number of blood donors.[23] Since then, several economic and psychological studies have shown the same results and proved that incentives have negative effects on prosocial behaviors like blood donation.
Given that, it seems like it is reasonable to ask whether the assertion that it will increase supply is well founded.
Banks (well, most at least) don't have a monopoly on dollars. If you can find some random guy on the net to give you the dollars to buy a house you wouldn't need to deal with a bank either.
You'd probably need to review the TOS and EULAs you agreed to along the way. It's fairly likely that we've all given permission to use our personal information in exchange for using services like Google or Yahoo etc. If we gave them permission then they haven't done anything without our permission and thus haven't broken then law, right?
While I'm sure the talk about the NSA being able to listen in on their customers will be bad for business, I wonder what they'll do if people start to really take online privacy seriously. That would really cut to the core of their businesses, so perhaps they're really trying to clamp down on it before people start to think about it even more than they already have been.
Gathering which data was pointless? A contract officer can surely put their hands on whatever contracts they need, but no one can easily find information about contracts they aren't managing. For an organization that tries to be highly compartmentalized that really sounds like a pretty good thing. Making it difficult for someone who doesn't specifically know what they want to get information is the point, FOIA is just one avenue they care about.
Sure, there are false negatives, which is why it's not the only process used to determine whether or not you're granted a clearance (nor is it required for a lot of clearances at all). It's just one tool in the box, and given their goals it doesn't seem to me to be a bad idea to keep using it--in conjunction with other tools of course.
No process is perfect, so if you're waiting for the one that has no false negatives you'll never get anything done. Knowing how a process fits into a larger system can let you try to layer things so their holes hopefully don't line up.
For many government agencies it's not about catching a criminal per se, it's about deciding who to allow into the circle of trust. If you have a screening process that will keep out, say, 90% (no basis for that number) of people you don't want to allow, but also will keep out 25% (similarly no basis) of people you could actually have allowed in, it's probably good policy to use that screening tool. If you have a list of people who you know have taken steps to beat that screening process you probably want to weigh that fact when considering who to allow into your circle.
That it's not admissible in court, or has a high false positive rate isn't really a concern for the way most government agencies use it.
Just because some aspect of something has been discussed publicly doesn't mean that people who know context and/or additional details should be free to acknowledge the leaked information. More information gets leaked, accidentally often, that way.
Also, there's a difference between "classified" and "hidden." If you get a security clearance they make absolutely clear to you that whether something ends up being discussed publicly has no affect whatsoever on its status as classified, and thus you must still follow all the rules about handling classified information. As AC above observed, if you have signed legal documents swearing you won't try to access any classified information you aren't authorized to access, you aren't released from that obligation just because someone broke their agreement.
So you actually think that you must know everything about a subject before you can say anything about it? I don't think there's a single subject in existence about which anyone could say anything then. Everything is us taking what we know and making educated statements about what else is likely true. If new information shows that to have been wrong we change our ideas, otherwise it strengthens things. You'll never be enough of an authority on anything to have all the answers about it, particularly with something as complex as global climate. I don't know everything about geometry, but I plan to help my daughter with her homework about it.
There's a huge gap between speaking when you know nothing and waiting until you know every minute detail. In that gap most of human knowledge rests and is built.
Well I'd expect your tax bill to go up soon if this were enacted. I would think the government would have to pay a hefty premium for a company to agree to terms like that.
What about when the government buys a license for some COTS product? Should the government be barred from using proprietary software all together because the source will often be unavailable to us?
It's certainly some different if the government is paying for development, though as I pointed out that's rarely clean cut either.
My point was that the government only pays, often, for part of the software. It would often be useless without some proprietary other part, so your goal wouldn't work without either depriving rights holders by virtue of them working with the government, or without you obtaining some commercial software as well.
The ownership of the code can often get a little muddied, as the company who is paid to develop it may use their own funds at times too--or extend an existing product the company has for the government's needs--meaning some of it is proprietary and privately funded. This is why most such software is available for use within the government, but the private company maintains rights to continue to develop and sell it commercially as well.
I find it useful to do shell scripting when I've been doing something by hand, and want to automate it. It's pretty easy to just echo the command I've been doing into a file and touch it up from there. Then I can take advantage of the organic growth of the command as it usually happens, and can also use it to run that same command on lots of systems if needed.
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Sure, but the same arguments can be made for people donating blood. You might want to check out what actually happens when you pay people for blood rather than leave it as a civic duty some people feel compelled to do.
For example, see this NIH study talking about the effects on blood donation. It includes the following quote "There is a serious concern over using incentives in blood donations even on a temporary basis. That concern is based on the findings that using incentives may attract at-risk donors, and worse undermine the motivation to donate blood." and also
Given that, it seems like it is reasonable to ask whether the assertion that it will increase supply is well founded.
If you get the Pro version it has realtime protection, but that's not free.
Banks (well, most at least) don't have a monopoly on dollars. If you can find some random guy on the net to give you the dollars to buy a house you wouldn't need to deal with a bank either.
You'd probably need to review the TOS and EULAs you agreed to along the way. It's fairly likely that we've all given permission to use our personal information in exchange for using services like Google or Yahoo etc. If we gave them permission then they haven't done anything without our permission and thus haven't broken then law, right?
While I'm sure the talk about the NSA being able to listen in on their customers will be bad for business, I wonder what they'll do if people start to really take online privacy seriously. That would really cut to the core of their businesses, so perhaps they're really trying to clamp down on it before people start to think about it even more than they already have been.
Gathering which data was pointless? A contract officer can surely put their hands on whatever contracts they need, but no one can easily find information about contracts they aren't managing. For an organization that tries to be highly compartmentalized that really sounds like a pretty good thing. Making it difficult for someone who doesn't specifically know what they want to get information is the point, FOIA is just one avenue they care about.
Sure, there are false negatives, which is why it's not the only process used to determine whether or not you're granted a clearance (nor is it required for a lot of clearances at all). It's just one tool in the box, and given their goals it doesn't seem to me to be a bad idea to keep using it--in conjunction with other tools of course.
No process is perfect, so if you're waiting for the one that has no false negatives you'll never get anything done. Knowing how a process fits into a larger system can let you try to layer things so their holes hopefully don't line up.
For many government agencies it's not about catching a criminal per se, it's about deciding who to allow into the circle of trust. If you have a screening process that will keep out, say, 90% (no basis for that number) of people you don't want to allow, but also will keep out 25% (similarly no basis) of people you could actually have allowed in, it's probably good policy to use that screening tool. If you have a list of people who you know have taken steps to beat that screening process you probably want to weigh that fact when considering who to allow into your circle.
That it's not admissible in court, or has a high false positive rate isn't really a concern for the way most government agencies use it.
Just because some aspect of something has been discussed publicly doesn't mean that people who know context and/or additional details should be free to acknowledge the leaked information. More information gets leaked, accidentally often, that way.
Also, there's a difference between "classified" and "hidden." If you get a security clearance they make absolutely clear to you that whether something ends up being discussed publicly has no affect whatsoever on its status as classified, and thus you must still follow all the rules about handling classified information. As AC above observed, if you have signed legal documents swearing you won't try to access any classified information you aren't authorized to access, you aren't released from that obligation just because someone broke their agreement.
So you actually think that you must know everything about a subject before you can say anything about it? I don't think there's a single subject in existence about which anyone could say anything then. Everything is us taking what we know and making educated statements about what else is likely true. If new information shows that to have been wrong we change our ideas, otherwise it strengthens things. You'll never be enough of an authority on anything to have all the answers about it, particularly with something as complex as global climate. I don't know everything about geometry, but I plan to help my daughter with her homework about it.
There's a huge gap between speaking when you know nothing and waiting until you know every minute detail. In that gap most of human knowledge rests and is built.
Well I'd expect your tax bill to go up soon if this were enacted. I would think the government would have to pay a hefty premium for a company to agree to terms like that.
What about when the government buys a license for some COTS product? Should the government be barred from using proprietary software all together because the source will often be unavailable to us? It's certainly some different if the government is paying for development, though as I pointed out that's rarely clean cut either.
My point was that the government only pays, often, for part of the software. It would often be useless without some proprietary other part, so your goal wouldn't work without either depriving rights holders by virtue of them working with the government, or without you obtaining some commercial software as well.
The ownership of the code can often get a little muddied, as the company who is paid to develop it may use their own funds at times too--or extend an existing product the company has for the government's needs--meaning some of it is proprietary and privately funded. This is why most such software is available for use within the government, but the private company maintains rights to continue to develop and sell it commercially as well.
I find it useful to do shell scripting when I've been doing something by hand, and want to automate it. It's pretty easy to just echo the command I've been doing into a file and touch it up from there. Then I can take advantage of the organic growth of the command as it usually happens, and can also use it to run that same command on lots of systems if needed.