THE MARKUP
The Latest NYT Editorial [Nathan Goulding]
The NYT has a new editorial today that further rationalizes the paper's decision to publish the Swift article.
The Swift story bears no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals.
Is information that "clearly compromise[s] the immediate safety of specific individuals" the only type of information that shouldn't be published for security reasons? Troop locations are a good example of something not to publish, but hardly the only one. For instance, publishing detailed information about our search patterns for terrorists in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan wouldn't clearly compromise the safety of specific individuals. But it would be wrong to publish this information, because it would directly and needlessly hamper our ability to capture dangerous terrorists.
Another strand of the NYT's argument maintains that TFTP isn't that effective, despite (by my count) at least four indentifiable examples of it actually working. The claim seems to be that smart terrorists—the ones most likely to successfully carry out an attack—would already know, or at least suspect, that Swift is being monitored. But it only takes one terrorist using Swift to lead investigators to an entire terror cell. Similar methods have been used in cracking down on organized crime: Watch for mistakes, find the weakest link, and exploit it/him/her. Now, everyone knows that Swift is being monitored—and we have one fewer effective weapon to use in the War on Terror.
06/28 12:19 PM
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