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Agencies embrace technology to find the enemy within (washingtonpost.com)
5 points by ryutin 4479 days ago
3 comments

I can't see this ending well. First, almost nobody works well when they're always under suspicion. This will encourage only the most self-centered, and unrealistically self-confident people to stay. Everyone else will suffer, and a lot will leave.

Any of these mechanical/automatic solutions are going to make "secret" or compartmentalized work even less efficient. One of the things about startups that lends them great efficiency is the lack of barriers, the lack of silos for information and work. All this is going to do is make impenetrable silos for information, leading to less ability to "connect the dots".

Statistically speaking, there's only a few real secrets, but there's many career-ending mistakes, and opportunities for slacking and thieving. Whatever practices come out of this effort will encourage covering up the mistakes and proliferating the slacking and fraud.

> Any of these mechanical/automatic solutions are going to make "secret" or compartmentalized work even less efficient.

Of course, there's an easy solution to that, and to the greater problem of how to prevent insider threats: limit what you declare "secret" to something far smaller and more manageable.

This is one of the most disturbing and Orwellian articles I have seen recently. The only threat those people posed was to tell the truth about unethical and dangerous secrets.
Incredibly sad to see this article about agencies bending over backwards to plug leaks instead just trying to be less evil.

On the plus side, maybe all this new bureaucracy will cause them to collapse under their own weight.

Its just like the Stasi in east Germany.