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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   33172 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 24, 2025

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I am not an expert on the US classification system, but I do know that producing an unclassified summary of classified information (including, for example, the classified information you worked on in the last week) is difficult work that only a few people in each department are qualified to do. The rule in corporate finance departments at banks (where almost all staff have access to market-moving non-public information such as upcoming mergers) and it is "Do not discuss live deals with anyone outside the department, even in general terms." For a corporate financier, sending a meaningful response to that e-mail would be a firing offence.

But this isn’t, like, a fact of the universe caused by the legitimate praxis of those jobs. Rather, this is itself administrative bloat designed to give bullshit jobs to the summarisers or inflate the self-importance of managers who want to pretend that their work is super serious. Everything you said constitutes organisational-calcification red tape that SHOULD be dismissively cut through, not “omg the freak-out-ers are right”.

Rules like 'never discuss what you do with those outside the department' are obviously necessary in many agencies, if you want to call that red tape then fine, seems like a pretty important piece of tape. Obviously it would be a terrible precedent in such agencies to say 'actually you can discuss your work if you, as an individual employee, decide on a random ad hoc basis that its probably fine this time'. In most cases a reasonably discrete summary probably does exist, but it plainly can't be up to individual employees when and how they get to share information about what they do in cases where discretion is important.

Obviously it would be a terrible precedent in such agencies to say 'actually you can discuss your work if you, as an individual employee, decide on a random ad hoc basis that its probably fine this time'.

Can you elaborate? Because I think it unironically would be perfectly fine.

Better that everyone know USG’s secrets than I have to pay taxes to keep them under wraps.

Can you elaborate?

An individual cannot always see the full implications of sharing particular pieces of information and unlikely to be aware of the full complexities of laws governing not only information the government wishes to keep confidential but also things like privacy laws. Private employers very often have blanket rules against sharing information (even internally) too, especially if you are in any field relating to things like law/compliance/audit/HR, this isn't some case of bloat peculiar to the bureaucracy, and it's for much the same reason. It's not their information to give out, it's their department's.

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