If it’s classified it must be true
by digby
Bruce Schneier points to a new study that says people trust secret information over public information. Which explains why so many in congress are so eager to believe classified government briefings:
In one experiment, we had subjects read two government policy papers from 1995, one from the State Department and the other from the National Security Council, concerning United States intervention to stop the sale of fighter jets between foreign countries.
The documents, both of which were real papers released through the Freedom of Information Act, argued different sides of the issue. Depending on random assignment, one was described as having been previously classified, the other as being always public. Most people in the study thought that whichever document had been “classified” contained more accurate and well-reasoned information than the public document.
In another experiment, people read a real government memo from 1978 written by members of the National Security Council about the sale of fighter jets to Taiwan; we then explained that the council used the information to make decisions. Again, depending on random assignment, some people were told that the document had been secret and for exclusive use by the council, and that it had been recently declassified under the Freedom of Information Act. Others were told that the document had always been public.
As we expected, people who thought the information was secret deemed it more useful, important and accurate than did those who thought it was public. And people judged the National Security Council’s actions based on the information as more prudent and wise when they believed the document had been secret.
[…]
Our study helps explain the public’s support for government intelligence gathering. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported that a majority of Americans thought it was acceptable for the N.S.A. to track Americans’ phone activity to investigate terrorism. Some frustrated commentators have concluded that Americans have much less respect for their own privacy than they should.But our research suggests another conclusion: the secret nature of the program itself may lead the public to assume that the information it gathers is valuable, without even examining what that information is or how it might be used.
I’m sure there are many ways this can be psychologically explained. But I think it comes down, once again, to how much you generally trust authority figures. If you’re like me, you’ve seen enough in life to be skeptical of power. Others tend to think the best of the people in charge. Perhaps it’s more temperamental than anything.
So I suppose it’s only natural that I would gobsmacked at this latest concept gaining currency among the cognoscenti in which we’re told that the secret government agencies’ “culture” is such that we needn’t worry about them misusing the information they’re gathering on Americans. Perhaps I’ve just read too much history, but I’m going to guess that those who live and work in that culture have no more integrity as individuals (or are no more legitimately concerned about the threats we face)than those who were exposed just 30 years ago as having relentlessly spied on Americans for political reasons — on a bipartisan basis, by the way — for decades.
When you’re young you tend to believe that the time in which you live is unique and that the past is irrelevant because the world has evolved into something totally new. You get old and you realize that just isn’t true. Humans have not changed. The nature of power has not changed. All the reasons we had nearly 250 years ago for the Bill of Rights are still operative.
I’m afraid anyone who thinks that this government is incapable of doing today what it did in the cold war because it’s “different now” is being naive. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely yadda, yadda yadda. This is a nation that just had to publicly declare that it would not torture and execute someone who revealed that our government was collecting massive amounts of personal data on its own citizens and people all over the world. And that was because only China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia execute more people each year than the US. And I think we all know our recent little issues with torturing people. To not be suspicious of such a government’s intentions is just plain daft.
In my mind, it’s an obligation of citizenship to keep an eye on these things.
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