re: #32 RealityBasedSteve

It’s also how one small piece of information isn’t very valuable, but if somebody gets enough small pieces of info, from various sources, they can put together a very good perspective of the whole. In the military it was in interesting thing, various facts and documents that in themselves weren’t classified, or were at the very lowest levels possible, could suddenly acquire a higher classification when aggregated into a single doc.

I was taught to think of it as a tile mosaic. Just looking at one or two tiles didn’t show the picture, but enough tiles and you have the big picture.

My understanding around military posts, especially just off post, things like barbers, surplus and gear providers, sew-shops would probably be able to give a command level briefing on any major upcoming operation just based on business and random comments made.

RBS

Yeah, that’s why Snowden’s release of documents was so damaging to legitimate efforts and why I consider him more as a clumsy fool than a whistleblower.