# Formerly classified documents wind up showing innocuous information **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 15, 2014, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536 "2014-05-15T17:30:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2014, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/21 "2014-05-15T20:21:28Z")
In each volume of Churchill’s _History of the Second World War_ appears a prefatory note to the effect that ‘at the request of the Foreign Office [_sic_] the text of certain official telegrams has been paraphrased but the sense has not been altered’. This was done to avoid giving the Soviets the plain text and have them comparing it with encyphered text which they surely had monitored and still had on file, thus gaining a key into the cypher. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/22 "2014-05-16T01:37:35Z")
When Cheney and his scootery minions decided to out Valerie Plame as revenge for her husband’s criticism, that led to an interesting detail; her formal resume was available online, including a particular obscure international consulting company where she had apparently done a stint work during some phase of her career (of course it did not say anywhere"CIA"). An internet search found another person with the exact same consulting company on his resume. The journalists who called him and asked if he had been working for the CIA also during that time suddenly found that resume disappeared off the website. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. There was also a story during the Strategic Arms talks in the 1980’s where the American negotiator got very frustrated. He dragged out a map and tried to cut through the bullshit with the Russian military sitting across the table. “Look.” he said. “We know you have 100 missiles in this base, 150 of the SS-18’s over here, and…” The Russian missile defence force cuts him off, points to the Russian naval commander and says “you can’t tell that to _him_! It’s classified information! He doesn’t have ‘need to know’!” ---
**Author:** ![rbroome](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/838e76/32.png) [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/23 "2014-05-16T01:59:28Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Rightly so. > I don’t think they want a pristine sample of such stamps out in the wild. not the stamp. The rule is anything stamped with a classification is by definition classified. Even a blank sheet of paper. Rather than put people (guards, junior employees, anyone) in the position of having to decide whether a document is classified, the blanket rule is if it has a stamp, it is classified. There are millions of classified pages in the system where one line is marked classified and the rest is marked unclassified. The whole page gets locked up. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/24 "2014-05-16T02:28:02Z")
> [@Chihuahua](#): > > And then they start playing a game of, “They can’t know that we know.” So we have to keep it a secret just to prevent the adversary from finding out that we know their secret. If they know their operation has been revealed, they might change their tactics or move or something. Wasn’t this also a real-life problem for the Allies when Turing & Co. broke the enigma code? They were then able to intercept and read German communications, and gained extensive useful – but unusable – intelligence. They had to be very careful what they did with that knowledge. If they knew the Germans were planning to attack a particular beach, for example, they couldn’t set up any extraordinary defense, lest the Germans figure out that the Allies had broken their code. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/25 "2014-05-16T02:42:03Z")
Aside from classified documents containing innocuous information, isn’t there also a perennial cloud of accusations that various govt agencies classify documents to cover up illegal or embarrassing information? Didn’t, for example, the NSA classify a lot of stuff to cover up their illegal spying on American citizens, their phones, etc.? Weren’t there lawsuits against the govt and the NSA over this that had to be dismissed because the govt claimed the suits would necessarily require revealing secrets “compromising the security of the United States”? And haven’t there been some cases in which such documents were eventually revealed, only to disclose that there were no national security issues there, but only information about government wrongdoing? (Sorry, I couldn’t find any links right off the bat, but certainly there have been a lot of stories like these in the news over the last several years. But every legit story, no doubt, generates hundreds of wacko conspiracy posts, blogs, and threads. So the real stories are hard to fish up among all the cruft there.) ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/26 "2014-05-16T02:51:44Z")
Mahar Arar was redacted to Syria by the USA despite being a Canadian citizen returning to Canada via JFK. After torturing him for a year with questions provided by the CIA and Canadian Intelligence (??) the Syrians concluded he was not involved in terrorism and let him go. Canada settled the lawsuit with him for $10M, but the USA refuses to admit they made a mistake and lawsuits went nowhere because the evidence is classified, due to national security… As also is the reason he’s still on their no-fly list. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/27 "2014-05-16T13:08:28Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > I love that the classified advice on how to be a saboteur in an office is… to act like you work in an office. I think I may be a sleeper agent. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/28 "2014-05-16T13:28:44Z")
> [@Mk\_VII](#): > > In each volume of Churchill’s _History of the Second World War_ appears a prefatory note to the effect that ‘at the request of the Foreign Office [_sic_] the text of certain official telegrams has been paraphrased but the sense has not been altered’. Why would that be sic’ed? It wasn’t called the Foreign and Commonwealth Office until 1968. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/29 "2014-05-16T14:53:01Z")
> [@Chihuahua](#): > > No. They are just the word “SECRET” or whatever in block letters. There is nothing unique or fancy about the stamp. What kind of block letters? Which font? What size? What color? Is there a square border around the word? How thick is that? Does it say “Secret”, “SECRET”, or maybe it’s “CLASSIFIED” or some other word? As far as labeling powerpoints in modern briefings, there is still uniformity. The color for secret. The color for Top Secret. The appearance of the stickers for labeling devices authorized to process or display those powerpoints or store the data. The computer background color and appearance for the various secured networks, SIPR etc. The answer to **Mangetout** ’s question is “yes”. The design was not special in that it could not be reproduced easily. But they were standardized, and knowing exactly what the stamps looked like are helpful to someone attempting to create falsified documents for espionage or sabotage or some other purpose. Hell, I can make a fake military CAC (identification card) in about 20 minutes. But doing so would be a lot more difficult if I didn’t have a legitimate one in my hand to go off of. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/30 "2014-05-16T14:56:37Z")
[http://www.redbubble.com/people/sundayedition/works/8201189-top-secret-stickers?country\_code=US&p=sticker&utm\_campaign=shopping&utm\_medium=google\_products&utm\_source=google&gclid=CN6tjqTZsL4CFc-BfgodLgoAIg](http://www.redbubble.com/people/sundayedition/works/8201189-top-secret-stickers?country_code=US&p=sticker&utm_campaign=shopping&utm_medium=google_products&utm_source=google&gclid=CN6tjqTZsL4CFc-BfgodLgoAIg) These stickers, for instance, are standardized. If I wanted to pull a Manning, and transfer some Top Secret data onto a DVD, it would be much less suspicious with one of these stickers on it. I can understand not letting the stamps out of the building. And I _am_ rather surprised to see these stickers for sale online. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/31 "2014-05-16T15:01:16Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Bear\_Nenno** : > > What kind of block letters? Which font? What size? What color? Is there a square border around the word? How thick is that? Does it say “Secret”, “SECRET”, or maybe it’s “CLASSIFIED” or some other word? How widely known are the answers to those questions? If they’re too widely known, then the secret is already out, and there’s no point in continuing to hide them (and in fact continuing to hide them could hurt security, by giving false confidence). But if they’re not widely known enough, then the secret is useless, because one could just as easily forge documents using the wrong font or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Sailboat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sailboat/32/461_2.png) [@Sailboat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sailboat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/32 "2014-05-16T16:17:58Z")
Although not directly comparable, the famous Midway “cipher trap” story shows the value of apparently innocuous information. Early in WWII, the Japanese held the initiative and were obviously going to attack again. Long story short, there was considerable disagreement among American intelligence factions as to where the blow would fall. Codebreakers had identified the Japanese code group “AF” referring to the apparent target, but nobody knew what AF referred to. Believing that Midway Island would be the target, and knowing that a secure undersea cable to Midway existed, proposed setting a “cipher trap.” The cable would be used to request that Midway (which depended on desalination for fresh water) send a distress signal by radio that its desalination plant had broken down and there was a shortage of fresh water. Soon, a listening station picked up encrypted Japanese radio traffic alerting high command that AF was running out of fresh water. Another example from the same period – Japanese garrisons on some of the pacific Islands went to considerable lengths to camouflage their positions, but even the openly visible garrisons tried to deceive the Americans about their actual number of soldiers. Various methods of scheduling activities, underground movement, night operations, and so on were used to hide troop strength. But in the interest of the troops’ health, most Japanese installations rigidly adhered to standard prewar regulations for the number of latrine pits and outhouses necessary (per a given number of men) to minimize the spread of diseases, and eventually the Americans obtained reliable estimates of troop strength by taking aerial photographs and simply “counting the toilets.” ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/33 "2014-05-16T16:27:53Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > My favorite bit of declassified material is a pamphlet called: “Simple Sabotage Field Manual.” … > > I love that the classified advice on how to be a saboteur in an office is… to act like you work in an office. > [Link.](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-images/26184-images.pdf) Hilarious! I used to work in a place that could have beat the Nazis without firing a shot! 😃 That excerpt reads like the freakin’ Employee Handbook. ---
**Author:** ![slash2k](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@slash2k](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slash2k)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/34 "2014-05-16T16:37:23Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Why would that be sic’ed? It wasn’t called the Foreign and Commonwealth Office until 1968. I assumed it was “sic” because it was really the spooks (whatever the Brits were calling 'em then–MI6?) instead of the diplomats of the Foreign Office making the request. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/35 "2014-05-16T16:41:39Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Why would that be sic’ed? It wasn’t called the Foreign and Commonwealth Office until 1968. The request wasn’t actually from the Foreign Office, but from one of the then-classified intelligence services, maybe? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/36 "2014-05-16T17:19:48Z")
_Sic_ is for apparent errors or nonstandard usage. It would make sense if the comment had been “(yeah, right!)” or something. ---
**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2014, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/37 "2014-05-16T17:59:08Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > _Sic_ is for apparent errors or nonstandard usage. It would make sense if the comment had been “(yeah, right!)” or something. I read it, used here, as a slightly more refined :dubious: : the literal “thus was it written” with a sarcastic overtone. ---
**Author:** ![Projammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/projammer/32/559_2.png) [@Projammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Projammer)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/38 "2014-05-17T05:33:07Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Wasn’t this also a real-life problem for the Allies when Turing & Co. broke the enigma code? They were then able to intercept and read German communications, and gained extensive useful – but unusable – intelligence. They had to be very careful what they did with that knowledge. If they knew the Germans were planning to attack a particular beach, for example, they couldn’t set up any extraordinary defense, lest the Germans figure out that the Allies had broken their code. You’re probably thinking of [Winston Churchill and the bombing of Coventry](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11486219). There are some people questioning the veracity of this story now, but for decades it has been accepted as factual. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/39 "2014-05-17T06:10:56Z")
> [@Projammer](#): > > You’re probably thinking of [Winston Churchill and the bombing of Coventry](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-11486219). There are some people questioning the veracity of this story now, but for decades it has been accepted as factual. I’m vaguely remembering reading stories that mentioned the Normandie coastline – Allies knew where the Nazi emplacements and defenses were most concentrated, for example, but couldn’t act on that information. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2014, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536/40 "2014-05-17T14:30:37Z")
I thought that the invasion of Normandy was the point when they finally pulled out all the stops. It doesn’t matter how much your opponent knows, when you’re going to win the war imminently. I have heard, though, that there were ship convoys that were left inadequately defended against attacks we knew were coming, so as to avoid revealing that we’d cracked Enigma. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/formerly-classified-documents-wind-up-showing-innocuous-information/688536.md?page=3)