23-02-2003 23:57									#1
	Classified Information Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

I ask that this thread be topped.

This list will be changed from time to time. Anything noted with a * beside it can be revealed by an ambassador to their nation only as a part of relevant negotiations.

If you are asked questions about classified information during a casual chat, you should say that you're sorry, but you're not supposed to comment on that.

If you have any questions about what is or is not classified, post below.

Classified Information:
ANY Military plans we have for how to deal with any nation or situation
The number, composition, and location of our military. (Ambassador may reveal what units we have available to help an ally should the need arise.)
What our cities are building.
How many cities we have and their location.
What resources we have and what we are missing. *
What Wonder of the World we are ULTIMATELY building (permissible to discuss what we are currently building, which may or may not be a placeholder) *
Where we plan to build our next city.
How much money we have.
What technology we have. *
What technology we plan to research next. *
Who we want to win in any foreign conflict.
Treaties we have with other nations. *
ANY details or conversations that any ambassador or individual proclaims that should be kept Confidential.


Declassified Information:
Who holds what positions in our government
Who we think is dangerous/winning/our current victim of Propoganda.
If we've play the save yet. (If not, do not say why we are delaying the save).
Who they should send a PM/email to if they need an official answer to a question.

	07-03-2003 04:08									#2
	Increase Your PM Length

Some of our treaties should stay secret, but we need some mechanism to declassify parts because:

If we keep our treaties classified, how can we convince 3rd parties to ally with us if the other signatory violates the treaty?

	07-03-2003 04:23									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

I marked treaties with an "*" because in some situations our ambassadors will need to talk about them with nations other than the one we signed the treaty with. Regular citizens in casual chats should not discuss them unless we've posted that the treaty (or parts of it) are declassified.

If you think something should be declassified or classified, please post to this thread.

--Togas

	07-03-2003 12:34									#4
	OpSec Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

When I was in the US Air Force, I learned about a thing called OpSec (Operations Security). Basically, about the ability to figure out what the other side is doing from a lot of little bits of information. This is akin to working on a very complex Jigsaw Puzzle (if you don't know what a jigsaw puzzle is, go here: http://www.jigzone.com/), but without the completed picture to guide you. THe Information that you receive (or give) is like being handed one peice at a time and sometimes, the peice is part of an entirely different puzzle.

With communication between several people, it's hard to keep information from actually being given. This is just something that really can't be helped, but it can be reduced. The key is to remember that you are going to give out information, it's just that you want to make sure what information is given. Lying and denigning something can be just as revieling as just giving that information out straight.

The real key is to sometimes give them too much infomation. As Arnelos likes to call it, the signal to noise ratio, and the more noise that is present, the less chance of them getting any vital infoarmation from us. Roleplaying is oneway of increasing the noise and there are several others, like talking about things that don't matter in the game, etc....

But it's also important to also remember, that they are doing the same thing. Some will hide it in boasting and beligerance and some will hide it in sillyness and wittiness. But, they will hide it in some form or fashion. The thing is to be able to filter out that noise, and then being able to evaluate the information that is presented. If, lets say, a person had a private conversation with GhengisFarb for 2 hours, you might get 1 true peice of Information and maybe a couple of 1/2 truths. Then again, everything might be just BS, you can't say for sure. And until that information is verified in some manner, it can not be taken as gospel.

So, the best thing to do, when talking to a member of a foreign team, is that they are looking to get as much information as possible. They want to be your freind. They will simpathize with your situation. They will listen and talk and maybe, even cultivate sympathy from you, the better for you to possibly open up to them. The KGB used that for years and it worked very well.

So, keep that in mind at all times when chatting with them. Do not try to turn that against them, for that is also a trap. Just be freindly and general in any chat, but becareful with that part too. If you feel that you aren't quite in control of something like that, then it's time to start. Remember, to keep saying to yourself, "what can they learn from this??" and "How can it hurt our team??" and you should be fine.

E_T

	07-03-2003 14:25									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

The signal-to-noise ratio is almost certainly a very important aspect here...

The thing to remember is that whether or not you tell them isn't as important as whether they pick up on it. Their liklihood of picking up on the signal is directly affected by the signal-to-noise ratio. The higher the ratio, the more likely they'll pick up the signal.

So if you actually don't want them to know something, there are two ways of reducing the signal to noise ratio and thus making it less likely for them to find out.

The first is to reduce the signal itself. This is what most people try to do and is the most straight-forward approach. Unfortunately, it inevitably fails. Someone always goofs eventually and something leaks that you really would rather had not been leaked. Take the Pentagon, for example.... so much stuff seems to leak out of there that it's incredible... and they certainly do whatever they can to minimize it.

But that's where the other half of trying to reduce the signal-to-noise ratio comes in...

The other method is to increase the amount of "noise" in order to obscure the signal. If you know it's inevitably impossible to prevent the signal from slipping out, one way of preventing its utilization by the opponent is to make sure that he's getting so much noise with the signal that he can't tell the difference. The U.S Defense Department (the Pentagon) is another great example here... the sheer number of "plans for the attack on Iraq" that have leaked over the past 2 years is staggering. It is almost certain that the VAST majority of those "plans for the attack on Iraq" were intentionally leaked in order to feed more noise into the system and confuse everyone as to which plan (if any of them...) might actually be even partially valid.

The result is that you keep them guessing... because even when you DO goof and acidentally say something you'd wanted to hide, the recipient can't be sure it's not just more noise.

For those working to piece information together and attempt to piece the clues together, noise is extremely frustrating. The puzzle analogy is really good one...

Intelligence work is like trying to solve a gigantic jigsaw puzzle where you don't have the picture on the box, half the pieces are missing, and half the pieces you DO have belong to the wrong puzzles.

The "noise" you're sending are the pieces that belong to the wrong puzzles. The more in there, the better (as long as you aren't letting the opponent then SOLVE the other puzzles, of course ).

Personally, I find that using noise that is TRUE is most effective. You see, if you're throwing a non-stop stream of lies at someone, they're going to just outright doubt anything you say... which means when you have something to tell them that you really want them to take seriously, you have a problem.

That's why it's better, when possible, to instead flood someone with an endless stream of information that is not entirely false and not entirely useless. Afterall, you don't want them to entirely doubt your credibility because that may be as important to you as keeping your information close to your chest.

But most critically, as stated above, you'll need to use some deception to make it work. Flooding someone with a bunch of useless trivia is one way to hope that the one piece of seemingly useless triva that's actually important gets overlooked.

------------

When you want to PROVIDE information on purpose, that's a related ballgame.

The trick is to somehow remain both a credible source of information and yet to provide as little information as possible except for that information you WANT them to know. Politicians attempt to do this with reporters from the media all the time... with wildly varying degrees of success Some are good at it, others obviously stink very badly at it

The trick there is to both provide the signal you want them to hear (and make sure they pick up on THAT signal) while obscuring any other signals you may accidentally give off by providing them plenty of noise to think about. This is extremely tricky to do right... as many an unfortunate politician has found when he decided to act as an "anonymous source" for a reporter doing a story.

The situation becomes even trickier if you want them to pick up on a certain signal, but don't want them to realize that you WANT them to know. I really can't give you an easy way of handling that... you have to play it by ear (sometimes literally) and hope you aren't being played yourself. It's a somewhat dangerous game that far too many people try to play without much inclination for it... and end up leaking all sorts of information they shouldn't have...

This is why it's very important for, ideally, only the official spokesmen to be the ones talking for the group. In our case, the ambassadors or (perhaps) the higher leaders themselves. There are certain subjects that really should only be discussed by those people.

But when THEY do discuss such things (or if any of us who aren't ambassadors discuss things with people from other sites other than the big ticket stuff), we should keep in mind that this is a difficult thing to do properly and CAUTION is always advisable. When you get cocky is when you'll spill something... I've done it before, I know.

So be careful.... don't get too cocky and please try not to tell them ANYTHING on the aforementioned list unless expressly authorized to do so. Just to make sure that any information that get's out isn't necessarily believed immediately, it might be good to feed plenty of useless and false information from various people, however... it's worth discussing the merits of that... having plenty of noise around has its merits.

	25-09-2003 06:05									#6
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

Bumping this

E_T

	25-09-2003 11:06									#7
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Excellent post Arnelos, every FAM member and anyone else who occasionaly joins us in the chats with other teams should read also.

	25-09-2003 15:34									#8
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

I just read the chatlog with CGN and there was a lot of info reported back and forth by (I believe) authorised parties. Nothing on the above list, and it was all well chosen, but it was a little alarming seeing so much being given up. Maybe it was just the conservative civil servant part of me, but it seemed as if it was not beyond the bounds of rationality for something to slip out in that information.

Personally, I am perfectly acceptable with swapping that sort of info, but should there be a rethink on what info our Ambassadors should not give away?

How about a kind of 30-year rule? Where events from x turns back are allowed to be discussed, but not anything from more recent than that? That we can discuss freely, say, CDG's actions now that they are gone, and also maybe the events of the GCA/CFC/CDG war except for anything specific like number of units used, terrain details etc?

	25-09-2003 20:01									#9
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

It was done on purpose. We believed the more we opened up, the more they would too. By sharing our bit of history in a way we forced them to show a bit of theirs, and some of the info in miccofl's history pages are more than we'd have told them.

Some other stuff we kept quiet upon, like the exact date we got contact with GWT. Those details are frankly none of their business, it should be good enough for them to know simply that we do have contact.