NEED TO KNOW

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:I can see your point, but, you must not overlook the gray areas, which are aplenty.

Take your notion of lawful command. Lawful command is ripe with gray areas. The military teaches you to follow commands. Factor that into the possible awe inspired "hero worship." What lowly Ensign would you expect could hold out against unlawfully sharing need to know info with the Salamander? Could he or she be considered of sound mind and judgement if he refuses? It is conceivable that even Honor can be denied access to certain information.

You mean the 5-star Fleet Admiral who's married to the First Lord of the Admiralty and is personal friend with the Queen and Empress? Is there any military classification she's not allowed?

Anyway, indeed there are grey areas. As you say, in the military one has to follow orders, but also know which orders are unlawful and NOT follow those. That does indeed open up for a lot of subjectivity. A well-squared military must be flexible enough that the people on-site can adapt to circumstances and not be required to follow orders that have gone OBE, but not so flexible that no orders get followed and the strategists can't get anything done.

I'm not saying this is easy. That's also why there are officers and enlisted (in theory): the enlisted crew is taught to follow the officers practically blindly after a few months in Boot Camp, but officers are required to have higher education and are taught to think during the years they spend at Saganami Island. That's of course a remnant from societies of a couple of centuries ago where education was much less available to the population, and enlisted crew may not even know how to read and write, while officers usually came from the aristocracy and had well-rounded education. In an advanced society like Manticore is supposed to be, that's not the case, and yet the distinction remains.

Therein lies the kicker. The "unlucky" Ensign - who is lucky enough to be trusted with this critical secret - CAN, according to the definition, decide that he can share it with someone else whom HE deems it is necessary to share the information with.

The problem lies in the fact that top brass know that fact as well. What lowly maggot in the Navy can turn down General Patton, Halsey, or the Salamander when the brass that they are wearing is blinding him.

Indeed, but as I said above, such brass is usually intelligent enough to know when they should ask for information. And besides, how would they know that the information was there to be asked in the first place? Doesn't that imply that they already knew about it?

And if this lowly Ensign is in Honor's chain of command, then she is most likely the ultimate CO in the area in the situation this is likely to happen.

In any case, hero worship does not change the rules. The ensign is supposed to ignore that and focus on the rules. The fact that it's difficult is not relevant at that time. What should have happened is that the situation not be allowed to happen in the first place, by those who created it. Don't put lowly ensigns in this position!

Does anyone think Pavel Young should have been trusted with information about Apollo even if he had been alive? If Young would have been captured, he would have sung like a choir with an all-star ensemble. If given the chance!

No, which is why he'd never have been briefed on it or allowed anywhere near the system. He'd also have never been put in a position where he might get captured in the first place. He was court-martialled after the first real action he saw, so if he were still in the RMN during a time when Apollo existed, then it's because this court-martial gave him a desk to fly with a standing order to never let the seat temperature drop below 95% human butt temperature.

Unfortunately, he couldn't have been assigned to the RMN's equivalent of GSN Francis Mueller because he'd already made Captain of the List.

If captured, Young would have sung. But he would not have hesitated in browbeating a lowly Ensign, or a Captain for that matter. And the threat of a career loss would have been the bull in the china shop.

I understand. But rules are rules. The ensign is not supposed to violate them because a superior officer is threatening retaliation. Though Pavel Young would never actually threaten; everything would be implied but never proven.

Yes. I am talking about the same Honor Alexander Harrington. Why not? Need to know is bigger than any one person. That is inherent in the definition.

Besides, it happened to her several times in text. It was necessary that she be kept out of the loop when they raped the command she was inheriting. She didn't find out that she was carrying Voldemort (grav lance) aboard Fearless until she had already inherited the command. One minute she was in her quarters twirling with glee, the next minute Courvosier was informing her that her command had been raped.

She got tangled up with need to know again when she had to inform, Captain Garrett was it, about a classified weapon's system. What if there had been a leak in Grayson's chain of command, what if there had been another Masadan spy? I agree it was necessary to share the info. But Grayson hadn't yet signed on the dotted line as it were. Conceivably Grayson could have decided to align themselves with Haven.

It happened to her again when she wasn't told about the games the Admiralty was playing with Warlock.

I suspect she was kept out of the loop when she was banished to Grayson. Actually that is a no-brainer considering how High Ridge felt about her. I understand that she wasn't really worth more than her weight in brass, then, as she is now, but, yes, I think that it is highly possible she could be kept out of the loop.

At any rate, Honor's credentials SHOULD NOT automatically qualify her for a need to know. Security clearances don't count. One reason she may be excluded is if she has been suspected of possibly being compromised. What if there is a chance that she has been nanited?

Asking how Honor can be kept out of the loop is sweating the small details again instead of accepting the premise. Small details that would only require the slightest push by that demon Murphy. Saying that "the chances of it happening was small" sounds like the apology you give to the Ensign who has been caught with his testicles in a vise. Real life comes at you fast.

There could be a carbon copy of Honor. A clone. An imposter, in the face of Nimitz being out of commission because he is seriously wounded and in a coma for months.

Making matters worse, the information that the Salamander may have been compromised may itself be classified as a need to know. You may not want to alert the clone, or its handlers that the cat is out of the bag.

It is failing to accept the premise again by asking how the info got out. Apollo is unprecedented. I suspect a lot of things were different aboard ship, post-Apollo. A couple of Ensigns who were responsible for loading the birds or connecting the special extension cords could have been overheard discussing their new duties.

If you are playing the "Honor's exalted status" card, then that is my point. Pavel Young would have the same exalted status in the eyes of some lowly baseborn Commoner.

Exalted status is in the eye of the beholder.

cthia wrote:Yes. I am talking about the same Honor Alexander Harrington. Why not? Need to know is bigger than any one person. That is inherent in the definition.

Honor wouldn't do that to a junior officer or enlisted.

It is possible for boneheaded people to rise up the ranks (the list is too long, with Pavel Young, Janacek, Jorgensen, Santino, etc.) to the point that they become that brass. So I actually take back what I said in my previous post: it would be possible for Young, if he had remained in the RMN, to have been given a command patrolling some of the ex-Peep systems when Thunderbolt was launched and get captured. It almost did happen to Santino, only he went out in a blaze of glory instead of getting himself captured. And since he was responsible for a shipyard, he was probably read in to many of the innovations on the Invictus there -- including Keyhole I!

Besides, it happened to her several times in text. [cut]

Trimming a lot of discussion that went off a tangent. I think I ended up mixing a person's clearance with compartmentalisation of information. So let me try again.

Honor has the top-most clearance available anywhere in the GA. There's no doubt about that. If she needs to be read in to any secret, she can be. So if there happened to be a situation where someone had to make a judgement call on the spot on reading her in, they'd probably take comfort on the fact that her clearance means she can be trusted with that information.

But there will be compartmentalisation of information and she need not be made privy to everything. She can't possibly make use of every single piece of information anyway. And the best way to ensure a secret doesn't leak is to keep it to as few people as possible, and if possible also confined geographically.

What if there is a chance that she has been nanited?

That's not a valid consideration. Everyone can be nanited if Honor can. Therefore, the conclusion would be that no information should be ever shared with anyone, and that's just unworkable.

But given compartmentalisation as I said above, then the counter to nanite infection is to vet the few people who have access to the information, monitor them and their contacts, keep track of how exposed they may be, and especially develop counters.

Besides, as far as we know, nanites can't be used for exfiltration of information. The information still needs to be carried out by some other means.

It is failing to accept the premise again by asking how the info got out. Apollo is unprecedented. I suspect a lot of things were different aboard ship, post-Apollo. A couple of Ensigns who were responsible for loading the birds or connecting the special extension cords could have been overheard discussing their new duties.

If you are playing the "Honor's exalted status" card, then that is my point. Pavel Young would have the same exalted status in the eyes of some lowly baseborn Commoner.

On every ship that Apollo was loaded, the captain and XO were read in. So if Young had been captain or commodore or admiral at the time of Apollo, and he had been sent out in a situation where he might encounter Apollo, he'd have been read in.

That would have been a disaster if he got captured, I agree. But that wouldn't be the ensign's fault.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:On every ship that Apollo was loaded, the captain and XO were read in. So if Young had been captain or commodore or admiral at the time of Apollo, and he had been sent out in a situation where he might encounter Apollo, he'd have been read in.

That would have been a disaster if he got captured, I agree. But that wouldn't be the ensign's fault.

Also there are various levels of read in. The details you need to tactically employ the system are far different, and far more superficial, than the technical details you'd need to design or build it. So a ship officer would only be read in to the uses of the weapon, its believed effectiveness, and see sims to practice how to use it -- they wouldn't know the engineering details necessary to recreate it.

So if a captain was read into the existence of Apollo then captured and had their knowledge extracted the enemy wouldn't be able to immediately build a counter; and definitely wouldn't be able to quickly replicate the functionality.

Though it could still be bad. If the intel sufficiently panicked the enemy they might try a Beatrice style all costs attack, risking it all to attempt to end the war before the new system reaches deployment. (Because without the design and engineering details they can't hope to invent a version themselves and get it deployed before the original navy gets it into service)
OTOH without direct evidence in the form of combat a navy is unlikely to believe their enemy has developed such a war winning weapon -- 99.9% of the time in history the wonder weapon that'll end the war is quickly countered or doesn't work out, or both sides simply escalate without winning. So they're unlikely to instantly jump to desperate rolls of the dice.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:On every ship that Apollo was loaded, the captain and XO were read in. So if Young had been captain or commodore or admiral at the time of Apollo, and he had been sent out in a situation where he might encounter Apollo, he'd have been read in.

That would have been a disaster if he got captured, I agree. But that wouldn't be the ensign's fault.

Also there are various levels of read in. The details you need to tactically employ the system are far different, and far more superficial, than the technical details you'd need to design or build it. So a ship officer would only be read in to the uses of the weapon, its believed effectiveness, and see sims to practice how to use it -- they wouldn't know the engineering details necessary to recreate it.

So if a captain was read into the existence of Apollo then captured and had their knowledge extracted the enemy wouldn't be able to immediately build a counter; and definitely wouldn't be able to quickly replicate the functionality.

Though it could still be bad. If the intel sufficiently panicked the enemy they might try a Beatrice style all costs attack, risking it all to attempt to end the war before the new system reaches deployment. (Because without the design and engineering details they can't hope to invent a version themselves and get it deployed before the original navy gets it into service)
OTOH without direct evidence in the form of combat a navy is unlikely to believe their enemy has developed such a war winning weapon -- 99.9% of the time in history the wonder weapon that'll end the war is quickly countered or doesn't work out, or both sides simply escalate without winning. So they're unlikely to instantly jump to desperate rolls of the dice.

kzt wrote:

cthia wrote:
Can need to know information be commandeered? Technically, it can be.

No, there is a specified method to be read into a program. The right answer to being ordered to provide information that the recipient has no authorization to or need to know is to treat them as the spy they are.

You misunderstood me. What I meant is that classified information can conceivably be commandeered by accident. By happenstance.

Again, there were several incidents of ships being commandeered. The SLN has the right to commandeer TUFT freighters at any time. And I suppose any senior commander on the spot can commandeer fleet trains. Was it Halsey who commandeered resources in the Pacific?

At any rate, prototypes of Apollo could be shipped to specific commands. Some arrogant commander on the spot could think his emergency is more important. Therefore, disclosure of the info could be INDIRECTLY forced. And incidentally obtained.

"You can't have these ships sir! We must continue on without delay!"

cthia wrote:At any rate, prototypes of Apollo could be shipped to specific commands. Some arrogant commander on the spot could think his emergency is more important. Therefore, disclosure of the info could be INDIRECTLY forced. And incidentally obtained.

"You can't have these ships sir! We must continue on without delay!"

That could happen, indeed. Suppose that the picket commander in the Lynx Terminus decides to stop the convoy that brought Spindle its Mk23 Apollo pods. No, that's not a good scenario, because Lynx is one transit away from the MBS and the order would be quickly countered, plus Lynx would have its own pods anyway.

Ok, suppose that Henke is deploying forward to defend the first approaches to the Quadrant, at Montana. The convoy arrives in Spindle with orders to drop off a portion of it and then continue to Montana, but Khumalo countermands the order and has them unload everything there.

First, would it be so bad? Supposedly, Khumalo has reason to believe this is a good idea, in spite of leaving Henke and Montana high and dry (even though the planet is apparently low lands with grassy pastures). Unless the convoy commander had specific orders from the Admiralty, he'd have to accept Khumalo's orders. And even if he had orders from the Admiralty, Khumalo is the officer on the scene and may have better knowledge, so the convoy's CO had better listen.

And as we know, Crandall attacked Spindle.

But let's change this again. Let's say the convoy stops by Split before Spindle to deliver something else, because this is not a rush job anyway. After all, the superdreadnoughts for Tenth Fleet that would benefit from those Apollo pods weren't leaving the MBS for several more weeks. And let's say that the CO of the picket in Split is the CO of a CA, CL or DD. Can this captain or commander order the convoy CO to drop off some pods? I this case, it's swung on the other side, because the warship escorting a convoy carrying Apollo pods is likely to be a CA anyway, so you'd have two officers of the same rank (Captain of the List) or the CO of the convoy is actually the higher-ranked one. Either way, the local CO couldn't order the convoy to do anything.

You'd have to create a situation where the fool is actually a Commodore or Admiral, like was the case with Santino. And the thing is that it's actually possible this could have happened, if Young had survived. Remember that Khumalo was a political appointee from the Janacek Admiralty, so if the war hadn't broken out again with Haven (yet), Young could have been one of the Commodores or Rear Admirals assigned to the region.

But if the war hadn't yet broken out, Apollo might not yet exist but neither would the RMN wouldn't have had trouble sending forth a bigger weight of metal to defend the Quadrant.

cthia wrote:You misunderstood me. What I meant is that classified information can conceivably be commandeered by accident. By happenstance.

Again, there were several incidents of ships being commandeered. The SLN has the right to commandeer TUFT freighters at any time. And I suppose any senior commander on the spot can commandeer fleet trains. Was it Halsey who commandeered resources in the Pacific?

At any rate, prototypes of Apollo could be shipped to specific commands. Some arrogant commander on the spot could think his emergency is more important. Therefore, disclosure of the info could be INDIRECTLY forced. And incidentally obtained.

"You can't have these ships sir! We must continue on without delay!"

We actually saw ship's have their orders overridden by the local fleet commander, way back in SVW.

Short victorious War wrote:those Erebus-class minelayers. Do we know what Admiral Parks intends to do with them?"
[snip]
The minelayers weren't officially assigned to Hancock—they'd simply been passing through on their way to Reevesport when Parks read Admiral Caparelli's dispatch and shortstopped them. It was probably little more than an instinctive reaction, but if he could be convinced to hold them here indefinitely . . .

Now that that case they weren't carrying classified compartmentalized cargo -- but the Admiral on the scene did override their travel orders based on what he felt was a compelling (if non-specific) need.

OTOH I don't know how much Parks knew about their mission to Reevesport; so I don't know by what basis he judged his, then nebulous, need for them outweighed their original job.


Still, I'd think that if a convoy was carrying secret material that most commanding and flag officers weren't cleared to know about, it'd also carry specific orders telling them it had priority and to keep their hands off. Historically, in WWII, that's basically what USS Indianapolis had when she carried the first Atomic bomb to be used in combat from the US out to the B-29 bomber base on Tinian.

The various Admirals whose spheres of control she passed through knew she had there, and had highest priority orders to proceed without interference, but they didn't know why. For that matter I'm not sure her Captain knew the specifics of the cargo she carried.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:You misunderstood me. What I meant is that classified information can conceivably be commandeered by accident. By happenstance.

Again, there were several incidents of ships being commandeered. The SLN has the right to commandeer TUFT freighters at any time. And I suppose any senior commander on the spot can commandeer fleet trains. Was it Halsey who commandeered resources in the Pacific?

At any rate, prototypes of Apollo could be shipped to specific commands. Some arrogant commander on the spot could think his emergency is more important. Therefore, disclosure of the info could be INDIRECTLY forced. And incidentally obtained.

"You can't have these ships sir! We must continue on without delay!"

We actually saw ship's have their orders overridden by the local fleet commander, way back in SVW.

Short victorious War wrote:those Erebus-class minelayers. Do we know what Admiral Parks intends to do with them?"
[snip]
The minelayers weren't officially assigned to Hancock—they'd simply been passing through on their way to Reevesport when Parks read Admiral Caparelli's dispatch and shortstopped them. It was probably little more than an instinctive reaction, but if he could be convinced to hold them here indefinitely . . .

Now that that case they weren't carrying classified compartmentalized cargo -- but the Admiral on the scene did override their travel orders based on what he felt was a compelling (if non-specific) need.

OTOH I don't know how much Parks knew about their mission to Reevesport; so I don't know by what basis he judged his, then nebulous, need for them outweighed their original job.


Still, I'd think that if a convoy was carrying secret material that most commanding and flag officers weren't cleared to know about, it'd also carry specific orders telling them it had priority and to keep their hands off. Historically, in WWII, that's basically what USS Indianapolis had when she carried the first Atomic bomb to be used in combat from the US out to the B-29 bomber base on Tinian.

The various Admirals whose spheres of control she passed through knew she had there, and had highest priority orders to proceed without interference, but they didn't know why. For that matter I'm not sure her Captain knew the specifics of the cargo she carried.

Indeed Jonathan, in fact that incident was fresh in my mind during the post. It is simply such a curious notion this thing of commandeering a fleet train, or any resources which are slated for delivery to another command for that matter. I think it is being a bit presumptuous.

We are also on the same page that it could have happened with the first atomic bomb. Even a shipment containing critical components to make the bomb could have been shortstopped.

I agree the classified shipment should be carrying special papers informing any potential boneheads of the importance of the mission in as much of a non disclosing fashion as possible, but boneheads are arrogant and stupid. And stupid can't be fixed.

cthia wrote:Besides, it happened to her several times in text. It was necessary that she be kept out of the loop when they raped the command she was inheriting.

Honor did not find out that she was carrying Voldemort aboard Fearless until she had already inherited the command.

One minute she was in her quarters twirling with glee, the next minute Courvosier was informing her that her command had been raped.

It would be remiss not to point out that the reason Honor had to be kept out of being read in on TWTSNBN is because at the time the weapon could not be named. The grav lance itself was on the need to know list.

cthia wrote:It would be remiss not to point out that the reason Honor had to be kept out of being read in on TWTSNBN is because at the time the weapon could not be named. The grav lance itself was on the need to know list.

There was nothing for her to know about the grav lance aboard the command she was being given until such a thing was installed. If she read the specs on the Courageous class (which she must have) and interviewed some previous personnel who'd served on Fearless (which I hope she did, though clearly not McKeon, because he was aboard supervising the refit), she wouldn't have found out about such a weapon.

Once the installation was begun, she had a need to know and she was briefed. It was a surprise for her, sure. But I didn't get the feeling that Courvoisier had orders or any reason to delay the briefing, so it probably happened as soon as was practical. But it might have been later than was strictly necessary because he wanted to give that briefing himself.

Besides, the operation was carried mostly in secret not because Honor couldn't know earlier, but because Sebastian D'Orville shouldn't find out.