Who Elected Me to Spill Government Secrets?
Dark Mirror and Angler, like a lot of my work, included information that the government tried to protect under lawyer-client privilege or national security classification. People often ask me what right I have to publish such things. I take up that question extensively in Chapter 7 of Dark Mirror.
I was among the people interviewed in “Secrecy,” an excellent documentary film that addresses that question. In one on-screen exchange (above), Mike Levin, a former chief of information security at the National Security Agency, describes authors like me as “traitors,” and I offer a reply. If you’re having trouble with the embedded video, try here.
I talked about secrecy and national security more extensively in a pair of Princeton lectures in 2003 and 2004. They are excerpted in an article in Nieman Reports, a quarterly journal.