Subject: the art of secrecy. It is a known fact that the current order and its armies and criminal enterprises have a sophisticated understanding of the art of secrecy. Reportedly this was developed/perfected during the last century. To also have this at our disposal, assuming the enemy is even more sophisticated in this area. All succesful use of secrecy demands that the highest top is loyal to a purpose that the others in the chain ultimately support. The counter-weight to the danger of secrecy is therefore the results in reality which are for all to see. If these results are bad then for example the top should be replaced and records be outed, blowing everything open and public to investigate what went wrong, to prevent it from happening again. 1. Compartmentalization & disinformation. The implementation of a plan involving at least 2 persons or activities lasting more then a single act can be compartmentalized per person and in time. If the plan is to build a shed and first the soil has to be made ready for building, then wood and concrete have to be bought, it can first be compartmentalized in time and then per person. They are first only told to make the soil ready, nothing more or less. By feeding different compartments different random or fringe information, you can identify who might have leaked a story if it later comes back. To the first person you say 'go get building wood for a small school,' and to the second you say 'go get foundation concrete for a tea house.' If the rumor starts to go around that a school would be build you know who might have leaked (although it could still be another leak, unless nobody else knew about it.) 1.b Deniability The risk is that these two people will compare stories they heard, finding out the differences in their stories. One way to prevent that is to make it deniable in their own minds so that they think they made a mistake. Instead of saying outright it was a school one could give the illusion, for example by looking into a map saying "SCHOOL" which is a little extreme maybe but you get the idea. You could also attempt to order them not to talk about it. 1.c Testing Plant higher access agents inside the process, who do tests on people, to see for example if someone starts to talk about what they should not be talking or some such. The results of this would feed into the trust level of tested people, giving clues to what level of access they could get. 2. Ambiguity, minimum information, and disinformation. Making commands susceptible to multiple interpretations. For example one could say 'make soil ready to build a small building,' which is saying more then necessary. One could also say instead (minimum): clear this area of everything, dig about 20 cm down, make it level. That leaves many possible ideas about the purpose of it (ambiguity). One could also say 'the soil has been contaminated, take off the top 20 cm' (disinformation). With disinformation one would have to make sure to occaisionally say the truth because otherwise they might come to the conclusion that whatever they are doing it is at least not what they are told it is, which is positive information. It is always important I think to give out a great many false stories and rumors, probably several of which approach the truth, so that everything people hear about something will have the status of unconfirmed hearsy. Rumors can be planted in several ways although I guess one would have to make sure the rumor starting channel doesn't get blown open itself. At higher levels of needed secrecy it might be better that rumors are vague enough not to give any clues, because now the enemy is expecting one of the rumors to be true. Hence whatever rumor they might think is true, it should never actually help them. But when the truth does come out, it should feel like just another dumb rumor. I suppose this is all like an art form really. 3. Creating a sense of chaos and absurdity. By moving people around from different projects to do small tasks that they do not have the oversight to understand the meaning for, a sense of chaos can be achieved for these people. One day they take off a patch of soil 20 cm deep with no idea what it is for, the next day they travel to another city to pick up a box and deliver it somewhere, the third day they stake out a home to see how late someone leaves, the fourth ... 4. Alternative realities and part-time involvement. This takes more effort because you want to let agents live in an alternative reality that needs to be crafted somewhat to make it more believable. For example someone works in a soil clearing line of work, and they are not supposed to know a small building is going to be build. They always clear toxic soil, so you throw some toxins on the soil that needs to be cleared and ask them to take off 20 cm. They won't have a clue what it is for, assuming it is toxic soil, which it is. 5. Levels of trustworthyness. At some point it will be clear that some sort of building will be build there, if this is information that ought to remain (more) secret then for example the possibility that something might be build or not (which is all the toxic soil cleaner might guess), people of more trust only should be involved. With these people the same systems can be used: they know it is a building maybe, but not what it is capable off or what it would actually be used for. Then a second web of compartmentalization, deception, chaos, ambiguity and so on (see also 1.c Testing.) 6. Exploiting opportunities. When it comes to secrecy I suppose it is a good practice to exploit any and all events to further the goal. Say the shed its cover has been blown somehow, one thing to do is scrap, take the loss and move on. But there probably can be had an advantage even out of this. For example deny vehemently that it was a cover operation, switch out sensitive parts and turn the shed into a trap. Who will attempt to investigate it, and how deeply ? Another use might be to turn it into something that still fits what was said but put a twist on it: if all they know is that it was used for secret storage and it was indeed secret files but they don't know that, you could turn it into storage of some weapon or something or something else that ties into some completely unrelated operation. Say there is another operation that might blow open, where certain poisons are manufactured. The shed in question for example is not involved. But you could get completely unrelated poisens and store them at the shed but with enough of a clue in them that it would interest someone investigating the other operation. This could create a false lead/trail, and those who might be spotted on it could be cross referenced with the earlier real operation to see if there is a connection. If there is one, perhaps someone is spying and getting close. 7. Hiding in plain sight. Not everything does need to be secret to be functional, what isn't hidden is also a nice distraction for what is. A famous example of hiding in plain sight is when a secret aircraft was put on show in Paris, while secret agents where looking down sewer pipes in another nation to find that selfsame secret plane. It was so much in the open that nobody bothered thinking it was the real thing because they thought "obviously that would be kept extremely well hidden." I suppose this is a case of playing the prejudices/expectations of your target enemies. 8. Having alterior explanations ready for anything, cover operations. Going to store files in that shed ? Oh yes absolutely: files about known criminals, people who have gone to jail. Add enough of such files in there too. If they do find that it is files on the trust levels for secretive agents then you could still say: yes that is true, and we need that. Then it goes back to the public to decide if they actually agree that we do need that or not. Then the operation is blown open, but you could still manage to keep the actual content of the operation hidden by appealing to the public its support in general. But what if the public would not agree with it ? In that case, obviously the operations would have to be stopped immediately. Secret operations for pubicly disagreed purposes would be the work of tyrants, the enemy. Scouting out for a new airfield ? Not really, merely taking in the sights and relax, right ? While really you're not even scouting for an airfield either. I guess this is also ambiguity but on the level of the operation itself, rather then confusing compartmentalized agents and whom they might talk to. 9. Dummy operations Just throwing up the old hand of dust in the eyes of who cares to see: all kinds of weird, wonderful, misdirected, wrong or even proper but not real operations on all levels; only the very top would be knowing what was a real operation and what wasn't. So in fact that shed was in the end not used to store actual files, although it did contain many such actual files but not the ones of any real interest. The whole operation had no purpose except just to be there for no reason, not even as a trap or anything, merely clutter. Obviously one could play with these things, what starts like a dummy operation can become a real one, and then morphe to become a trap operation, ending like another urban legend to add to the generalized maze of disknowledge; or maybe not. Nobody believes the liar anymore. By telling enough lies, you have the truth exposed without anyone believing it in the end. I suppose in some sense that is the holy grail of secrecy, because it would mean that even if exposed you are not exposed. 10. Code Obviously everything is always in code, unless discussing the code itself, even on the highest level. "Going to get the potatoes," could as a simple code mean "Going to get the ammunition," and a more sophisticated code would be the meaning of ordering a batallion to the left 10 km north/north/east. I figure code is great, even the simplest code can cost an enemy serious time, particularly if they're not looking anyway, and it deflects casual observers. One can't rely much on code I guess, given some time enemies may be able to crack any code. Encryption is also nice, duplicity, and so on, and casually agreed codes on the low levels that change whenever people meet (though this could result in a tremendous amount of mistakes from bad memory). Some mafia bosses have succesfully evaded police for a long time by communicating using small written notes on scraps of paper delivered through intermediaries. Meetings are probably a good venue to agree on a new code until the next meeting. Obviously communication channels can be tested, pass some false information along the line to see if that sparks reactions. I'm not sure how much computer encryption can really be trusted, because it is such a tremendously complex field. Computer encryption can ofcourse still be used as an added security, although it carries the risk of attracting attention; one would still want to talk into incomprehensible code even if encrypted or rather especially if encrypted. Enemies may have top line machines working years on encrypted messages, using math nobody even knows exists (??). One would of course have to make sure no connection is visible between a message in whatever new/unknown codes/encryptions and an action. If someone says "give me the potatoes" and someone gets up to get ammunition, you haven't achieved any secrecy but rather gave away the code. Code only works when the connection between word and deed can be successfully hidden / confused. It might on the other hand confuse a listening bug, to not use the actual word 'ammunition,' since without seeing they might not know the connection word and thing for lack of seeing the thing. On the other hand ammunition has a certain sound. Hence one would need to know when to use general code, when to use immediately effective words and do things like point, 'those things,' and so on because otherwise the general code could get blown too easy, and when it is no use to avoid a certain meaning anyway and use plain language. Obscuring the word deed/thing connection can be achieved by waiting for a long time between message and deed and doing enough unrelated but 'potentially meaning that' activities, and changing the codes often enough. If the word-deed connection can not be hidden then that code is blown immediately, meaning it can only be used once (more appropriate word is 'signal,' 1 use code isn't much of a code but it is a signal). (The dumber dumb people probably best talk plain language and kept out of secret stuff. They would give away the codes too easily ? The exceptionally dumb would start to make jokes about the codes too, and misunderstand them anyway. They can still be used as effective cover, doing mundane tasks, their lack of brains makes them less likely to understand operations too and inform on them to the enemy.) Can't rely on it imho, but can use it a lot. Distributed organization is one of the essential strategies of this whole system, it does not rely on long communication lines. 11. Counter espionage Since we have a great set of goals here, it is very likely that at some point 80% of all people in the world would support our cause, which would include the majority of all armies and espionage services. They would all be passing information to us or the public. We would obviously have to assume the enemy knows all the tricks of secrecy and espionage and even more then we do, and on top of that they might torture people (which we never would, I think it is a strategic and principled mistake history would not forgive us, then better play it by wing and lack certain information if that could even be tortured out of someone). 12. High technological threats are real. Our ultimate safeguard is the will of the people, their knowledge. At the same time, a war could quickly descend into medeaval conditions. Space satalites could be de-orbited, power stations destroyed in masse using hundreds of video rockets, whole industrial areas flattened with a choice of weapons, and then we'd all be back to a pocket compass, maps that are falling apart from mold and dirt, bullets becoming so scarce for lack of manufacturing having escaped mass destructions that the main weapons become axes, kitchen knives, improvised swords and the bow and arrow. We can't rely on high technology, the fact that modern armies do means they are likely to get exactly there. It is their strength but also their weakness.