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US Military 'Banned' From Viewing Wikileaks
Following up on its risible demand that Wikileaks return the Afghanistan documents, the Pentagon has banned military members from viewing the documents. The Washington Times obtained copies of Navy and Marine Corps messages to their troops saying that accessing the documents even from a personal computer is "willingly committing a security violation." Wired notes that terrorists everywhere are under no such restriction. Reader carp3_noct3m writes "I am personally left almost speechless at this disconnect from reality demonstrated by the military. I am a USMC Iraq war vet, and find these policies completely ridiculous. They show the inability of our supposedly technologically knowledgeable military to fuse this knowledge with policy, mostly due to the political pressure that has erupted to 'take care of' the Wikileaks problem."
If the material is currently classified, wouldn't it be against the UCMJ or other military policies to view such material?
seems the military might be afraid what i s leaked me thinks....
The fact that the documents have been leaked did not immediately and magically change their status, thus they are still considered 'SECRET' by the military. Likely the military will eventually change this classification, but that won't happen overnight (there 90,000 freaking documents). Until that does happen, it's a security violation for a military member to access documents for which they are not cleared.
control.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I'm thinking the motive is to prevent damage to morale, but I can't see how the order is any less destructive on morale than the contents of these documents.
Is the bit of fulmination we're seeing from outside the government a symptom of some serious pressure being applied within? I mean first it was Marc Thiessen calling for the United States Government to basically declare war against a person, and now this irrational command.
I just can't help but wonder if these things aren't just signs of a lot of behind-the-scenes scurrying.
...that military security automatically scans their machines and networks for classified documents in the wrong locations, and that every time someone downloads the file set from Wikileaks it sets off a dozen alarms, and that's why they're banning the downloads.
throw a party and not invite Julian Assange.
Always seemed to confuse me.
Like deserting or going AWOL getting you court-martialed and either put in confinement for a month or 2/3rds of your pay or something like that. If you don't want to be there, shouldn't you be allowed to leave? Maybe thats why people end up so messed up in the military, because leaving when they know its unhealthy for them is pretty much an illegal act.
You can't shove the toothpaste back in the tube, General Failure. Get with the program.
What if they accidentally come across the documents on a coral cache or a tinyurl? Or simply look at the cached pages on Google?
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Words fail me. About the only thing I can imagine is that there is something in there that will utterly cripple morale when someone recognizes it for what it is and spreads the word. Of course, all this does it raise a giant banner up in the air saying, "PLEASE DO NOT LOOK AT THIS, THERE IS SOMETHING THAT WOULD EMBARRASS US!"
Well, either that, or this whole thing is designed to intensely focus analysis on something known to be benign.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Things have to be a little more subtle than "information wants to be free".
Except for the "even from a personal computer" bit...
This was already restricted information. The rank and file had no right to it and presumably there are laws that state they should not access it.
The laws are still in effect and even if there's no intention to prosecute, they should be reminding soldiers of their duty to obey the law if there is a rumour going around that this does not apply.
This is coming from the people that buy an OS that they can't secure. Make note of the fact that they can't use USB drives, but they can transfer files via write once media like CDs/DVDs Look at the farce that is NMCI. The Navy doesn't even own its computers. They can't install anything that's not already approved.
Yes, they are very much disconnected from reality. The inmates are running the asylum and they have 1 -5 stars or go by the title Assistant Deputy Sec/Deputy Sec/Secretary of Defense/Army/Navy and Marine Corps. They really don't have a fucking clue.
Aside from the security classification not having officially changed, you also don't want your troops getting into the habit of taking "leaks" off the Internet at face value. It may not be relevant to these documents, but there will come a day when deliberately altered documents are released (by friend or foe) as part of a propaganda campaign. Best to remind people not tasked with doing the analysis to stay away from the koolaid.
Is it me, or is everyone attacking the fact that these documents, which are apparently so horrible that they need to be banned, were leaked, and not the fact that the events that happened in the documents shouldn't have happened to begin with?
No, it doesn't make much sense. But there's very little of the genius cloak 'n' dagger stuff going on in the military these days compared to, say, back in WWII when we were trying to hide from the Axis that we had in fact broke their encryption.
Classified information is mostly just administrative nowadays... maybe more like a way to dish out "job security clearances" for work that only American citizens can perform so it won't be outsourced. For example, there are plenty of vehicle performance parameters listed in the Jane's guides. If that information comes from a cleared person, it's classified. But if the exact same information comes from an open access source, it's not. But even if data is out in the public, a cleared person is not able to confirm or deny that the public information matches the classified information.
So it's probably this kind of thinking that is driving the DoD to react this way. Like the BP oil spill, this set of leaks is being treated more like a PR disaster than a natural / national security disaster. So if the soldiers who were actually involved in any of the operations are not allowed to view the leaked documents, the press theoretically could not get any of those soldiers to confirm or deny their accuracy and authenticity. Probably the most boring form of administrative INFOOPS measures possible. But the military has entire divisions dedicated to winning the "war for hearts and minds" nowadays.
anything thought of as 'banned' is sure to have juicy info inside.
getting me a copy, now. thanks for the heads-up.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Here's the thing, guys.
If you knew how military officers work, it goes like this: Something is wrong, they do *SOMETHING*. It doesn't matter what it is, they just have to be seen doing something.
Some news organizations say the military isn't accepting PTSD? Fine, every returning troop is basically TOLD they have PTSD. The VA sells it to you. The military psychs try to talk you into it. They make videos, brochures, send people out to spread the word, loud and clear: It's okay to admin you have PTSD (even if you don't)!
The military ALWAYS has an answer. Parachuting into powerlines? Wigle your body front to back in cadence to the song "Wire Wire Wire". Does it work? Who knows...but they had to have an answer in case someone asks.
A few people kill themselves? Oh jeezus...double the Suicide Prevention briefs. More powerpoints. More online classes. More assessments and dollars spent! Does it help? Who knows...if it doesn't then we will double it again! We'll keep them in suicide classes 24/7 just to keep an eye on them!
So someone is mad about wikileaks? A general gets an email, and before you know it...here we are.
THL phish sticks
Is this just a ham-fisted attempt to control those who they can, or is there specific content they don't want the soldiers (in particular) to see?
From an outsider, I'm not shocked at all by this disconnect. The military has always displayed its "leave your individual thinking to us" mentality, which I suppose is a way to stifle dissent, but by no means a way to effectively relay information anywhere, except at the top. I am, however, happy to find that individual service members do actually think for themselves, and I'm sure some will commit this so called willing security violation. Instead of trying to force the water back into the spigot, they should be finding a way to funnel the water in a way that is beneficial, or at least, less damaging to them. Like always, the people who run things are always out of touch with reality, and are unwilling to adapt policy/behavior when shit hits the fan.
The fact that these documents are considered so damning is exactly why they should be public. Change for the better, in situations like these, never happens purely by choice, but rather because someone (individuals or entities) is actually pointed out and told "I know you fucked up, now what are you going to do about it?" And like most cases, the public is always the most expedient avenue.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
The likely concern the government has with this publicly-available classified information is the chance that someone with legitimate access to related information might download and (perhaps unintentionally) combine it with unclassified information. That act causes the all that data to become classified... thus causing an information "spillage" on many unclassified systems. Cleaning up classified information spillages is very expensive for the government... even minor ones.
Thus the main idea here is to stop this problem from occurring before Murphy's Law can take effect. Nothing sinister, just pragmatic.
-- We live in a world where lemonade is artificial and soap has real lemon.
Or cups of water and a sinking ship. I'm sure there's an idiom for this.
it's under construction
The military is getting this right, legally.
"There has been rumor that the information is no longer classified since it resides in the public domain. This is NOT true." - the US Navy.
Their position is that the material is classified, and processing classified material on non-approved equipment is a crime.
They aren't taking the fallacious position that "everyone's doing it" eliminates the criminal responsibility.
So, yes, I'm saying that anyone who's downloaded those documents has, in fact, committed a crime.
Now it's up to the DoJ to figure out what to do about that.
The message from the linked Washington Times article does not ban military personnel from visiting WikiLeaks - it only appears to remind them that downloading classified material on/through public networks is against the rules, and attempts to put to rest the idea that just because a classified document has become publicly available does not automatically change the status.
There is the question of whether the rules make sense, but the only purpose of the messages appears to be to clarify what the rules actually are for publicly-available but still-classified documents (sounds like there was a wide-spread rumor that public disclosure of classified documents automatically removed the classified status). Until the documents are officially declassified soldiers must follow the rules and treat them as classified documents, which means not attempting to access them if they do not have the proper clearance level, and even if they do have the clearance to access them, they cannot do so over a public network (or store them on a non-secure system).
Note that I'm not saying the rules make sense, just that everyone is getting all riled up about the military simply clarifying the rules so that service members don't get themselves in trouble. This is analogous to your lawyer telling you, "Just because you can find copyrighted material freely available on a web site does not mean you legally have the right to download that material". Of course in this case it results in a perverse situation where everyone outside the military can access these classified military documents, particularly those the classified status was meant to prevent obtaining the documents, but until a rule change or declassification of the documents members of the military still need to follow the rules.
Sorry if that scans as a troll. I meant it sarcastically, in a deep, disappointed voice.
It's been a few years, but at one point the major networks put up a document marked 'secret', something about a senator's aide sneaking out classified in his socks then claiming 'I didn't know I wasn't supposed to do that'.
As a result, we blocked the major news networks for a few days - CNN, Fox, NBC, etc...
We've also had issues where we block the sites of hostile parties(or perceived hostile parties) such as the Taliban, Al Jazeera, etc...
It's mostly a Knee-jerk reaction among the higher ups.
I don't read AC A human right
Dear Service member,
It has recently been brought to our attention that the television has been used to distribute various information still considered classified by the US government.
As a result, all members of the armed forces are hereby unformed that viewing the tele is strictly forbidden.
Violators of this policy will be flogged.
By the Order Of,
General Karmahoer
Unfortunately, the only way to accomplish that mission is to eliminate the source. No, I mean the secrets, not Wikileaks.
"If...you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning" - Catherine Aird
I am personally left almost speechless at this disconnect from reality demonstrated by the military. I am a USMC Iraq war vet, and find these policies completely ridiculous.
Maybe I'm a little more jaded from my time in the Army, but I don't find this terribly surprising. I might have a little perspective I can offer.
If you're in a combat unit, especially deployed, you're facing the reality of actual people backed by a large network or foreign government trying to kill you. Bullshit has a short half-life in such a situation.
Unfortunately, the further removed you are from the hard rain, the less intrusion you have from reality. The sergeant doing paperwork just can't say, "fuck you sir, this could get someone killed!"
And the higher echelons have, much like corporate culture, a certain unreality built in. I've seen how it starts with a first sergeant, who is responsible for a company of troops. He knows he has to lead by example, so he forces himself to always appear motivated, even when it's socially inappropriate. Senior officers sometimes appear to be squarely in the uncanny valley.
Add to that the telephone game played by the insane rank structure. A senior officer puts out his intent, and it is then passed along from subordinate to subordinate, with each re-interpreting it every step of the way. Who knows where this originated, and how much it's changed along the way?
You got it backwards.
Step 1 is call the security folks
Step 2 is to disconnect everything
Step 3 is to follow the security folk's instructions on how to destroy/remove everything.
Why this order? Deleting/destroying the stuff could destroy any evidence on HOW the classified got where it was, who put it there, etc...
Anyone in the defense world in possession of classified documents they shouldn't have is in violation of employment agreements and potentially laws.
Depends on how they got it...
I don't read AC A human right
"No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country." I just wish Patton had really said it. The lionization of death in combat always seemed ridiculous to me.
When something is classified and you aren't supposed to view it, then you're not supposed to view it. Something doesn't become declassified because some idiots stole it and some other idiots published it. You say you are war veteran but since you don't seem to comprehend this simple fact you know and don't understand about Security clearances and the purpose of classified documents you know, your speechlessness is understandable. Crimes were committed to acquire these documents, people will go to jail for it. People have died because of this security breech and I do hope that the United States government is able to shut down Wikileaks and end their own disconnect from reality. To think that they will escape the consequences of their actions is the ultimate disconnect as far as I'm concerned.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
The clearance is only half of it - you also have need to know.
I don't have any need to know for the documents on wikileaks. Most military types don't.
I don't read AC A human right
Forbidding ordinary soldiers, sailors, airmen and such from reading the documents actually makes a lot of sense. Terrorists already know how utterly witless the US military brass are, so it doesn't matter if they visit Wikileaks and engage in an orgy of downloading. The brass, however, are scared to death that the lower ranks in their own commands might figure out how stupid, cruel and ineffective they are.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
... it doesn't exist!
As dan mentioned, this would make things WORSE.
Remember, the military doesn't operate under the same rules system as civilians do. The UCMJ system is more flexible. It does NOT look kindly upon circumvention attempts like this.
For example, they can now hit you for deliberately inciting the transmission of classified over unsecure telephone lines...
I know of military members who were convicted under the UCMJ for having nudie pics sent to their military email address by non-military friends.
I don't read AC A human right
Remember when the Cult of Scientology banned its members from viewing critical content or leaked documents, and even distributed a sort of parental-guidance web censor? Can't find the source at the moment, but it was probably around 2008.
Is anyone shocked? Honestly. If it takes a "leak" of a bunch of silly documents about things i know are going on and have for thousands of years involving war to wake a few people up then so be it but the simple fact is war is murder of the worst kind. On top of that we send our KIDS to do it!!!!!
Fuck governments and secrets, this time the people are winning.
-JKG
Keep in mind, we're talking about an organization that still considers some strategic documents from WWI to be classified. My God, can you imagine the damage if Germany finds how many Sopwith Camels we had in air worthy condition in 1917?
"Marine Welfare and Recreation" should have been shit caned years ago. They do far more to harm morale than these damn leaks.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Tom Clancy tells the story about security review of "Hunt for Red October" (published by Naval Institute Press, they routinely send stuff to the Navy just to be sure.) The review came back, "Can't publish, contains classified information." "Well tell me what that is, I'll remove it, and we'll be good to go." "No, sir. You don't have the clearance for that information."
After a couple back-and-forth, apparently Clancy went over his book, line-by-line, justifying everything in there as derived from open source (in the Intel sense, i.e. freely available from the press, unclassified technical reports, etc.). Eventually the Navy had to admit that, if there was something classified in there, it was derived from stuff that anyone could read and deduce on his/her own.
Yossarian is alive and well, it appears... (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22)
They're only confirming that everything stated in the reports is true. Even if everything ISN'T true, the level of reaction to it makes people think "Well it must be true"
They've now even gone so far as to confirm, yes these are all classified documents and even looking at them is a serious offense. I guarantee everyone will read at least part of them now.
lol, ok. (Anonymously, as cowards of course.)
Maybe Mr. Assange knows something we don't - but the Dutch government's decision wasn't an event that 'just' happened. The Dutch government originally stated (a promise to the public), in 2009, that they would be withdrawing their military operation from Afghanistan in 2010 as agreed upon in 2006 (though at the time with the option for extending the mission). It's early in 2010 that one of the governing political parties - already having a little fight with one of the other governing parties - pushed the issue.. with the other parties going "well, maybe we should consider staying a bit longer...". In the end, a vote was held, and the party that essentially was in favor of keeping that promise (whether or not this was a power play is another discussion - if it was, it only had short-term success) won with the support of a lot of the smaller parties. It was one of many events leading up to the fall of the Dutch government and its currently on-going formation process after the elections from a few months ago.
So not only was it not an event that 'just' happened.. it is in no way directly related to the release of these documents whatsoever - not sure why Mr. Assange is trying to make that connection. Information that -also- happens to be in those documents may have played a part in the above, of course.. but that's happenstance.
There are few Generals with comprehensive intelligence. A lot of them are jacked-up little men who have developed skill in only a narrow range of activity. They learn when they get slapped upside the head, usually not before.
They'll come round, eventually. But by then, though, circumstances will change again and they'll get slapped upside the head all over again. And soldiers die.
Another reason war sucks.
I would be worried to if I were these politicians and generals. I can't imagine how much bullshit our troops have seen, and it would be hard to keep the propaganda machine running smoothly with pesky things like this popping up on wikileaks. Frankly I imagine they just want to keep a lid on it until they can get them home and disarmed. The problem will be not what content is on now, but the fact that wikileaks has proven to the world that they will run things that they get that are dangerous to them. They have proven they have enough balls to stand up and put things out that would serious piss off the mighty US government.
This can only encourage those who have access to fucked up shit, with a burning conscience, to send it in to wikileaks, because they KNOW they will put it up for the world to see. I don't suspect they are so much worry about "the enemy" seeing this, as they are our own troops and our own people. I predict we haven't seen the last of it, in fact it's just warming up. I think we will see some major crap come out now that the heat is turned up and the focus is now on them. Before they were just some geeky nutjobs with an obscure website, but now they have credibility via their intense US Government opposition.
For the US Government to become heavy handed in this would be a vast mistake I feel. The reactions I have seen so far are amateurish at best, arrogant at worse. To simply ignore them gives miles of deniability because you don't lend them any credibility. Now that we have shot our mouths off, we have to do something or we will look even more stupid. To do anything about this is going to seriously step over boundaries in a rude and arrogant way that violates the neutrality of the Internet in ways that may not be able to be repaired once broken. Sure, China can get away with it in their own country because the entire world knows they are assholes. But at least they are assholes in just their own country.
I see they want to create a whole new branch of the military for "cyberwarfare". Something about that makes me afraid, and I am a citizen. I can't imagine WTF the rest of the nervous world is thinking about it. It can't be optimistic, FFS.
Take the Red Pill.
From an OpSec perspective having a bunch of accesses to specific documents on the wikileaks server is a BAD IDEA. Anyone with access to the logs on the server will be able to correlate the IP addresses doing the accessing with the specific documents of interest. With 75,000+ documents, there are sure to be some really interesting needles in that haystack. The people most qualified to recognize those needles will be military personnel - so one guy finds something "surprising" related to his personal work and forwards the URL to all his buddies who also check it out because its "surprising" to them too and now wikileak's logs have a great big arrow pointing at the document that got an order of magnitude more hits than all the others. Someone decides to investigate and now whatever made that document "surprising" is well known to public and "the enemy" too.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
'If the topic poster was a real USMC he would of realized that it's a violation of UCMJ to view material above your security rating and can land you in a lot of trouble. Just because its published all over the world by groups of people who think you're a baby murdering psychopath and hoping you die doesn't mean you as a serving member of the military now have the security rating to view and access them it's still classified as secret and until you are told other wise it's is illegal.
What kind of military organization believes in "Ignore it and maybe it'll go away" as a strategy to deal with their problems.
I realize I must be pretty idealistic in believing in that notion, but thats what ideas are for.
This isn't how you adapt to this day and age, you can't just wrap everything up in a brainwashed police-state tactic. Whats next? I can imagine it will be illegal for any American citizen to view the leaked documents... only a matter of time.
Forget the UCMJ, it's the NDAs you break when you mishandle NSI and Federal criminal prosecution you need to worry about. ... there's going to be a lot of failed tests and that creates a problem for the branches.
I heard secondhand that the real issue is that when you take a poly (required for a lot of stuff), and they ask questions about handling or access NSI without authority, which is a routine question
the Soviet States of America!
I work for the defense department. I completely agree with the personal computer requirement. The DoD calls this "spillage", referring to the viewing of a higher classification of data on a lower classification medium. As for the rest of this story, I have no opinion.
Unless you are US military - of course!
Documents that only military personell could read are now documents that everyone but military personell can read. What's the classification tag for that?
Be careful not to read a newspaper. You might get exposed to some classified information. You might accidentally commit treason. You know those journalists. They investigate; they report; they cause all sorts of trouble.
I heard that after the press conference the other day, before reporters could ask questions, the pentagon spokesperson closed his eyes and started yelling "You can't see me! I'm invisible. You can't see me!"
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
Rationale: let's ban our people from looking at the leak, so there is no leak!
Little do they know their asses are still out there.
Maybe Wikileaks is collaborating with U.S. counter-intelligence. The strategy? Instruct Wikileaks to post a lot of legitimate, apparently sensitive military documents that are ultimately irrelevant to OpSec. Make a giant fiasco in the press about it, demanding that Wikileaks remove the offending documents. Now that people believe Wikileaks is a safe source to report their knowledge to, and to offload sensitive military documents, they will do so. These people can then be identified and thrown into military, CIA or FBI lockup with no formal charges filed against them.
When I was in the military if someone told me not to look I damn sure would not have. Service members are held to the UCMJ, when someone asks you to jump the only question you may have is how high.
Got Code?
Check it out sometime. Don't equate adult military personnel with babies that don't think.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
“I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy . . . censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, ‘This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,’ the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.” — John Lyle in "Revolt in 2100" by Robert Heinlein
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
Which most military do, you agree to abide by the rules of material classification including clearance level and need to know.
This means that even if you have a Top Secret clearance, you are not allowed to view Secret-classified material to which you do not have an official "need to know."
Anybody with a clearance who does not have a need to know what is in the Wikileaks documents, yet obtains and reads those documents, is committing a security violation.
Very logical. Very simple.
I expect the original idea to have been along the lines of filtering the wikileaks domains so that uploading documents or finding address to email to and such was a lot harder from within the military net and CO with no technical experience revised it a little and past it up the chain of command, and the next did the same until the chinese whispers came up with this useless policy.
CUPERTINO, Calif. - August 8th - Today a spokesman from Apple, Inc. confirmed that the Pentagon has hired Steve Jobs to handle the WikiLeak problem. Pentagon has been under fire when WikiLeak released about 90,000 classified military files last month. Impressed by Steve Jobs' ability in handling the iPhone 4 crisis, the Pentagon tasked him with regaining people's trust of its ability of keeping secrets safe.
According to people close to Mr. Jobs, the Silicon Valley's No.1 chief executive plans to hold an emergency press conference on Monday with the following data points:
1. There is no Wiki-leak-gate. Compared to the 900,000,000 classified files maintained by Pentagon, 90,000 is only a very minor part. The leak is obviously blown out of proportion by the media.
2. The Pentagon is not perfect. The government is not perfect. We all have weak spots. We know that, and you know that. [ show slides of leak cases from various governments around the world in all times. ]
3. According to popular polls, this administration is doing a great job in maintaining document security. Out of 100 document, we only leak fewer than one more document compared to the Bush administration.
4. The government cares about its citizens. We will give out free eye-pads and ear-plugs to people who don't want to watch or hear this WikiLeak nonsense.
Mr. Jobs believes that these talk points will appease all of people's worried about the current administration.
32 C.F.R. PART 154--DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE PERSONNEL SECURITY PROGRAM REGULATION ... ...
154.3 Definitions.
(p) Need-to-know. A determination made by a possessor of classified information that a prospective recipient, in the interest of national security, has a requirement for access to, knowledge, or possession of the classified information in order to perform tasks or services essential to the fulfillment of an official U.S. Government program. Knowledge, possession of, or access to, classified information shall not be afforded to any individual solely by virtue of the individual's office, position, or security clearance.
You are supposed to have two things to get any classified (SECRET, TOP SECRET) information: The appropriate security clearance, and the need to know.
TS/SCI enforces a strict documented need-to-know, but that doesn't negate that SECRET material is also supposed to be given on a need-to-know basis.
Look, it's more of a computer and systems issue than protecting innocent minds from classified spillage. If someone, on an unclassified US government computer, downloads a classified document, then the computer has to be sanitized. The stress on the IT staff would be enormous, and the exposure of the unclass network to classified would result in security violations. Yes, one might say that hey, it's out in public, why is it classified? Because the process of declassification does not include "because it's out in public". Just because something is exposed doesn't mean it's suddenly unclassified material; the reasons for classification still apply, and the expiration of that information (by default 10 years from production) still applies. This isn't anything I expect people who haven't worked in a classified environment to automatically know, and clearly, the press has no clue.
Military personnel (as well as anyone with a clearance actually) is prohibited from possessing classified material that they do not have specific need to know in any way, shape, or form, regardless of where it comes from. Not to mention having it on personal or other non accredited machines.
Doesn't matter that it comes from wikileaks and that half the globe hs this info - the stuff is still classified and they are to treat it as such: no exceptions.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
In some ways a soldier in war is the only one to know anything about a war. In other ways a soldier in a war knows less about his war than almost everyone else. One thing is certain. A soldier can be demoralized to the point of being useless by being exposed to some truths that he best never know. In situations like Vietnam it is a wonder that our troops did not go into total rebellion and attack their leaders. I suspect that the American public dare not know all that is behind the conflicts in the Arab nations. People might ask why we are so hated in that region. It is just so hard to have a full blown war these days with battlefields filled with millions of dead soldiers. Ah, the good old days!
An email has gone out to DoA personnel(military and civilian) informing them that all unclassified equipment would be confiscated in connection to the ongoing investigation and to prevent further spillage.
Clearly the purpose of the order is so that the data trail remains clean. If the info is not endlessly duplicated throughout military computers everywhere, then places where it does show up may be signs of the path it took. They want to finish the forensics before everyone downloads it. Obviously the technicality of it not being officially declassified is a red herring. The absurdity of it is not the problem in itself. It is the clue to the real reason. The clue that you were looking for!
Get over it!!!! What is it about these neanderthals that makes them think that they can silence or purge information of any kind once it is in the wild??? IT IS ON WIKILEAKS.....HELLO!!!! That means that it is stored, cached, saved, archived by SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, OTHER THAN YOU!!! China's failure to keep hackers or other intent individuals from gaining access to "prohibited" materials online should have been the clarion call to all of these schmucks that if someone wants to get to it, and it is available online, they can get to it!!!
-Oz
This leaking of information has consequences that may never be known to all parties involved. Unfortunate to some and cause for glee to others. Either way one would be a fool not to think that someone, somewhere, will lose his or her life and/or liberty over it.
Integrity is what you are when nobody is looking.
> Let's be honest. The reason the military doesn't want their own people to see the wikileaks documents is because it doesn't want them to realize what a complete farce this war (and by extension the war in Iraq) is.
At first I thought they were just being stupid, but what you say makes far more sense. Interestingly The DoD advised soldiers not to watch HBO's "Baghdad Hospital: Inside the Red Zone" because they may find it traumatic but there was more to it:
"Senior Army officials have scaled back their planned participation in an advance screening of a coming HBO documentary about an Army Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad because of fears that the graphic footage could demoralize soldiers and their families and negatively affect public opinion about the war, Army officials said Friday."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/14cnd-hbo.html
To me this is pretty lame. Sure, soldiers have to fight wars. But "negatively affecting public opinion" shouldn't be their concern. Leave that to the politicians who start wars. Soldiers fight wars, but they're not supposed to "encourage" them. The same applies to so-called "Media Units" in the military.
Just because you can access it over the network doesn't mean you should.
Yep,
Many classified things are well known. Verification through documentation is a use of secret clearance. It is similar to talking "off the record".
In a Russia they already have these. Pentagon now can go and accuse russkies on a Red Square in front of Kremlin, and also do some "proactive action" in order to stop that. Yeah, go ahead... *me grabs a popcorn watchin that* :-)
I always thought there were a lot of smart folks on /., but now I'm not so sure.
The reason for the policy has nothing to do with hiding anything. It has to do
with keeping classified information off of an unclassified network. Just because
the information was leaked, doesn't make it less classified, and they don't want
to have to scrub all those DoD computers.
I would like to stand up for some of my fellow military members. Just because we are in the military, that does not mean we don't know what's going on the world. When we are home, we live regular lives just like everyone else, we have access to the same information. To stop this information from reaching us, you would have to disconnect our internet, take away our cellphones, take away our on base post office and force us and our families to stay on post.
If there is a conspiracy to keep information from getting out to the public, most of us are not aware of it. That of course does not mean that there are no higher ups trying to accomplish that.
I believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are more complex than "we are there just for oil" or "we are fighting terrorism". Just like everything else in life, there is no black and white, just different shades of grey.
By banning wikileaks access, any subsequent access is therefore suspect. Also by banning access, any DNS lookup of www.wikileaks.org can set off the bells and whistles, even if the follow up is years later. Banning access reduces the number of leads to track down.
Its not like the military causing more fuss about these documents will make people more interested and view them. This has never happened before in this history of anything in the world, no-sir-ee.