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."

Comments

Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the material is currently classified, wouldn't it be against the UCMJ or other military policies to view such material?

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[oldspewey]

Well, there's classified information that very few people have seen, and then there's classified information that several billion people have (potentially) seen, and that your battlefield enemies have very likely studied in some detail.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[cptdondo]

It's been a few years since my TS clearance went away, but ISTR that publication of a secret document immediately renders it declassified. In other words, once it's on wikileaks, it's not classified. Prohibiting someone from viewing it is just silly and I expect that the "security violation" charge would not stand up, even in military court.

Howerever, I suspect this would be handled as an Article 15, "Conduct unbecoming", rather than a full courts-martial sort of thing.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[Goldenhawk]

Yes, it would be against such policies. In fact, that is the exact rationale for instructing military members and associated civilian employees to avoid it.

The military services (both service members and associated civilian agencies) all have a strict policy about accessing classified material. If you do so on an unclassified machine, it's called "spillage", and BY LONG-STANDING POLICY the machine MUST be disconnected from the network and carefully scrubbed of all traces.

And if the access is intentional and made with full awareness of the law, that's punishable by all kinds of nasty penalties.

And no, it doesn't matter that it already exists on thousands of other machines around the world. Until it's officially declassified, it's still classified, and rules and policies still apply.

So this is NOT an attempt to muzzle the information - it's simply following long-standing rules and making sure everyone knows exactly what those rules are.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[Artifakt]

More to the point, once the compromise is massively widespread and definitely already in the hands of enemy forces, there is no way our own people seeing it will result in further compromise to the enemy, so the only effect left for non-enemy personnel is the possible negative morale effect. Even if the law technically supports it, isn't worrying so quickly about the possible morale implications from an inconvenient set of facts, a sign that the administration is refusing to face up to much more primary implications of those facts. I know that when, for just one example, when it was first learned secrets being compromised may have helped the USSR develop its own nuclear weapons program, the joint chiefs and Dept. of Defense didn't focus on how that news would dampen the morale of US troops, but on the strategic and tactical implications for the whole free world.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[_Sprocket_]

Well, there's classified information that very few people have seen, and then there's classified information that several billion people have (potentially) seen, and that your battlefield enemies have very likely studied in some detail.

I keep picking up this implication that the US military is keeping valuable information from itself while it's enemies have access. I'm not sure if that is the intended implication. But if it is, I find it suspect. It seems to me that US soldiers who'd find tactical use of this material likely already had access to it (re: old news). Any tactical value to this information to be gathered from the leak is going to be gained by those who didn't have access; namely the US military's adversaries.

Restrictions on the US military is about something else. I seriously doubt those restrictions would have any negative impact. Or at least, not the impact being implied here.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[ptbarnett]

It's been a few years since my TS clearance went away, but ISTR that publication of a secret document immediately renders it declassified.

Unless they have changed the rules recently, this is incorrect.

Classified information is not automatically declassified by public disclosure, accidental or otherwise.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[PopeRatzo]

there is no way our own people seeing it will result in further compromise to the enemy

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. They're probably worried that there would be a big drop in morale if the service people on the front line knew that they had been sent to war by an administration that just didn't care about success, as long as their friends at Haliburton and KBR got fat contracts.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan never had a thing to do with terrorism or 9/11 or national security. That's ultimately the secret our military doesn't want getting out.

When we have to keep our own forces from learning what the rest of the world can easily learn, we no longer have any claim on being a moral nation, or a force for good in the world, or some "shining city on the hill" spreading freedom throughout the world. The corporatists and rich elitists and Right-Wing ideologues that have run our government since at least 1980 are so cynical that they'd let young men and women and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians die just to protect their own profits and power while complaining that anyone who would seek to end these useless and meaningless conflicts is "an appeaser" or "un-American".

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[blair1q]

No. Here's the latest executive order:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526

And I'm not sure that was ever true. Even if it is made public, it has to be declassified under proper authority to legally be declassified. And if it still has valid security implications, it can remain classified. Which means certain people can't legally discuss it, much less process it on their non-classified machinery, while others will openly discuss it. The idea being at the least that discussing one secret can lead to exposure of another, and mixing secrets and non-secrets in improper ways can confuse what is and isn't secret.

There are a number of issues of invalid classification that were raised in wikileaks' self-justification for publishing this information that should legally force the authorities to declassify those particular items; but clearly that does not apply to the entirety of what they released, and certainly not to the un-analyzed, un-redacted form in which they were released. Leaving in the names of people who are still in danger is a clear violation of law even when properly declassifying information.

At any rate, none of this information has been declassified by the proper authority, so all of it is still legally considered classified, and anyone accessing it is liable to be charged with a crime.

The only unsettled issue here is the scope of the release. It's not merely a few copies of documents that need to be collected and secured, and a few civilians to brief and warn about further disclosure. It's potentially millions of unauthorized computers infected that legally may be seized, an entire society led to misunderstand the role and importance of secrets, and our security apparatus put in a position of looking like fools for trying to follow the law and maybe save a few lives out of the dozens or hundreds that the insecurity apparatus put in danger.

Which brings up the simple question of moral relativism. This started with a few people being killed in a form of collateral damage, and may end up with hundreds being killed in retribution murders. People talk about who has blood on their hands. Well, we all do, in the end, but for some of us the blood comes with moral authority and a lack of criminal guilt.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[severoon]

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.

Sorry, but this theory of yours is ridiculous.

If the military can achieve preventing anyone within its ranks from seeing the documents, then it will be just like they were never leaked in the first place. The scientific experiement is so simple to conduct you can even use a baby in place of the military industrial complex, as follows:

• show toy to baby
• note reaction (baby notices presence of toy, reaches for it, goes "goo" perhaps)
• place toy behind cardboard (make sure the cardboard you use doesn't interest baby)
• note reaction (baby ceases to recognize toy is still present)

For that baby, the wikileaks isn't just out of view, it ceases to exist! This has been proven over and over again. If you don't find this experiment convincing and you're willing to take the time and effort, redo it but this time make sure "Firewall" or something computery is written on the cardboard this time, you'll get the exact same result. (Don't use glitter as that will attract baby and it will be hard to "separate evidence" as science-like people term it.)

So we should make a law that puts the leaked information behind a piece of uninteresting cardboard, problem solved. I said, PROBLEM SOLVED. NEXT PROBLEM, PLEASE! as this one is solved

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[Omnifarious]

When talking of the actions of government, using the word 'criminal' is quite problematic. Governments are the entities that have the power to classify some actions as 'criminal' and some not. Whenever I see someone use that word to condemn someone's actions with regards to a government, I see someone using a circular self-justification. "It's wrong because the government said it's wrong!"

Personally, I place a lot more stock in arguments grounded in something anybody can judge for themselves without reliance on an authority. After all, the whole reason we have a system of law is the hope that public laws which anybody might judge will end up being more moral than the arbitrary dictates of an authority like a king.

Additionally, classified secrets are much like trade secrets. Once the cat is out of the bag, they are no longer considered secrets. So I believe your interpretation of the law is in error as well.

So basically, your argument boils down to "It's wrong because I think it's wrong!", not even "It's wrong because the government said it's wrong!".

Lastly, I think your balance between collateral damage to civilians vs. damage to civilians from retaliatory murder is a little off. I suspect the number of civilian casualties numbers in the thousands or 10s of thousands at a minimum. So if you wish a numerical calculus of death, then clearly the civilian casualties as 'collateral damage' form a much greater number and more moral culpability.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[microbox]

we no longer have any claim on being a moral nation

Haha! If facts would have stopped that particular US canard, then they would have stopped preaching about their moral superiority long ago.

Never underestimate the power of delusion.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[ultranova]

My irony-detector sometimes goes haywire when I encounter discussion of issues that have to do with politics. I've read so many comments that I thought have to be a joke but turned out to be serious that I hesitate to trust my ability to discern the difference between authentic idiocy and the clever opera buffo.

This is known as Poe's Law, and it basically states that it's impossible to tell actual stupidity from a parody of stupidity.

Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways?

[carp3_noct3m]

Let me clarify some things. While I do not believe anyone is questioning the letter of the law in regards to such matters ;as all the documents I have seen are focused at warning those who hold S or above clearance not to access the documents, and those people have a responsibility to safeguard matters regarding national security; the issue seems to be about the public and the non clearance holding military who should, as citizens, have equal access to information that is public already. The threatening of non-clearance holding military is part of the key to this issue. What is the risk? The information is in the public domain, the enemy has it, everyone has it, there is no getting it "back". Regarding the documents themselves, they actually do not reveal anything that those of us informed on the issues didn't already know about, (which basically boils down to, yes, were funding the Pakis, who fund ISI who funds our enemies, that we pay money to warlords for convoy security while preaching about no tolerance to the Karzai government, that the war was and continues to go badly and that Pakistan is more of a problem than a help due to the sensitivity of its national security aka it's nukes) I have analyzed some of the documents, and have not managed to find one yet that contained a name. I know that the 10-15k documents withheld were kept because of Wikileaks clear intent on trying to sanitize the information. Wikileaks also contacted, through a third party, the White house and offered for them to sanitize it, who then of course would rather not take the hit to pride than see any deaths occur, at least that way they can demonize Wikileaks, right? As far as moral relativism goes, I will flatly call the bullshit card. To conjure this idea up that "truth or justification of moral judgments is not absolute, but relative to some group of persons" which translated in this context you mean that "as long as we continue to think we are right in all we do, and no one questions the status quo, then we are right." is simply an exercise in misdirection and shows how ill informed you are. Let me tell you, on the battlefield, blood hardly ever comes without guilt (and when it does, it is disguised in cognitive dissonance) , and moral authority likes to sit at his desk in the rear, and is rarely seen. If American moral authority did show up, I think the first thing noticed would be the unneeded deaths of American's in wars that have no benefit to the people of either nation involved (other than the rich elite), wars that have ostensibly caused our nation to be less secure, wars that are the direct result of our interventionism in the 80's and elsewhere, and the lack of our foresight to learn histories lessons. And it is the Americans who cheer this war machine on without having the slightest clue what the reality of war is, those are them that are no different from the radical imams to me. Bottom line, Iraq and Afghanistan are literally not only unwinnable (barring decades and more of perseverance) but were and are indeed mismanaged, misunderstood, unnecessary, and even morally questionable.

I See No Problem

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Tip of the iceberg?

[IICV]

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.

Re:Tip of the iceberg?

[Hatta]

lot of behind-the-scenes scurrying.

Like cockroaches when you flip the light switch.

Authenticity

[Fractal Dice]

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.

Re:Morale issue perhaps?

[Applekid]

I think a response that would be less destructive would be to take reverse-course on the approach they're taking now. Best description I've seen from Julian Assange himself:

However, there are countries, Western countries, even countries in NATO, that are strongly supportive of what we do politically. And, for example, the UK has announced--UK Parliament has announced two inquiries into Afghanistan, one on the civilian casualties and the other on what is the exit strategy and how to get out of it. The Dutch government just formally announced its exit from Afghanistan. And other governments around the world involved in the ISAF coalition have, in bigger and small ways, announced that they are trying to do something about the revelations in this material.

And all of them are taking note of what the United States' attitude is, which is, instead of immediately saying these relevations are a serious concern, we never wanted to harm Afghan civilians or to bribe the media, as an example of one of the revelations in there, and we intend to launch an immediate investigation to understand this and compensate those people accordingly and change our procedures--that's what the rest of the world wants to hear. That's what Afghanistan, the people of Afghanistan want to hear. But instead they heard a personal attack on me and on our organization and an announcement that they would be going after the whistleblower or whistleblowers involved in this. And now we see them living up to those words and stalking around Boston, spying and harassing MIT graduates, and trunking around the United Kingdom, where they raided Manning, the alleged whistleblower, for a video release called "Collateral Murder," in her home in Wales.

It makes perfect sense.

[gandhi_2]

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.

Re:I'm betting...

[sco08y]

From what I've read in the press, if they have the capacity to conduct those kinds of scans (and I honestly don't know if they do or don't) and they had audited their ACLs, the docs wouldn't have been leaked in the first place.

You're really that surprised?

[sco08y]

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?

Classified forever

[sjames]

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?

Catch-22: related anecdote from Tom Clancy

[david.emery]

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)

Devil's Advocate...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.