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US Military 'Banned' From Viewing Wikileaks

Posted by kdawson on from the do-you-want-these-guys-protecting-cyberspace dept.

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."

9 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? by oldspewey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
    2. Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? by Goldenhawk · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      --Brandon / Split Infinity Music

    3. Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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".

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? by blair1q · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    5. Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? by severoon · · Score: 5, Funny

      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

      --
      but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
  2. I See No Problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Tip of the iceberg? by IICV · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Authenticity by Fractal+Dice · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.