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Graduate Students Being Warned Away From Leaked Cables
IamTheRealMike writes "The US State Department has started to warn potential recruits from universities not to read leaked cables, lest it jeopardize their chances of getting a job. They're also showing warnings to troops who access news websites and the Library of Congress and Department of Education have blocked WikiLeaks on their own networks. Quite what happens when these employees go home is an open question." Update: 12/04 17:48 GMT by T : The friendly warning to students specifically cautioned them not to comment online or otherwise indicate that they'd read any of the leaked information; reading them quietly wasn't specifically named as a deal-breaker.
Honestly, if there is nothing to hide, why all the panic? Its like... Well, I'd think of an analogy but I'm hungry.
"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. "
Seriously treat the problem, don't go shooting the messenger.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Now I want all of these cables specifically because I read the summary. Where can I find them? Are they on The Pirate Bay yet?
Seems like the cables might be a good excuse to implement full legal media censorship.
In soviet America, government threaten you! No, err, that seems wrong...
A latent existence
The mail doesn't say anything about not reading them, just not posting about them.
I guess they're saying "Don't leave any evidence that you read them"...
Why don't you think about who that "potential employer" is and the kind of access to information that they have.
Will ringing sex lines stop you getting a job at Walmart? No. Would it leave you open to compromise in a highly senstiive government position? Yes.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
The email (from an alum acting in a non-official role) warns not to make posts about this on Facebook, Twitter, etc. It didn't say "Don't read them." It's really nowhere near as crazy or interesting as the submitter wishes it were.
> I saw a weird Outer Limits
Isn't that kind of the point? :/
Before we all blow up, the warning was from one alum to their alma mater, and was suggesting not to post links to cables and WL on facebook, twitter, etc. because "engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government" which, honestly, is pretty reasonable. If the State Department is deciding between equally-qualified five candidates, and three have indicated they sympathize with WL, well then the choice is down to two. Just like companies looking at your pictures on facebook before hiring. It sucks but it's true - be responsible with what you say about yourself.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
They are deliberately seeking out uncurious and deliberately ignorant people to work for them, as being uncurious and maintaining deliberate ignorance is considered a sign of loyalty.
When you deliberately avoid the best and brightest because you don't trust them to be loyal to you, and deliberately make your institutions stupid, you are a dead country walking.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I don't live in other countries nor do I really care what they do to their people. I do, however, live in the US and believe that we are a free nation which based in our past history should be held to a much higher standard than Arab countries and North Korea (per your chosen examples).
The people of this country have the power and we should be the ones standing up to the government when they do things that are NOT aligned with what this country is supposed to stand for. Honestly the documents provided by WikiLeaks are nothing exciting to me. All countries do shady shit behind closed doors but what is shocking is the bullshit response to it.
I'm sorry but the reaction is not acceptable and all congressmen and senators who are condemning this by suggesting death should be put to death themselves.
They said to not post about it in Facebook and the like. The reason why is more self-protection for the students who may want or need a security clearance later on.
If you've ever had to get a higher-end security clearance (I've had them both in the military and as a civilian), you would know just how anal and frustratingly detailed the FBI and DSA can get when it comes to investigating your background (interesting tidbit - if you have a debt that's more than 180 days past due - for any reason, even if you didn't know about it, you get denied. I had a former co-worker get his clearance initially rejected because he never saw the $20.odd account closing fee sent by an old cell phone company to his old address).
As crazy as the investigations can get, coupled with the government's ability to dredge through your online presence over the years, it's common-sense to not go around spouting off about things that the government is obviously going to be sensitive about if you ever expect to work for them in a sensitive role at some point in the future.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
If I studied political science, international relations or even history, I would definitely be all over these leaks. I can't think of a better source of lessons on how international politics really functions. It may be harder to read than a textbook, but it's real and raw and recent. In fact, if I were a professor of international politics, I'd consider throwing together a graduate seminar where the wikileaks are the primary assigned reading. The government warning would give me pause, and it would be a dealbreaker for my university. But that wouldn't make such a seminar any less good. Why deny American graduate students this understanding, and leave that treasure trove of information to foreign graduate students?
It's been superseded by "if you have no warrant, I can hide anything I want."
Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is.
Allowing America's enemies access to the content, but not its own citizens, is madness.
That just says "Be ashamed, we certainly are".
I just heard the same story from someone who works in government; they've been warned not to discuss anything leaked by wikileaks, even to each other, because nonauthorized disclosure of classified or secret information doesn't make the information unclassified. (OR so they've been told--I don't have time to check the law at the moment. It would be an interesting court case.)
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself--anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face...; was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime..." - George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 5
Probably because the US Government, of the people, for the people, and by the people, has no reasonable expectation of privacy. The 4th Amendment protects us from the government, not the government from us.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Just keep shoving the toothpaste back into the tube
That's why I only call my mom's sex line. She won't rat me out.
No big surprize, but the DoD is doing this as well. Ironically, I don't think it's having the effect they wanted; at least one of my coworkers asked me if I knew what wikileaks was, and I told her it was the digital equivalent of the Pentagon Papers.. Needless to say, I can almost guarantee she looked up wikileaks at home that night. All I can say is, if they want to turn away job applicants who are curious, inquisitive and willing to do research on their own time, they will reap what they sow.
It sound like to CIA, FBI and friends won't be around for much longer, since there is probably not a potential young adult in the US who hasn't been tweeting and posting plenty of stuff they themselves will be embarrassed by in a few years. (obviously I am being facetious; they aren't going to go away, but they will have to evolve and change their criteria to survive)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
There are a lot of fucked up places in the world. Your might not be the worst of them, but as of lately it's far from ideal.
People used to be very proud of that America is the "Land of the Free", not that "It's better than North Korea". If that's what it's supposed to be, why do you keep trying to divert the attention by pointing to some hole like North Korea? Shouldn't you be working tirelessly to uphold that ideal, no matter how much shittier some other place might be?
You're in the US (I assume from your message), and you're in the position to make it less fucked up. So your dirty laundry suddenly got exposed. Don't whine about people noticing the stains, don't point to your neighbour's, but do the proper thing and clean it up.
I'm not sure you've thought this through.
Does this mean that anybody that reads the cables is ineligible for the draft? Where do I get my copies?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
How is suggesting they don't expose themself to certain things which might have an impact on a future career move, threatening their "free speech rights"?
The suggestion was that they not post links to the cables, because if they do, their eligibility for government jobs will be called into question. How is that not threatening their free speech rights?
Palm trees and 8
and I have been specifically told by our gov't security folks that if I access Wikileaks (either via my work computer or my home computer) I will lose my security clearance. I can understand them making a rule not to view it at work and taking away someone's clearance if they do it anyway, but I really don't see how they can legally take away someone's clearance for looking at a website on their home computer that basically ever major news outlet has shown screenshots of.
I don't want to live in China. Whether wikileaks is good, bad, right, wrong, or ugly, if we endorse the self-protectionist nature of the PRC govornment domestically and internationally, if we deny the truth in intellectualism in our graduate schools, then we have ourselves fearfully denied the truth of human nature to seek improvement through understanding and expansion through creativity.
That societies and the global community will have difficulty digesting the recent events does not mean that we shouldn't learn to cope with what is merely a more true revelation of where our mutual interests exist and where our relationships are perhaps thinner than we believe ourselves capable of addressing.
"There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell them." ~ Louis Armstrong
I have spent the last week running searches trying to figure out WTF a cable is or how it could possibly describe a document. Any one?
If there really is an immediate risk to life, then it was probably built on the wrong foundation to start with if it requires secrecy. While maintaining said secrecy may save a life or few, what is the long term cost? Could it very likely cause more harm or death?
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
Sounds a lot like the Church of Scientology's warnings against it's low level parishoners against listening to leaked CoS documents, lest it corrupt their unconditioned minds.
Slashdot is not a game, Slashdot is not a game. Crap, I just lost points.
is ww2 still going on ? why didn't anyone tell me ?
is wikileaks leaking the plans to make a nuke ? i call hype then, 'coz pretty much everybody knows, the diffilculty is in the actually procuring / making.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
which is affiliated with SLAC, an academic research DOE lab that is run by my university. We were just warned about accessing wikileaks using government resources. I wonder why they haven't warned against accessing news sources who have published the cables? The email follows:
To: SLAC Staff and Community
Subject: Do Not Access wikileaks.org Using Government Resources
The Department of Energy has determined that anyone using a DOE resource to access wikileaks.org poses a serious security risk. An extract from an official DOE communication is included here:
-----
Any users navigating to wikileaks.org will pose a serious risk of introducing classified information to an unclassified machine. Clem Boylston, CISO for the Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence sent out a note to the community stating, “Any document that is on an Internet web site that is purported to be classified cannot be downloaded to an unclassified computer system without contaminating the unclassified computer system (i.e., a spill).” In this case, “downloaded” would not only mean the actual process of saving it to the hard drive, but also the simple case of viewing it as the information is cached on the local machine when doing so.
Anyone using their DOE computer to view the purported classified information posted on the website would merit involvement to the appropriate DOE authorities for a full review and analysis of severity
-----
Accordingly, no SLAC resource (i.e., computer, network, VPN, SLAC wireless) may be used to access or assist in accessing wikileaks.org by any SLAC staff member or visitor.
All persons belonging to organizations are assumed to speak for the entire organization. Also, all quotes in blogs are assumed to reflect what the quoted person actually said, even when two blogs contradict each other on what the person said (both are true, cognitive dissonance be damned!!).
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Because the very people who are ensuring that these warnings are transmitted are the ones who will be judging the future applicants. The problem, you see, is that, rather than showing a degree of pragmatism, they are attempting to work against the grain of a world that increasingly requires open communications and which features vastly more expansive (and porous) human networks. And they are doing so through threats and intimidation.
Worse, they're doing it through proxies, deploying their catspaws to coerce people and organisations without even pretending that it's formal policy, thus eschewing even the pretense of debate.
Tableau Software drops even mild, unincriminating references to the cables based on the bloviation of the Chair of the Homeland Security Committee, who abused his position by uttering these remarks. Whatever he may think, he is not in law enforcement. Amazon claims they were not coerced into dropping wikileaks, even though their precipitate action and their subsequent rationalisation are utterly inconsistent with their decision to host the far more incriminating Afghan and Iraq materials. That it happened the day after pronouncements by a politician is, we are told, purely coincidental.
I'll tell you why all this matters to those of us in the outside world:
Two days ago, the government changed in the country where I live, a struggling democracy in the developing world. The Prime Minister was overseas at the time. The Parliamentary Speaker abused his powers and closed parliament to the public and the press. The new cabinet includes people who are known to be guilty of criminal behaviour. One of them has been publicly expressing his opinion that what this country needs is a 'strong regime' - code for a dictatorship.
When the local media and others try to express their outrage at this democratically dangerous turn of events, we no longer have anyone to use as an example. The Minister can blandly reply that the world has changed, using security as a shibboleth to unravel democracy. And the small few who actually care about the practical benefits of a democratic state are bereft.
You might be inclined to say, "Sucks to be you," and to claim that you're not your brother's keeper. If you do, then you should recognise that any future claim to American exceptionalism is void.
You used to set an example for the rest of the world. Now, tragically, you still do.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Your analogies don't work with this situation. Wikileaks isn't posting war plans, they aren't posting technical details of bombs and jet planes. They are simply posting details about past things that the mainstream press conveniently "forgot" to tell us. This isn't about disclosing D-Day information, this is about the government lying to us. It is about putting the information in the hands of citizens about the war so we can make informed votes over if it is worth it to continue.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This isn't even a joke anymore.
.
Read your Red Pravda or your Blue Pravda, and like it, citizen
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I won't bother reading the leaked cables, I'll just wait for the misleading headlines and form my opinions by scanning those...
Wouldn't it be much worse if life were fair and all the terrible things that happen to us, come because we actually dese
It occured to me just the other day, while reflecting on this recent wikileaks incedent and the previous one, on the gouvernments trying to stop the stuff from spreading and their futile attempts at doing so: Wikileaks and the socialogical processes tied to its concept are yet another big step forward into the age of cyberpunk.
National borders fuzzying up, borders between cultures tilting from the vertical lines between landscapes into the horizontal layers of societies stacked with the metropolitain areas of the world, the rapidly dimishing importance of a production society and the vastly growing importance of knowledge and contacts. Subculture groups nobody in 'mainstream' has ever heard of gaining political power and significance within weeks or even days, anonymous individuals and rag-tag tribes rapidly forming doing something with a solid political and international impact and disbanding inmediately after. Think about it: Wikileaks is no real-world Nation, yet their actions have a measurable impact on politics. You can't even pinpoint the people controlling it. Assange is just a figurehead that can be replaced by anonymous at a moments notice.
It is called the Age of Cyberpunk, and it is dawning as we speak. And no matter what the powers that be do to try and stop it, it is gaining momentum and tracktion day by day. Interesting times indeed.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
RTFA folks! The summary is, at best, misleading. From TFA:
"He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government."
The request is to not PROPAGATE the material; note that there isn't even a suggestion to not READ the material.
I support Wikileaks, but under the circumstances the State Department's position in this matter seems reasonable.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
The most interesting thing about this whole Wikileaks story is how it's exposed the corporate government as being exactly what we feared they had become.
If only for that, Assange will be assured status as a hero. He has been able to get the corporate-intelligence state to drop the mask of "democracy" and show their true face.
It's all been unfolding so fast that very few people have processed the meaning of Wikileaks and the power structure's response. But we're quickly learning who's who in the world and whom is dancing to who's tune.
It's interesting that there was almost no response from the government and law enforcement until it was announced that Wikileaks' next batch of leaks was from Citibank. Suddenly, the FBI, CIA and Interpol are involved and Assange is Public Enemy Number 1. Very interesting. When it was just foreign affairs, relations between superpowers and the military it wasn't that big a problem, but mess with the money boys and we go to Defcon IV.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...On purpose, I suspect.
Reading the original email, it says that if you're intending to work for the govt in a position that includes dealing with classified material, then you shouldn't post links or facebook about the cables because the material remains 'classified' (to the US if nobody else) and this may cast doubts on your ability to deal with classified material appropriately.
It says NOTHING about not reading the cables.
-Styopa
Never mind what illegal, immoral or just plain goofy activities were leaked, the RESPONSE the government has had to the leaks is far more telling. On one hand, Obama releases a memo that says, "Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing." And out of the other side of his mouth he's talking about prosecuting Assange for providing just that very sort of transparency. What the government is WILLING to tell us they are doing is not going to be the interesting part, any more than it is a fact that the speech that most needs protection to be free is that which is unpopular.
If the government is uncomfortable with what has been showing up on Wikileaks, they should have thought of that before they set the precident by things like the Bush administration pardoning Scooter Libby for being instrumental in outing Valerie Plame, for the Obama administration granting immunity to AT&T for illegal wiretapping of US citizens. They set a good example with those, showing us that it's OK to illegally spy and leak, you can get away with it-- we let our buds off the hook on that all the time! If it wasn't for that kind of example-setting, they might have gotten a little more sympathy for the impact the leaks have had on their operations. As it is, it's the just deserts.
But the behavior that has resulted, suggesting an Assange assassination, prosecution for espionage, censorship akin to shutting down a newspaper's printing press because they don't like its politics. A complete attack on the messenger, the vehicle of freedom of speech, of speech that MOST needs protection because it is unpopular. While they may have legitimate issues with Bradley Manning leaking the info in the first place, the fact that Assange doesn't roll over and play dead and cover it up like Amazon did at the snap of the US government's fingers is WAY out of line. The real scandal here is not the shenanigans revealed in the leaked cables, but the responses they have had to the idea of a legitimate news publisher doing it's job-- publishing the leak itself. Behavior that shows that to them, while they talk a good game about transparency and freedom of speech, they are no different than any totalitarian government when it really counts.