Pentagon to Troops: Taliban Can Read WikiLeaks, You Can’t
25 replies, posted
[highlight]That cry you hear? It’s common sense, writhing in pain.[/highlight]
[url=http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/pentagon-to-troops-taliban-can-read-wikileaks-you-cant/]Source[/url]
[release]Any citizen, any foreign spy, any member of the Taliban, and any terrorist can go to the WikiLeaks website, and download detailed information about how the U.S. military waged war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2009. Members of that same military, however, are now banned from looking at those internal military documents. “Doing so would introduce potentially classified information on unclassified networks,” according to one directive issued by the armed forces.
That cry you hear? It’s common sense, writhing in pain.
There was a time, just a few months ago, when the Pentagon appeared to be growing comfortable with the emerging digital media landscape. Troops were free to blog and tweet, as long as they used their heads and didn’t disclose secrets. Thumb drives and DVDs could be employed, as long as they didn’t carry viruses or classified information. But the WikiLeaks disclosures — tens of thousands of classified documents — seem to have reversed that trajectory.
Now, the Marine Corps is telling troops and civilian employees in a memo:
[quote][W]illingly accessing the WIKILEAKS website for the purpose of viewing the posted classified material [constitutes] the unauthorized processing, disclosure, viewing, and downloading of classified information onto an UNAUTHORIZED computer system not approved to store classified information. Meaning they have WILLINGLY committed a SECURITY VIOLATION.[/quote]
The other branches of the armed services have put out similar notices. The memos were initially reported in the Washington Times. But the story has been removed from the paper’s website.
Sumit Agarwal, the former Google manager now serving as the Defense Department’s social media czar, explained the Pentagon’s logic in an e-mail to Danger Room.
“I think of it as being analogous to MP3s or a copyrighted novel online — widespread publication doesn’t strip away laws governing use of those,” he writes. ”If Avatar were suddenly available online, would be legal to download it? As a practical matter, many people would download it, but also as a practical matter, James Cameron would probably go after people who were found to be nodes who facilitated distribution. It would still be illegal for people to make Avatar available even if it were posted on a torrent site or the equivalent.”
“With minor changes to what is legal/illegal re: classified material vs a copyrighted movie, doesn’t the analogy hold?” Argawal asks. “One person making it available doesn’t change the laws re: classified material. Our position is simply that servicemembers ought not to use government computers to do something which is still completely illegal (traffic in classified material).”
But it’s an imperfect analogy, at best. Cameron might plausibly argue that each pirated version of Avatar reduces his customer base for legitimate versions of the movie (even if the opposite has proven to be true). Banning troops from reading the WikiLeaks war logs won’t in any way impact how potentially nefarious consumers of that information behave. This is the equivalent of Cameron banning his own staff from watching Avatar — even after it’s been posted online.
Meanwhile, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell demanded Thursday that WikiLeaks “return all versions of all of these documents to the U.S. government and permanently delete them from its website, computers and records.”
But he quickly added: “I don’t know that we’re very confident they’ll have a change of heart. They’ve shown no indication thus far that they appreciate the gravity, the seriousness of the situation they have caused, the lives they have endangered, the operations they have potentially undermined, the innocent people who have potentially been put in harm’s way as a result. So I don’t know that we have a high degree of confidence that this — that this request, this demand, unto itself, will prevail upon them.”
Every officer in the military — and many of the enlisted men, too — have a basic, “secret,” clearance. That’s hundreds of thousands of potential sources to WikiLeaks. Seems to me that the only plausible explanation for the Pentagon’s arm-waving is to remind troops not to spill secrets. The question is: Does clinging to military regulations at the expense of basic logic encourage people to respect classification policy — or only make the secrecy regime seem more absurd?
[b]Update[/b]: “Take ‘wikileaks’ out of your headlines,” one Army contractor e-mails Danger Room. The web filter “has been updated to block anything with wikileaks in the URL.”
“So, yeah, common sense out the window,” the contractor adds.[/release]
Not...surprised?
Brilliant!
not surprised
they don't want them to see the truth
[QUOTE=PrusseLusken;23883492]What? So the people that the files are regarding are [I]banned[/I] from reading them? How is this logical in any way?[/QUOTE]
It's not
:cawg:
they don't want their soldiers to question.
[QUOTE=PrusseLusken;23883539]So they're implying Avatar has never been available to the public on the internet?
...[/QUOTE]
these internet goers, what crazies
i mean if criminals suddenly had guns, would that make it okay for normal people to have them? Pfuh. weirdos.
[release]“Take ‘wikileaks’ out of your headlines,” one Army contractor e-mails Danger Room. The web filter “has been updated to block anything with wikileaks in the URL.”[/release]
In other news, the US army's web filter now also blocks all instances of "wiki" (as in "[i]Wiki[/i]pedia, the free politcally subversive encylopedia that any terrorist can edit"), "army" (as in "I am in the [i]army[/i], and here are my coordinates") and "the" (as in "You can bomb [i]the[/i] convoy when it stops at these coordinates to refuel")
All about control.
I [i]think[/i] the block is to stop people uploading stuff onto Wikileaks, not necessarily viewing the war diaries. Apparently the data is / was accessible by people with the lowest clearances (and that's how it got leaked).
Also
[quote]But it’s an imperfect analogy, at best. Cameron might plausibly argue that each pirated version of Avatar reduces his customer base for legitimate versions of the movie (even if the opposite has proven to be true)[/quote]
I love the journalist for that unnecessary but awesome jibe
Pretty messy damage control they have here. This is only going to make people want to download it more.
The real reason is because most of the documents are online conversations between high ranking officers making jokes about individual soldiers under their command.
So it's just to stop the troops from being depressed :downs:
Most soldiers can already read the documents that were released on wikileaks on the classified network so it's not like they're not trying to prevent them from reading it. They're just trying to make it harder for them to leak classified documents onto the the internet. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because if you were to upload thousands of classified documents you probably wouldn't be doing it on a government computer.
[highlight](User was banned for this post ("Reporting GMF posts, by a moderator no less" - Rusty100))[/highlight]
[QUOTE=DamagePoint;23886588]Most soldiers can already read the documents that were released on wikileaks on the classified network so it's not like they're not trying to prevent them from reading it. They're just trying to make it harder for them to leak classified documents onto the the internet. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, because if you were to upload thousands of classified documents you probably wouldn't be doing it on a government computer.[/QUOTE]
You probably wouldn't upload it at all, I remember reading / hearing (cant remember if it was a text article or video) that Wikileaks receives a lot of stuff like this on storage devices delivered to them.
expected...
and op i really love your avatar.. may i ask where did you get it?
Hate to break it to you guys but the military has jurisdiction here. This is the equivalent of a soldier getting onto a government computer and looking at stuff they shouldn't be looking at. When you join the military you give up certain freedoms, this happens to be one of them.
[QUOTE=privatesmily;23886749]expected...
and op i really love your avatar.. may i ask where did you get it?[/QUOTE]
[url=http://www.facepunch.com/showthread.php?t=950296]Homestuck thread[/url].
They don't want their troops to realize that they're not really helping the world at all but are just ruining lives and killing Afghan civillians, not to mention ruining global economy. The U.S. military is the most shitty and greedy military in the modern world.
[editline]11:30AM[/editline]
I'm loving Wikileaks more and more. Geniuses they are indeed. It's only a matter of time before the truth is exposed. People need to know that these troops aren't fighting for "freedom" or anything like that.
[QUOTE=PrusseLusken;23883492]What? So the people that the files are regarding are [I]banned[/I] from reading them? How is this logical in any way?
What they are doing is stupid. This isn't making anything better. As long it's out there, it will be accessible in some way.[/QUOTE]
My grandfather wasn't allowed to read the book he wrote for the CIA :v:
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