US Military 'Banned' From Viewing Wikileaks 390
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."
I See No Problem (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.
Re:Military Policies in General (Score:3, Informative)
While I see your point, I would like to be sure in a firefight that the guy who has been ordered to watch my back is actually there and not on a plane home because he/she decided they didn't want to play war any more.
You need to balance the "if you want to leave you should be able to leave" with "if you have been ordered to go to X and do Y we need to be sure that Y is actually going to get done or people will die".
Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? (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.
Re:wow... (Score:3, Informative)
Nope, as I posted above, it's NOT some Big Brother attempt to censor the material. Give the military leadership SOME credit - they're not so dumb to think they can put the genie back in the bottle.
Instead, it's reminding servicemen and civilian agencies of the fairly strict policies about what happens if they view classified material on unclassified computers - or even on computers without need to know. If it's done (especially on purpose), it's punishable by pretty nasty penalties, including removal of security clearance, permanent banning from military computer resources, etc..
Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? (Score:5, Informative)
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:I See No Problem (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? (Score:3, Informative)
Article 134 of the UCMJ covers anything. As in, even if it's not against the rules, what ever you did is against the rules. Also, Indecent Acts With a Public Animal (my favorite).
Article 92 would be disobeying an order.
Article 90 would be disobeying a superior commissioned officer.
Better part of valor and all that (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Really are you surprised? (Score:3, Informative)
Well, idiocy is not limited to the military. For example, in my company, CD/DVD drives on laptops are disabled for security purposes, but we can use USB drives to our hearts' content. And it's not an artifact of old policy not being updated... this is a newly written policy put into place this year.
So? The issue of ownership is separate from the issue of security.
This seems like a good practice, to me.
Security clearance is only half of it... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:We still don't know much about the contents... (Score:3, Informative)
Catch-22: related anecdote from Tom Clancy (Score:5, Informative)
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)
Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? (Score:5, Informative)
No. Here's the latest executive order:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526 [wikisource.org]
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:Military Policies in General (Score:4, Informative)
Administrative discharge isn't quite as bad as Dishonorable, but still causes you to lose all your benefits and sticks you with the "Conditions other than honorable" stigma for the rest of your life.
Uh, no. It doesn't. Dishonorable is Dishonorable, nothing else comes close. Dishonorable discharge is the equivalent of a FELONY CONVICTION.
Admin discharge is effectively honorable in most cases, just that you're not suitable for the military. You might not have enough service time in for all benefits, but you can still qualify for quite a few.
Medical is definitely honorable, and should include discharge for psych reasons.
Re:I See No Problem (Score:3, Informative)
Regulations be damned. Information posted to a public website is automatically declassified whether they like it or not.
No, it's not. In fact, the usual procedure is to not comment on what is claimed to be leaked classified information, so as not to confirm the information. Obviously this case is a bit different in scope, but the policy is the same. Leaked classified information is still classified.
Re: Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? (Score:3, Informative)
I think the word you're looking for is "struthious".
Re:I See No Problem (Score:3, Informative)
No, the declassification process isn't updating a bit of data on a file. The review is much more extensive.
It's just applying a set of very straightforward rules to data, but because of the belief in magic, they insist on having a human go through the ritual rather than designing a system to automate it.
Then you miss-classified those documents.
I didn't classify anything, they were field manuals, and nothing to do with intelligence, stuff like FM 17-97. Okay, that one's actually useful, I wouldn't shred that, but they're all clearly marked that they have to be destroyed. And there are never any updates to say "okay, all this stuff is on the Internet, so don't bother."
Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? (Score:5, Informative)
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:Morale issue perhaps? (Score:1, Informative)
Are you on crack? Manning is not a female, and he doesn't live in Wales, or even in the United Kingdom. He was a US soldier on deployment. Assange knows that.
So what are you trying to do there?
If you have a clearance (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Morale issue perhaps? (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps the sentence was jumbled, but he was referring to the investigation of Bradley Manning's mother [dailymail.co.uk].
Re:Wouldn't it be against the rules anyways? (Score:1, Informative)
I work for the US Navy, and also received an email.
There are very detailed policies about treatment of leaked classified material. Specifically, it is our duty to prevent the spread of the material. We are also not allowed to access any confidential material of which we are not granted access.
Yes, it is a bit silly to ban material thats so public now, but we must follow policy.
I trust those who specialize in this to identify any potential crimes hidden in the material, and those responsible are brought to justice.