Pentagon to Troops: Taliban Can Read WikiLeaks, You Can’t

[kpete]

Source: Wired

Any citizen, any foreign spy, any member of the Taliban, and any terrorist can go to the WikiLeaks web site, and download detailed information about how the U.S. military waged the 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 its troops and civilian employees in a memo that “willingly accessing the WIKILEAKS website for the purpose of viewing the posted classified material 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.”


Read more: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/pentagon-to-troops-taliban-can-read-wikileaks-you-cant/#ixzz0vr3GYprE

[superconnected]

1. This is ultimately what the internet off switch is about.

That way they can keep info from the citizens and not just the soldiers.

[hack89]

3. Except the soldiers can access the information on the classified networks. nt

[superconnected]

5. excuse me - internet Kill Switch.

[hack89]

2. You have never had the pleasure of sanitizing an unclas network

the fact that they have been leaked doesn't change the fact that many are still officially classified. The commission of a crime hasn't magically made them all unclassified.

[haele]

4. Can't use unclassified work computers to view them. Can't use classified systems to go to Wikileaks

The Wikileak documents are still classified, even if they are out in the public, and if they are even viewed on an unclassified military computer (which puts the documents in a cache), the hard drive has to be turned in, checked, and wiped of all classified materials. If it goes through an unclassified military network to get to that computer, the IT people have to go through the server and wipe traces.
The soldier or sailor - or contractor - who looks at the classified Wikileaks documents ends up costing the DoD a huge chunk of time and money because they have to sanitize the system.
And since the Wikileaks site itself is unclassified, it can't be accessed through a secure portal by people with the clearance to read the documents.

Another issue is "need to know". Even if the information on a classified document is no longer applicable, so long as it is still classified, a person who carries a security clearance may find that clearance in jeopardy if they seek out that they don't "need to know". Sounds silly and secretive to those outside the military, but OPSEC is a serious business.

Compromised secure information can and have led to costly breaches and delays in security, diplomatic, humanitarian activities. as well as incarceration and/or deaths of not only military members, but to civilian citizens both in the country and overseas - whether or not they are actually associated with the activity that information pertained to.

The directives I've seen apply more to a return to established security requirements in handling and disseminating classified documents and other information. Nothing new, nothing really unusual, and certainly nothing unexpected in light of what happened.
Whether or not a whistle-blower was doing the right thing by posting information has nothing to do with the fact that secure documents were compromised and put into public domain due to a relaxing of security posture. It doesn't matter what the outcome of the "leak" would be. It doesn't matter why the documents were classified - ultimately it only matters that they were classified and had not been downgraded before they were sent out "in the wild" (i.e., public domain) the way they were.
And I don't know of any organization - civilian, commercial, judicial, or military - that doesn't clamp down and return to "the letter of the law" in such a situation.

Haele