How can documents that hundreds of thousands of people have access to be considered "secret"

[FarCenter]

Does anyone seriously believe that the intelligence agencies of governments around the world didn't already have copies?

A secret is something that one person knows. If two people know it, it might still be a secret. Possibly even three.

But if hundreds of thousands have access (or possibly a couple of million?), it is just high-class gossip.

[RKP5637]

1. Yeah, that's what I've been thinking too. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

2. agree. i don't believe the standard storyline on this one.

[librechik]

3. exactly--but it gives the Right an opportunity to scream about the Left

so it's all good. Let's pile on! (I won't join those who do)

[notadmblnd]

4. You should read this article

It's not about what information is coming out. It's about why Wikileaks is doing it. It really is a great article.

http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/

[texshelters]

8. This one too is an interesting take

http://texshelters.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/you%e2%80%99re-only-as-sick-as-your-secrets/

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[FarCenter]

15. Excellent too

However, "Yes, it’s shocking to find out that some Arab nations hate Iran." doesn't strike me as being true.

In fact, it's unlikely that the populace of the gulf monarchies hate the Iranians.

The monarchs and royalty of the Gulf states do, primarily because:
- the Iranians deposed the Shaw, and the elimination of the Iranian monarch could set a precedent,
- the Iranians actually hold elections, although imperfect ones, rather than being ruled by royalty,
- the Iranians are mostly Shiites (as are many of the lower classes of the gulf monarchies), while the royalty is Sunni.

Also re: "Leaking that U.S. commanders criticized the U.K. makes the world unsafe, somehow." -- If you recall, the British commander (General Sir Mike Jackson) in former Yugoslavia also thought that the US commander (General Wesley Clark) was an idiot for almost starting world war three by telling them to take an air base in Pristina that the Russians had already occupied. Confrontation Over Pristina Airbase

[FarCenter]

11. Excellent essay

[bemildred]

21. "And lots of successful politicians do nothing but fail."

Yep, I'm going to have to study that.
:thumbsup:

[Journeyman]

5. "I wrote the Air Force back then, asking for details about the raid on Dresden. . .

who ordered it, how many planes did it, why they did it, what desirable results there had been and so on. I was answered by a man who, like myself, was in pubic relations. He said that he was sorry, but that the information was top secret still.

"I read the letter out loud to my wife, and I said, 'Secret? My God -- from whom?'"

-Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughterhouse Five

[TexasObserver]

6. The point of classification is controlling the message.

By making it illegal for anyone with knowledge to disclose these things to the public, the government is able to control the flow of information, and therefore able to deceive the public about the wars in which we engage.

[flyarm]

7. They are not secret..just no one in this country had the fucking guts to tell the truth..

until a 20 year old military angel decided, enough murders and torture were done illegally and he wanted no part of it! And a young Aussie decided to tell us the truth.

Most of this many of us already knew..this only validated what we knew and posted about for 10 years!

The rest..gutless cowards!

[gateley]

9. That's what Randi Rhodes was saying - this latest batch, at least, wasn't of the

level of classification that the REALLY secret stuff is. She said the real damaging stuff came in previous leaks, such as the soldiers firing on the Afghani people.

MOST of this stuff is almost gossipy, but Hisspyspit posted a thread about America being protected during inquiries. (I"m sorry, I've got a cold and my brain is more lame than usual.)

And if this WAS that classified, what does it say about our security that somebody can spend so many months hacking into it and downloading without getting caught?

[texshelters]

10. They're only "secrets" because

some powerful people feel "embarrassed". Boo hoo!

http://texshelters.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/you%e2%80%99re-only-as-sick-as-your-secrets/

Peace,
Tex Shelters

[Poll_Blind]

12. And that's kind of a point which shouldn't be missed: Other world governments already...

...are likely to have access to this exact same information- without the redactions provided by WikiLeaks.

Especially given the amount of subcontracting to non-governmental organizations, I think it's fairly reasonable that dozens if not hundreds or thousands of those with access to the material have become wealthier by selling bits and pieces (or a lot more) to foreign governments.

PB

[TheWraith]

13. Who says hundreds of thousands had access?

Hundreds of thousands of people having network access is not the same as hundreds of thousands of people having access to everything on the network. Technically, you have access to a network that has millions of credit card numbers stored on it. It's called the internet. That doesn't mean you're getting to go off on a buying spree.

If any one of hundreds of thousands of people could have accessed the cables, how do you think they narrowed it down to Bradley Manning so fast?

[FarCenter]

16. WikiLeaks FAQ - What Do the Diplomatic Cables Really Tell Us?

Around half of the embassy cables aren't secret, with 40.5 percent classified as "confidential." And only 6 percent, or 15,652 cables, are classified as "secret." Of those, 4,330 are so sensitive that they carry the additional label "NOFORN," meaning that they should not be made accessible to non-US nationals.

Close to 2.5 million people have access to the SIPRNet data, including staff at many government departments and agencies. Experience has shown, however, that the largest share of users are at the Department of Defense. The classified data is available on special computers that are set up at centers where US forces operate. The log-in procedures and passwords are changed approximately once every 150 days. But even documents that are classified at the highest level of "top secret" are still accessible to around 850,000 Americans. The leak of the diplomatic cables is an accident that was bound to happen sooner or later.

From http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,731441,00.html

[flyarm]

17. Daniel Ellsberg said so yesterday on Democracy Now ..go listen to the interview.

ABC news admitted the same last night.

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Clearly what’s possible to 22 year old Manning who was, by the way, several years younger I think, probably 20 or so when he actually started this process. What is available to him is probably available to five or six hundred thousand people- available to SIPRNet- and notice that the thing that first struck him was his realization that he was involved in the arrest process of people who he later discovered were doing nothing other than writing what he calls, "scholarly critiques of the current administration" for which they were being tortured by the Iraqis to whom we were turning them over with the knowledge of Americans. All of this being blatantly illegal, both for the Iraqis and for the Americans who turned them over to torture. When he reported this to his superior, his superior told him to forget it and get back to work arresting people. The effect that had on Bradley Manning was that he was being asked to participate in a blatantly illegal process and he chose to say no to it, to expose it, to resist it, to do what he actually should have done. One person out of hundreds of thousands who did that.


http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/29/us_facing_global...

[TheWraith]

18. Please actually READ MY MESSAGE.

Having access to the network is NOT the same as having access to EVERYTHING ON THE NETWORK. If you feel it is, please come back to me with the credit card numbers of all Amazon.com customers.

[flyarm]

19. YOU asked a question, I replied..READ MY REPLY!!!!!!!!!!!! eom

[FarCenter]

20. Iraq frontline technology: Interview with Lt. Monroe Mann

Iraq frontline technology: Interview with Lt. Monroe Mann

Lt. Mann: Yes. We use NIPRNET and SIPRNET; they are the same thing. The only difference when you’re on SIPRNET is you won’t be able to access the public Internet such as Google because it’s not a classified website. However, the DoD actually uses Google as the SIPRNET search engine. They are both very similar, but one doesn’t cross over to the other. Anyone who knows how to use the Internet can use the SIPRNET.

It appears that once you have a SIPRNET login and password that you can access anything on SIPRNET via the search capability. I can't find anything about forms for getting access to specific databases or web sites on SIPRNET -- just the forms for getting the overall SIPRNET login and password.

[ProSense]

14. More than 95 percent of the documents were confidential, not secret

Secrecy?

Josh Marshall

This is sort of a side note on the larger Wikileaks question. But in reading various commentary on the Cables story I see again and again references to government secrecy, over classification and so on. But very few of the documents seem to have been highly classified or even very far up to secrecy totem pole. Indeed, if I'm understanding the origin of the leak -- or as much as we think we know about it -- the reason these cables were accessible is because they were not highly classified. And thus in the post-9/11 effort to make sure information could flow freely between different parts of the government -- connecting the dots and so forth -- they were placed on a system where a lot of people in government could access them. As I said, this doesn't necessarily speak to the big questions people are talking about. But this whole question seems more like one of confidentiality -- the fact that the nation's diplomats do not immediately release their internal communications -- than 'secrecy' per se.

The bulk of the material was not top secret or secret information. Based on the NYT's note, less than 5 percent were marked secret.

<...>

About 11,000 of the cables are marked “secret.” An additional 9,000 or so carry the label “noforn,” meaning the information is not to be shared with representatives of other countries, and 4,000 are marked “secret/noforn.” The rest are either marked with the less restrictive label “confidential” or are unclassified. Most were not intended for public view, at least in the near term.

<...>