Comments on: Wikileaks is a major security threat

By: Paul Murray

Paul Murray — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:47:17 +0000

AFAIK: Here in oz, Defence took the attitude that anything available on the internet gets declassified. It reduced the paperwork burden enormously. If something is marked “secret”, you know that it is.

By: Dan J

Dan J — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:50:08 +0000

I always got a kick out of the fact that strong cryptography was considered “munitions” for the purposes of the government. They seem to view anything they can’t control as an imminent threat.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:54:44 +0000

Jason, that is because the “harm” comes from people in authority finding out that people in charge of secret stuff screwed up, not from secrets being compromised. It is only when the higher-ups find out there was a screw up can anyone be “harmed”, that is anyone who matters.

By: Jason Thibeault

Jason Thibeault — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 09:46:07 +0000

Let’s err on the side of caution and declare the internet as a potential security threat. I mean, anyone can put any old piece of information there! Then let’s reductio ad absurdum a little more, and declare communication itself to be a threat, because people can share secrets with one another if they have a common language!

That there’s a central repository for these documents is a good thing. Especially if every leaked document makes its way there, or ends up there FIRST. Because everyone can see what’s up there, including the people who then learn they need to plug some leaks. I don’t see how this is difficult to comprehend.

By: Paul S.

Paul S. — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 07:43:09 +0000

@Jeff –
From what I’ve heard, a lot of things tend to get classified that don’t actually need to get classified. The attitude tends to be to classify it if there is the slightest doubt, because someone is much, much, MUCH more likely to get in trouble for not classifying something that somebody higher up the chain of command thinks should be classified, than the reverse.

Since everything needs to be thoroughly reviewed before being declassified, declassifying is much more labor-intensive than classifying, which is why there is always a phenomenally huge backlog of classified material, most of which probably has no serious reason to be classified.

By: MadScientist

MadScientist — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:24:08 +0000

@daedalus2u: But the managers love being dumb and happy – remember how Richard Feynman’s security concerns were addressed: keep Feynman out of the area. It’s all about pretending there is no threat, then blaming other people when problems are discovered and promoting yourself as a responsible person rather than a perpetrator of the problems.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:18:31 +0000

That’s some bullshit classification for that document. SECRET my ass. I’m having a little trouble believing it was actually classified, but the fact that it was marked so properly and thoroughly leaves the possibility that it’s real. If it was faked, whoever faked it knew what they were doing. Perhaps it was classified in order to make someone feel important.

You see, storing and maintaining (and ultimately destroying) classified information is expensive. Damn expensive. So you don’t go around calling things classified SECRET on a whim (though, when in doubt, better to be safe than sorry). It’s only supposed to be for information that “when compromised might reasonably cause serious injury to the national interest.” Absolutely, nothing in that document fits that definition by a long shot.

Take that classified quote you used. That’s all common knowledge for anyone familiar with Wikileaks. It’s just stating facts that could be found on Wikipedia.

By: daedalus2u

daedalus2u — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:26:53 +0000

This is complete BS. By the time wikileaks gets it and makes it public, it is not at all a secret.

When wikileaks publishes it, at least the US government knows that it has been compromised and can take corrective action.

Without wikileaks they are just fat dumb and happy while the actual evil-doers use that information in secret.