The war on whistleblowers

[Callie Del Noire]

Oh, I know, but Ecuador has a pretty bad history of not being able to keep it's own citizens from bombing each other in the streets.

That doesn't make our actions any less wrong or heavy handed. We've shown a dark side to our acts since 9/11. Not a lot of liberty or justice being shown. Bradley Manning has spent HOW long in lock up, in solitary and suicide watch conditions without trial?

We need to reassess our actiosn of the past decade and a half.

[kylie]

     Just a couple lines that struck me from a Guardian article today.

The US has sent Venezuela an extradition request in advance of a potential move by Snowden to travel there.

In it, US authorities claims that the former National Security Agency contractor "unlawfully released classified information and documents to international media outlets" naming both the Guardian and the Washington Post.

I wonder if all the context is there or not, but as written...  It sounds rather like they are saying, he should be considered a criminal because he talked to a major US paper -- the Washington Post -- and after all, foreign powers read major papers.  So don't anyone dare tell anything to the media, whether domestic or foreign agencies...  And no mention here by said authorities of the so-called 'threat' (in their view) that American citizens might want to shut down domestic snooping against them with little to no cause, and that also bothers NSA.

     Just struck me as a paper-thin veil over a threat that any speaking to the media can be punished...  And that would take away one great fallback of whistleblowers on any subject whatsoever, regardless of where the event or readership happens to be located.

[kylie]

     Oh, but I just caught this part:

Pushkov joked that if Snowden does not find shelter in Venezuela, "he will have to stay and marry Anna Chapman" – a reference to the redheaded Russian spy who was among 10 sleeper agents deported from the United States in 2010.

The 31-year-old Chapman proposed to Snowden, who just turned 30, on Twitter last week.

     ...  Maybe life is not so horrible for some international fugitives, after all?  ;)

     Ack, now I kinda want to dream up a Chapman-based rp...  See what Politics does!

/ possible digression

[kylie]

     And here comes the same argument from the Manning trial -- that if releasing material to the Internet is equivalent to aiding the enemy, then any online press might just as well be considered traitorous, or even a terrorist organization:

The final defence witness called, the Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler, delivered blistering testimony in which he portrayed WikiLeaks as a legitimate web-based journalistic organisation. He also warned the judge presiding in the case, Colonel Denise Lind, that if the "aiding the enemy" charge was interpreted broadly to suggest that handing information to a website that could be read by anyone with access to the internet was the equivalent of handing to the enemy, then that serious criminal accusation could be levelled against all media outlets that published on the web.

Something else in the same article, between ridiculous and scary:

Coombs revealed in court that according to stipulated testimony that has not yet been made public, Bin Laden only asked to see the WikiLeaks files after his curiosity was piqued by the US government's own description of WikiLeaks as an organisation helpful to America's enemies. It was the government's own rhetoric, Coombs said, that drew the al-Qaida chief's attention to the website; the defence attorney said this was an important example of how a legitimate journalistic organisation could be turned into a terrorist outfit "upon response of the government".

The "rhetoric is what drives the enemy to actually go look at WikiLeaks, not the actual publication of the information," Coombs said.

...  So if the government says some information is useful to an enemy (or simply "impolitic" to reveal to an ally/neutral), the enemy (or neutral/ally for that matter) looks, which allows the government to say 'see - we told you so,' and then prosecute whoever spoke it on the Internet.  What assumption of absolute censorship power that might lead to!  ::)

[Oniya]

Something else in the same article, between ridiculous and scary:
     ...  So if the government says some information is useful to an enemy (or simply "impolitic" to reveal to an ally/neutral), the enemy (or neutral/ally for that matter) looks, which allows the government to say 'see - we told you so,' and then prosecute whoever spoke it on the Internet.  What assumption of absolute censorship power that might lead to!  ::)

Do none of these lawmakers have teenaged children?  The surest way to get someone to read something that they can access is to tell them they aren't supposed to.  (Even if they can't access it - then it makes them try harder.)  Stories I could tell...

[Kythia]

Necromancy ahoy!

I thought this was interesting.

[Ephiral]

Do none of these lawmakers have teenaged children?  The surest way to get someone to read something that they can access is to tell them they aren't supposed to.  (Even if they can't access it - then it makes them try harder.)  Stories I could tell...

Apparently, the Department of Defense has no teenaged children to run their policies past, either.

EDIT: DHS, not DOD. Got this mixed up with another Snowden-censorship story in my head. Sorry.

[Callie Del Noire]

Apparently, the Department of Defense has no teenaged children to run their policies past, either.

Okay.. just like the memo says.. by putting that document ON YOUR WORK PC.. you're violating your NDA/Clearance agreement. Is it stupidly written? Yes...  It was simply a reminder that no matter the source.. KNOWINGLY access a classified document you don't have a 'need to know' is a violation. I would have written it differently.. BUT the general ghist of the intent is to remind a person who can get in trouble bringing up that document to NOT to do it. Better to do it in a possibly stupid way and NOT have folks break their clearance at work.

[Ephiral]

Okay.. just like the memo says.. by putting that document ON YOUR WORK PC.. you're violating your NDA/Clearance agreement. Is it stupidly written? Yes...  It was simply a reminder that no matter the source.. KNOWINGLY access a classified document you don't have a 'need to know' is a violation. I would have written it differently.. BUT the general ghist of the intent is to remind a person who can get in trouble bringing up that document to NOT to do it. Better to do it in a possibly stupid way and NOT have folks break their clearance at work.

Except that a) it specifically says "If opened on your home or work computer you are obligated to report this to the SSO as your computer could then be considered a classified workstation." (emphasis mine), and b) the smart policy would be that a document available to almost literally everyone everywhere is, by definition, no longer classified.

[Callie Del Noire]

Except that a) it specifically says "If opened on your home or work computer you are obligated to report this to the SSO as your computer could then be considered a classified workstation." (emphasis mine), and b) the smart policy would be that a document available to almost literally everyone everywhere is, by definition, no longer classified.

I know.. but they are signed the agreement. That means they (the folks with a clearance) don't have the same rights of access that most folks do. IE.. it can be easily written off as 'uninformed access' by others.. but folks, once informed by the email, aren't in that category..

It's a stupid limitation.. but it's there..and if you've read some of the news stories on this thread.. DAs and the Justice Department  love STUPID shit like this.

[Kythia]

b) the smart policy would be that a document available to almost literally everyone everywhere is, by definition, no longer classified.

Except of course the 60-65% per cent of the world without the internet.

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage

[Ephiral]

I know.. but they are signed the agreement. That means they (the folks with a clearance) don't have the same rights of access that most folks do. IE.. it can be easily written off as 'uninformed access' by others.. but folks, once informed by the email, aren't in that category..

It's a stupid limitation.. but it's there..and if you've read some of the news stories on this thread.. DAs and the Justice Department  love STUPID shit like this.

So... the email creates the very problem it's warning against? That's... even worse.

Except of course the 60-65% per cent of the world without the internet.

Okay, yes, I was a bit hyperbolic. The point stands.

[Oniya]

Except that a) it specifically says "If opened on your home or work computer you are obligated to report this to the SSO as your computer could then be considered a classified workstation." (emphasis mine), and b) the smart policy would be that a document available to almost literally everyone everywhere is, by definition, no longer classified.

Considering that the average home computer has all the security of a wet paper bag... Yup.

[Callie Del Noire]

Considering that the average home computer has all the security of a wet paper bag... Yup.

Agreed.. I use a 16 character password for my desktop, another one for my wifi, my network works on a WPA2 Enterprise encryption, I have all my devices tied to my network by their MAC address with specific ip addresses within the network and I don't broadcast my SSID (my wi-fi network identifier) .

And I look on my network as 'semi-secure'.

[Ephiral]

Considering that the average home computer has all the security of a wet paper bag... Yup.

Oh, I understand and acknowledge this (I'm a bit of a security nut). But... again, once it's in a major international media source... it is, by definition, not restricted information in any meaningful sense. Trying to pretend that it's still high-security eyes-only info on the Post's public-facing website is petty bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake.

This is especially true since the highly-classified slide which can change the classification of your home and work computers and subject you to punitive action... reveals nothing substantive. If you paid any attention to the news about the NSA at all in recent weeks, you know about PRISM. The tapping of the trunk cables is a no-brainer and has been happening for a long damn time, as is an intel agency using every source at its disposal. So basically the only thing that slide actually adds to the conversation is... the names of a couple of the upstream programs, with no data attached, and that only because the Guardian previously censored two of them.

And by that standard, they'd better ban LinkedIn, too.