
The Pentagon’s ‘Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure’ - laktak
https://warisboring.com/we-love-the-pentagons-encyclopedia-of-ethical-failure-21f2a08e38e0
======
a_bonobo
The link to the doc of the Encyclopedia 404s for me - this link (PDF) works:
[http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/defense_ethics/dod_oge/eef_complete...](http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/defense_ethics/dod_oge/eef_complete.pdf)

~~~
eternalban
Inspector General of AirForce - Report of Investigation (S8011P):
[https://cryptome.org/2013/12/nuke-commander-nukes-
self.pdf](https://cryptome.org/2013/12/nuke-commander-nukes-self.pdf)

------
OliverJones
Here's a government agency that calls things by their names: mostly.

How about this one? "the brother-in-law was treating the inspector to an
evening with a lady of dubious morals."

I doubt the lady in question had dubious morals. She surely knew exactly what
she was doing and exactly why. Why not call her a "sex worker?"

The dubious morals? the two men involved.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Dubious morals is a more prozaic title than sex worker. Horizontal service
provider would be another one.

~~~
DanBC
There's no evidence the service provided was horizontal.

------
failrate
My favorite section from the essay was that it highlights the problem with a
lot of modern news reporting: we typically don't see a resolution. An incident
happens, we froth over it for a while, and then we move on to the next. Maybe
I feel so stressed out all the time because of all of these open loops.

------
tombone12
“They had properly listed the restaurant stop in their mission plan. Since the
stop was properly listed, the soldiers had not violated any regulations, but
they still received verbal counseling because their actions created an
appearance of impropriety.”

I wonder if they where very loud in the restaurant? That they got clearance to
stop the blackhawk is clearly the "violation" here, as long as they weren't to
smug about it afterwards.

~~~
pjc50
Depending on how near they landed the Blackhawk it would probably be louder
than the patrons. Mind you, I've seen someone land a small helicopter at a pub
before.

------
navs
I don't work in the public sector but I'm curious, how does one protect their
browsing habits on a work computer?

I see there are a lot of cases of personal computer usage. While browsing
'sexually explicit' material at work is just plain stupid, I know I'm guilty
of logging into my personal e-mail or browsing Hacker News' latest.

~~~
pjc50
Firstly, check your policy.

Then check whether it's actually enforced. Ask around. See if other people are
routinely personally browsing.

If the admins are serious about it, they're monitoring you at the firewall. Or
snooping your screen. Just don't mess with this. Comply with the policy or
browse on your phone instead.

If there's no real enforcement, then the policy is a figleaf. _If_ someone is
abusing it _and_ someone complains, it will be used against them.

If you're handling actual personal confidential or classified material on your
computer, be very careful. If it gets compromised and traced back to an
infection on your PC then the policy may be used against you there too.

Try not to do personal business on your work email, even in Europe this is not
legally protected:
[http://www.eversheds.com/global/en/what/publications/shownew...](http://www.eversheds.com/global/en/what/publications/shownews.page?News=en/ireland/personal-
emails-at-work-have-employers-more-access)

BYOD tends to erase the "work/personal" distinction, so watch out for other
policies that try to enforce it. It may not be worth BYOD.

~~~
webmaven
A few tips: Figure out whether you can clear your browser's cache and history,
also find or figure out IT's strategy for desktop backups.

Also find or figure out what sort of network monitoring is in place, and
where. If you're a developer, consider places you can shoehorn a plausibly
deniable proxy or VPN so monitoring at the network egress for example doesn't
trace directly back to your desktop IP address.

~~~
pjc50
I don't see cache and history as too important, incognito mode will help with
those. But there are other forms of monitoring - e.g. antivirus gets to look
at all your browsing and potentially log it.

> shoehorn a plausibly deniable proxy or VPN

This I think is a bad idea, because it greatly increases the severity of
getting caught. It serves as evidence that you knew what you were doing was
not allowed and took steps to hide it. The whole idea of "taking steps to
hide" activity at work is fundamentally doomed, because taking steps to
frustrate the enforcement of a policy is itself against policy. Especially if
you're in a legal environment with few employment rights.

~~~
webmaven
_> This I think is a bad idea, because it greatly increases the severity of
getting caught._

The threat assessment and risk mitigation is of course very context dependent.
There is usually a trade-off between the risk of getting caught and the
severity of consequences if caught.

One approach to getting a proxy officially "blessed" is to sell management on
a proxy for the use of execs as an obscuring measure to "foil attempts at
doing traffic analysis on their web use", should an intruder gain access to
the network, which proxy then happens to be available for anyone "in the know"
to use. This pitch may be particularly effective if one or more of the execs
use Ashley Madison. ;-)

------
rl3
> _There’s the Navy official who faked his own death to end an affair._

He was an attack submarine captain.

The sheer lack of thought put into his plan alone warranted the dismissal,
nevermind the actual ethics part of it.

------
webmaven
Just remember that these are cautionary tales, not a tutorial!

~~~
pjmorris
That's funny, and appropriate. I recall Michael Lewis saying that he'd written
'Liar's Poker' as a cautionary tale, but that people were excited by the life
described, and took it as an operating manual.

------
DanBC
I like the plain description of the action and violation.

Another US Government agency (FBI, maybe) has a similar document and the way
it's written is unbearably smug. I think that got posted to HN sometime, but I
have no idea when or what it's called.

------
tajen
I was hoping for the chapter "He spied on his girlfriend using work means" or
"He misread the constitution to the point that he issued a blanket warrant on
all phone calls in the USA", but it seems like this guy hasn't been caught.
Yet.

------
jack9
> Since the stop was properly listed, the soldiers had not violated any
> regulations, but they still received verbal counseling because their actions
> created an appearance of impropriety

But huge donations to a senator's campaign is not? I hate this kind of top-
down hypocrisy.

------
peterkelly
How about carelessly bombing hundreds of innocent civilians with drones in
countries you're not officially at war with, concocting dodgy evidence about
WMDs to present to the UN security council, and basically destroying an entire
country, while at the same time creating the power vacuum and conditions on
the ground that allowed ISIS to gain power?

I thought some of that might at least warrant a mention.

~~~
LanceH
What did that have to do with the military?

~~~
peterkelly
Um.... they were the ones who did all that stuff (except for the lying to the
UN bit).

"Just following orders" isn't a great excuse.

