
Senate Staffers Told To Pretend Top Secret Docs Are Not Widely Available On Web - jalanco
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/06/14/senate-staffers-told-to-pretend-top-secret-documents-are-not-widely-available-on-web/
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jessriedel
This is a well-known and important aspect of keeping data classified. Just
because classified information is leaked does not mean that people with
clearance can treat it as unclassified. There is lots of bogus "classified"
information out there, and an excellent way to limit the harm of leaked truly
classified info (which is unavoidable) is to make it indistinguishable from
bogus info. And the way to do this is to not confirm or deny that it is
legitimate.

Yes, this means people with clearance will sometimes have to sound silly when
it becomes overwhelmingly clear that the info is legitimate. But the
alternative is for individuals with clearance to effectively declassify
information unilaterally, which would be disastrous. Instead, information is
only declassified by folks at the top.

This is just the basic idea I gathered from working near labs doing classified
research. Some of the explanations for seemingly bizarre behavior concerning
classified information gets even deeper into the "because he'll think that
she'll think that he'll think...." rabbit hole. Someone who actually has
clearance can probably speak on this much more usefully than I can.

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Retric
I would just like to add that treating a lot of things a classified
information _is_ useful as someone seeing _top secret_ stamped on a report has
no idea if it's worth blowing cover or even just opening to read.

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dhughes
I was going to suggest that isn't the fact this information can now be seen by
the public mean it is by definition unclassified but I see there are different
levels of classification.

I was under the impression "classified" meant secret and the two words were
interchangeable. If I can trust Wikipedia it shows there are five classes
information can Top Secret, Secret, Confidential, Restricted, Unclassified.

Now I understand that if a document is classed as Secret it's still Secret
even though it's leaked to the public, the information doesn't change just
because more people can view it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information#Classif...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information#Classification_levels)

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mtgx
Exactly. How is this not censorship then? They pulled the same thing with
Wikileaks cables. People should be suing them over free speech infringement.

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tingletech
Do Federal employees have free speech rights? My father was a mail carrier
when I was growing up, and according to the union's material that they mailed
to the mail carriers, Federal employees don't have free speech rights and that
was how Reagan was able to fire the striking air traffic controllers. Mail
carriers are not able to complain about working conditions in the post office
(that is what the union mailer was complaining about, I guess since a union
staffer was writing it they could complain -- it was like 25 years ago that I
read this, so I could have the details wrong).

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thecabinet
The Hatch Act[1] restricts the ability of Executive branch employees to engage
in partisan politics. The Smith Act[2] prohibited executive employees from
advocating the overthrow of the US Government, although I think it's been
found unconstitutional.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1939](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatch_Act_of_1939)

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act)

~~~
mpyne
Note that I'm 98% sure that it's still illegal to advocate the _violent_
overthrow of the government, so civil servants should take the Smith Act
overturning with a grain of salt.

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jacob019
Actually seems quite reasonable, wouldn't want the employees getting a feeling
that the security rules don't apply anymore. They would be wise do declassify
the leaked documents, what's done is done and trying to pretend otherwise will
only server to delegitimatize the rules.

~~~
pyre
This stance made more sense with the WikiLeaks cables, because declassifying
would confirm that they were real, and there was a lot of content discussing
foreign affairs. But with this leak, they haven't confirmed that the documents
are genuine, but they have confirmed that the subject matter is which is
really "good enough."

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RogerL
Here's the deal. Most classified information is segmented. Say I want to build
a encrypting radio. I may have one team build the encrypting part, but they
don't know it is for a radio. I have a second team build a radio, but they
don't know an encrypting part is going in it (there is just a spec for a
'device' to be plugged in). If I am in the radio building team, and the
encrypting info is leaked, and I read it, suddenly I know that an encrypting
radio is being built, something that the average person reading the leaked
info wouldn't know.

You don't access classified material that you are not cleared for. Period.

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michaelfeathers
This is all like the plot of a bad cold war movie.

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swombat
Kafka would be proud!

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sigzero
That's pretty much what my company told me. They went so far as to block any
access to sites that even mentioned NSA or terms associated with whistle
blowing.

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Fuxy
It's more like an attempt to not let other classified information
inadvertently leak because people get careless when they know the information
is out in the open.

I would encourage them they still have something to hide apparently :D

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Yaa101
Basicly this command is "Do as I say but don't do as I do".

Sad enough this make the majority of people follow.

behhhh.

