

US Government Strategy To Prevent Leaks Is Leaked - thedoctor
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110104/23484712519/us-govt-strategy-to-prevent-leaks-is-leaked.shtml

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zacharycohn
I'm not sure how big of a deal this is. I mean... the entire document is
unclassified. It's not even at the "secret" level. Do we know if this is a
leak, or if it was just.. published.

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ryanc
I don't think this is a big deal at all. It is unclassified and also not
marked with one of the Sensitive But Unclassified markings
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_but_unclassified>) meant to control
distribution. You could request this document through a freedom of information
act request.

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jroes
The document says "UNCLASSIFIED" in the footer of every page. Has this really
been "leaked?"

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bajsejohannes
I wouldn't say so, no. The link title should clearly be changed to something
less sensationalist.

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aptsurdist
I worry that this will just encourage employees to wear fake smiles when
they're having a rough day, and to conceal any skepticism about the direction
of their program out of fear of what their co-workers might tell the
psychiatrist. This sounds like a disturbingly unhealthy and counterproductive
work environment.

~~~
thangalin
I believe this is how space shuttles explode: reality must take precedence
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

[http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/roger...](http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-
commission/Appendix-F.txt)

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skeltoac
It's not a leak if the government published it:
[http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/memoranda/2011/m11-08.pdf)

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Splines
We apologize for the fault in our secrecy. Those responsible have been sacked.

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RyanMcGreal
In fairness, they might not have implemented it yet.

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paulgerhardt
If the disseminating body were to uniquely sort the list of bullet points for
every recipient, one could perhaps determine the source of the leak.

Strangely, I don't see this mentioned as a suggestion in this document.

I suppose this could also work if one were to programmatically insert typos or
synonyms to act as unique watermarks.

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ronnoch
Does the government throttle document downloads? It seems like if there was a
download limit and a mandatory wait between downloads, the whole cable fiasco
could never have happened. I mean, you could still leak a few documents here
and there if you wanted to, but nothing like the massive leaks that have been
happening.

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quanticle
As I understand it, the Afghanistan War Diaries and the diplomatic cables from
a trove of documents gathered by one Bradley Manning - a US Army Private First
Class who had access to SIPRNet (the DoD classified network). He went into a
secure area with CD-RWs and downloaded as much data as he could, and then
ferried it out.

In this kind of scenario, where you have a trusted insider bridging an air-
gap, no amount of throttling can really help you, and the limitations imposed
by throttling might hinder legitimate network activities (e.g. building of
search indices).

~~~
tomjen3
Limit people to two articles per hour, unless they have special requests
signed by an officer (such as to build search queries) - it would take about
125 000 hours to download all the cables under this system.

Of course it is not airtight, but it would make the leak much smaller (and the
amount of people who could leak them all reduced drastically to a few people
whom you could keep an eye on) and presumably less harmful.

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ThomPete
You don't need thousands of documents to leak interesting stuff.

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m0nastic
I don't really see the issue here. If an anti-leaking policy loses utility if
published, than it's not really effective to begin with.

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kylelibra
You have to love the irony.

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kingsidharth
LOL, looks like we have nominee for "Irony of the Year 2011" already

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maeon3
This leak-protection system will turn all employees into brainwashed minions
who will not act in the best interest of humanity, and instead act in the best
interest of the person who controls the salary.

Good citizens should leak documents to the press when they believe that grave
injustices are being committed. Whistle-blowers should be praised when they
expose legitimate corruption, they should be praised by individuals higher up
in that same organization. Instead of being praised for whistle blowing, they
are seen as the source of the evil.

After this fails, maybe they will attempt to create loyalty implants for all
employees to prevent them from thinking about doing something for the good of
humanity over the internal interests of the group.

I see absolutely no way that forced loyalty in every way can go wrong.

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thangalin
Relevant: <https://sites.google.com/site/pfcmanning/>

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ddkrone
I knew it. The government is run by idiots.

