
Defense Department Blocks Access to Guardian to Prevent Viewing of NSA Leaks - llamataboot
http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/06/27/defense-department-blocks-access-to-guardian-news-website-to-prevent-viewing-of-nsa-leaks/
======
whateverfor
This isn't about censorship or trying to shut the barn door after the horse or
anything about trying to prevent the spread of documents to the public (or
even realistically the people who work at the DoD). The key words are right in
the article itself: "integrity of unclassified government information
systems.”

Note that it's not the classified systems they are worried about, but the
boring unclassified ones. There are separate systems for classified and
unclassified information, and there are rules to make sure that stuff doesn't
move from the classified systems to the unclassified ones by accident. One of
those rules, very sensibly, is that classified information shouldn't be on the
unclassified systems.

Again, this has nothing to do with stopping public spread of the documents,
and everything to do with trying to keep "clean" systems clean, as they
explain in the article.

~~~
radicaldreamer
Certainly, there must be a state for "leaked" classified documents, for which
this rule simply wouldn't apply (these leaked documents could literally appear
anywhere on the web in theory).

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rurounijones
"Classified" remains classified even if leaked to remove ambiguity and
possible sloppiness.

It is to avoid situations like: "this document says it needs to be handled as
if it is classified but I am pretty sure it leaked last week so I will treat
it as unclassified which is easier..."

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joelrunyon
To me this is just as bad of an example (if not worse) of the leaks. How soon
till we expand this firewall from "classified docs in the public domain" to
"anything that we don't like" affecting "active duty soliders" to "anyone we
don't want to have this information."

~~~
rhizome
And the US Government criticizes China (and Snowden's possible presence there)
under exactly these terms.

~~~
throwaway10001
When you join the Army etc you largely leave your free speech (and many other)
rights at the door, so I fail to see the equivalence.

My guess is that that info is still classified, even though it's public, and
accessing it might be a technical violation for those without clearances.

~~~
rhizome
For the first part, I didn't say they were equivalent. I said it was the same
_criteria_ by which China and Snowden were criticized, not that the US was
doing to _all_ of its citizens _all_ of the things that the US criticizes
China for.

For the second, honest question: does published information actually retain
its classification?

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danielrhodes
The people of Troy are still worrying about the efficacy of their city walls
when the Greek soldiers have already gotten out of the horse and opened the
gates.

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mtgx
I was wondering when they'll actually start attacking the 1st amendment (well
I guess they started when they went after the press, and chilling speech), and
when they will be actually censoring stuff. It happened a bit earlier than
even I expected.

~~~
cstross
It started in 1919. It was ruled in the _Schenk_ case that the Espionage Act
(1917)
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage_Act_of_1917))
did not violate the freedom of speech of those convicted under it. Schenk
mailed out anti-draft leaflets during WW1, and jailed for it. Per wikipedia:

'The Court, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
Jr., held that Schenck's criminal conviction was constitutional. The First
Amendment did not protect speech encouraging insubordination, because, "when a
nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a
hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as
men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any
constitutional right."'

So, precedent: freedom of speech doesn't apply if it impairs the ability of
the state to wage war.

The next step was the gradual institutionalization of a permanent on-going
state of war. This has been sliding into place since WW2, from the early days
of the Cold War onwards, by way of the gradual militarization of the federal
system; from the outside, the USA of today looks like an Imperial colossus,
out-spending the rest of the planet on weapons (and out-deploying it, too).

Where you have a permanent state of war you have a permanent justification for
emergency authority (as Orwell observed in _1984_ \-- what did "We have always
been at war with EastAsia really _signify_?"). So wartime regulations
overriding normal constitutional protections become embedded.

Finally, we have the virtualization of the permanent state of war: from a war
stance pointed at a concrete enemy with tanks and nuclear missiles, to a war
on an abstraction, "terror", which is drawn so widely that it leads to
officials making statements like this: "We take water quality very seriously.
Very, very seriously ... But you need to make sure that when you make water
quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water
quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of
terrorism."

Source: [http://www.alternet.org/environment/tennessee-official-
says-...](http://www.alternet.org/environment/tennessee-official-says-
complaining-about-water-quality-could-be-considered-act)

It's a slippery slope, but the USA is already surprisingly far down it -- the
bottom is within reach already!

~~~
makomk
Wasn't that ruling overturned in Brandenburg v. Ohio in order to protect
members of the KKK from arrest? (US history is really pretty awful sometimes.)

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ferdo
Nothing like closing the barn door after all the horses have bolted.

~~~
asperous
This is more like closing the neighbor's barn door. Like the Guardian's main
website has a "upload leaked document form"?! This is them either too scared
to think straight, or they are being told to do it by someone who is.

~~~
jaxb
New Yorker runs Strongbox, so Guardian can run one too.

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danboarder
Documents are classified as "secret" to maintain control of who sees those
documents. However, once they are available for view on the Guardian or other
public sites, they are no longer secret, by definition, and thus should no
longer classified as secret (because they are not).

Following that logic, why aren't leaked docs simply declassified? The cat is
out of the bag...

~~~
rdtsc
"secret" and "top secret" are specific classification labels that don't
necessarily correspond 1 to 1 with colloquial definition of the word secret.
(Kind of like maybe the word memory in a computer doesn't quite correspond to
human memory even though it is the same word).

Just because a set of documents are leaked, exposed, stolen, published by
someone or handed over to people who are not authorized to view it, it does
not automatically reset their classification label.

Now you might say "so what this is dumb". And it is and it has nothing to do
with you unless you have a clearance. People with a clearance have signed
contracts and other documents that say "there are penalties involved if you
commit a security violation". One such security violation is "copying or
accessing classified information on unclassified systems". That's it. You see
where I am going hopefully.

You are a grunt on some army based working with crypto radios. You have a
clearance. You hope to work for the CIA or NSA maybe when you go back to
civilian life. News about leaks comes out. You browse HN or Reddit at work
during lunch. See news about leaks. Click and oops! you have just committed a
serious security violation. You are accessing classified information on an
unclassified system. This _could_ get you into trouble. If anything at least
when you are polygraphed if you apply to work at the 3 letter agencies later.

So think of this filtering as a "courtesy" to help them inadvertently break
some serious rules.

Now, does it sound silly and pedantic? Yes. Do I personally agree with this
interpretation? No. But that is how it is. And I think this is the reason for
filtering not that it tries to prevent oh I don't know an armed rebellion.

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temphn
This is exactly analogous to covering your eyes to make yourself invisible.
Covering DoD's eyes will not make these revelations go away.

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saw-lau
Northrop Grumman did a similar, but wider-ranging, thing a few weeks ago;
blocking _all_ sites classified as 'news.' This lasted a day or so.

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mpyne
Probably for the best, Guardian loads like shit on old versions of IE compared
to WaPo and even NYT.

~~~
mtgx
I think the State Department was moving to Chrome.

~~~
lostlogin
Ironic - Chrome only recently started supporting do not track didn't it?

~~~
Cthulhu_
Which is only a guideline that can safely be ignored by whoever wants to track
user behavior.

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llamataboot
Streisand effect

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jasiek
That doesn't make any sense. Don't their employees already have access to that
information?

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fsckin
They did the same thing after the collateral damage video was posted on
wikileaks.

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inthepink
How about bundle these up, sign them, and place them on a peer to peer
network?

~~~
TheCondor
Maybe donate and buy cryptome's DVD this year

