1
Welcome back, Wicket.

2
well...it's a good thing we [Bush] started the DHS...

3 I was surprised that it was just No Forn

4

Welcome home Ace - glad to see the bread crumbs worked!

5 Ace you cloth-eared dunce that's precisely what we do!

6
So much for the government trying to get us into a "9/12" world.

We're back to living in a 9/10/1901 world.

7 Oh: And hi again! I've missed you. We missed you too big guy. Hope your Thanksgiving was full of roast hobo and Valu-Rite.

8 Welcome back, ace!  It was great having the pinch-hitter bloggers, but the place isn't the same without you.   

Will you let us know what you did?  Did you move to permanent digs yet? 

9 Or, we could make the consequences of leaking the information so drastic that the incentive to leak would evaporate.   Seems to me we're awfully easy on these leakers.

10 Please tell me that 'over 3 million US government personnel' means every single Federal employee. Or are these only the "elite" 3 million?

11 Some kind of double checking all those who have access and download might be nice. Secure downloadable media might be nice. Clean rooms where this shit is downloaded would be nice. Better security checks would be nice, meaning less PC correct would be nice.

12 Ewok Dookie!

13
Speaking of our nation's secrets...

I know I'm not the only one who was sick to his stomach on election night in November 2008 at the thought of Barack Hussein Obama, David Axelrod, and Bill Ayers having full access to all our secrets.

14 Dude, he got dumped by his trannie hooker boyfriend. Who wouldn't become a traitor?

15 This is typical government incompetency. They go from one extreme to the other. Because known terrorists were not shared with the FBI we now allow entry level private access to sources, methods, and other top secret information for material that they have no specific purpose for accessing?

Because the FBI dropped the ball in following up on terrorists learning how to fly a plane but not land it we now share State Department inter-office top secret cables with everyone in the military with a clearance?

This is pure insanity and does not pass the smell test.

16 Could it be this easy? Am I missing something?

The part where that would be intelligent?

In all honesty, though, the problem isn't the process.  It's the people and the expectations of (and placed upon) those people.  I work with sensitive data pretty well all the time in my position (not national security, no, but sensitive enough to damage my employer if I chose to do so).  I know, however, that doing anything to betray the trust of my employer would end up, at minimum, with me fired and possibly sued.

These "low level" personnel know that nothing, or very little, will happen to them for leaking the information, however, so they have very few compunctions about so doing.  If they knew that they'd be thrown in military prison for the next 20 - 30 years for doing this kind of thing (and, yes, any specific leak could be tracked to its source), they'd be less likely to do it.  If we then ALSO classified WikiLeaks as an agency aiding and abetting Terrorist Organizations, we could actually shut them down relatively easily as well.

17 If Wikileaks Office blew up tonight, it might send a message

18 What the hell happened to the "Need to Know" requirement?  The HS yearbook committee has definitely taken over the US government, good grief!!!

19 Have no fear....Eric Holder said they're going to be looking into this. Looking into it, dithering and doing nothing will resolve everything

20 Is there tryptophan in hobo meat?

Welcome back.

21 Eric Holder said they're going to be looking into this.

Top men.  Top.  Men.

22

23 So much for the government trying to get us into a "9/12" world. We're back to living in a 9/10/1901 world. Posted by: Professor Soothsayer at November 29, 2010 12:17 PM (uFokq) Which is EXACTLY where the administration wants us to be. If you're paranoid enough you can read some really sinister stuff into this...

24 What the hell happened to the "Need to Know" requirement? The HS yearbook committee has definitely taken over the US government, good grief!!! Posted by: ColinC at November 29, 2010 12:25 PM (phZA1) It's still in force, but nobody is adaquately guarding the chicken farm from the foxes

25 It's been my general experience that 10% of the population is pure fucking nuts.  If 3,000,000 people have access, that would be 300,000 lunatics with access.  But let's assume that they screen out the obvious Alvin Greene type mental defectives.  So then if the pure fucking nuts rate is only, say, 0.001% (a very optimistic assumption I would think), that would still be 3000 pure fucking lunatics with access to all of our secrets.

26 #18 wikileaks is designed like the internet. There is no "central office", so while it would be symbolic, it wouldn't stop it. As another moron said one of the few positives of Julian Ass Sausage's total lack of responsibility with obviously classified materials is that the overwhelming bulk will mock Obama and Clinton for a while overseas. Being that we have to actually work with a lot of the nations we apparently insulted, that isn't even really much of a positive.

27 @Ace,

I think you are missing something. A piece of information that you or I may think is trivial and would never restrict can turn out to be very important indeed. And the opposite holds true as well.

Classification of information is incredibly difficult. I think that there is no answer, although there will certainly be refinements that can be made in light of this huge disclosure.

The internet has made this a much more complex issue. Before we had world-wide connectivity, the information was simply not physically available, so control was much easier. Now of course any hacker or disgruntled employee can disseminate anything to a huge audience.

28

Oh: And hi again! I've missed you.

Wish I could say the feeling is mutual, .  I'm kidding Ace, it will be good to see your posts (and double posts) again! 

18 If Wikileaks Office blew up tonight, it might send a message

Or if Julian Asshat was in some sort of "accident". 

Him and Private Manning have done incalculable damage to our intelligence networks.    Hang em' both.

29

If they had been allowed to ask the little ball-licker one simple question - "Are you now or have you ever been an homosexual?" - then none of this would ever have happened.

There's a reason that the APA used to classify homosexuality as a mental disease - these little @$$-f*ckers are so damned unstable that you can't trust 'em to walk and suck cock chew gum at the same time.

 

30 I agree that these sort of things have been treated too kindly.  Isn't this at least espionage?  Sabotage?  No one takes seriously an unenforced law. 

31 The ewok has returned.  Must have caught his limit on hobos.  That or ran out of val-u-rite.

32 wikileaks is designed like the internet. There is no "central office", so while it would be symbolic, it wouldn't stop it. As another moron said one of the few positives of Julian Ass Sausage's total lack of responsibility with obviously classified materials is that the overwhelming bulk will mock Obama and Clinton for a while overseas. Being that we have to actually work with a lot of the nations we apparently insulted, that isn't even really much of a positive. Posted by: CAC at November 29, 2010 12:27 PM (lV4Fs) Yeah i know that, but still maybe the server in Sweden, I think, might get infected or melt down.

33
What, you didn't realize how incompetent the intelligence departments in our govt were back in 2003 when we saw the likes of Colleen Rowley, that FBI moonbat twit from Minnesota, tell Congress we dropped the ball on the 20th hijacker?

34

"The only way this can work is if each person who sends a report creates three or four different versions of the same report. "

Would it be logical to assume the person sending the report is the same person doing the work?  The intelligence gatherers and operatives and so on?

I deal in traffic.  I help make sure cars can move down the road efficiently.  We rush around quite a bit in emergenc situatiosn sometimes, but most of the time it is pretty low key.  I have to imagine I have asolutly no where near the amount of stress of someone who works in national security; but even I hate reports.  I loath paperwork.  I am not alone, everyone of us who actually does stuff hates putting together reports.

My boss digs it, but he doesnt' actually do the work.

My point here is, the people who actually do the work make writting reports the very last thing they do...after vacations and sick leave and reading really smart military blogs.  It is just the way people are.  The people who write reports are probably not the same ones who did the work.

35 If the way the system is indeed designed to work it to allow a large number of people to use it without revealing it, that increases the need to harshly punish the leaker - specifically execution.

Out of three million, you will have not only those who would leak for ideologucal and financial gain  but those w3ho would be tempted to do it for fame.

Well, the best way to stop these people is guarantee a punishment  that will offset their perceived personal gain.

36 This is pure insanity and does not pass the smell test.

A lot of things we did immediately post 9/11 were insane and did not pass the smell test.  They need to be undone.

And, while I'll believe that "spy-types" are already doing this, are normal FBI Agents?  How about your average State-Department stenographer/trained-monkey?  I don't know (as in seriously: no clue).  But, based on the information I've heard (haven't had a chance to read it, yet) most of this is not stuff the government would really consider tippy-top-ultra-secret.

The fact that some internal docs refer to Imadinnerjacket as "Hitler?"  Well, okay, maybe not nice, but is it really surprising?

The fact that State is spying on the UN?  About freaking time, thankyouverymuch.

Iran bought ballistic missiles from N. Korea- bad, but not really surprising.

The problem with the leaks is not that they're so bad per se, its that they do several things all at once:

1) Prove the feckless incompetence of the Obama Administration
2) Prove to the world that their secrets are not safe with us.
3) Provide the Terrorists with additional weapons in their ongoing efforts to get other world governments to side with them and against us.

37

Assange and Manning?

 Hang them.  In public. 

38 Well, the best way to stop these people is guarantee a punishment that will offset their perceived personal gain. Posted by: 18-1 at November 29, 2010 12:30 PM (7BU4a) Jail them for life and blow up the family home like they used to do in Israel

39 9 Or, we could make the consequences of leaking the information so drastic that the incentive to leak would evaporate. Seems to me we're awfully easy on these leakers. Posted by: angler at November 29, 2010 12:19 PM (SwjAj) Actually the government IS pretty hard on leakers- look at Bob Hansen: life in SuperMax, under ground 23 hours a day. The problem is that the leakers all think alike: "sure they caught those other guys, but that's because they're all idiots, I'm not an idiot!" Leakers are a lot like socialists in that regard. Either that or they just don't give a d*mn about retribution.

40 I miss the open bloggers..

Even liked CAC's Art threads.. 

41 http://www.bradleymanning.org/

Keynote speakers included renowned peace activists and scholars Daniel Ellsberg, Col. Ann Wright (ret.), and Ray McGovern.  Over 250 supporters crammed the hall while hundreds more watched through the streaming webcast on MichaelMoore.com and Ustream.tv.


She was a passenger on the Challenger 1, which along with the Mavi Marmara, was part of the Gaza flotilla.

It was the JOOOOS!!!

42 Hmmm, maybe this is for the best. If 3M people have access, it'd be nearly impossible to figure out who leaked the info. So all of this becomes information that is available to the public. If there were any truly sensitive information, one could use a phone call (no transcript), or pgp encryption, or even an encrypted email account like hushmail. Ahahahhahahahaha! Like anyone in the government is that sharp. Crap, I just blew coffee scented snot bubbles all over my keyboard by making myself laugh. Mondays: where would we be without them?

43 Oh: And hi again! I've missed you.

Promises of pancakes were made.

44

It's been my general experience that 10% of the population is pure fucking nuts. If 3,000,000 people have access, that would be 300,000 lunatics with access. But let's assume that they screen out the obvious Alvin Greene type mental defectives. So then if the pure fucking nuts rate is only, say, 0.001% (a very optimistic assumption I would think), that would still be 3000 pure fucking lunatics with access to all of our secrets.

This.

Any of you silver-spoon types out there who have never come into close personal contact with mental illness - just thank your lucky stars.

Those fuckers will absolutely ruin your God-damned life and the lives of as many other people as they can figure out how to ruin.

If you value your happiness, then stay the hell away from the mentally ill.

 

45 Assange and Manning? Hang them. In public. Posted by: garrett at November 29, 2010 12:31 PM (vVqZy) Can we sell tickets and make a buck off of this?

46 There's got to be some middle ground here. Off the top of my head- how about allowing access to data as a searchable object, but getting the context requires some sort of approval?

For example, Private Numbskull can run a search on the name "Bob Smith" in the super, top secret DHS database. The query returns results that show something like "Bob Smith- [Agency that created the Record]- [Date]- [Topic of Record]".

So, now Private Numbskull can report to someone with a brain that, indeed, Bob Smith has a record on the database and provide them with a record number. Said person-with-a-brain can then request full access to the record from the appropriate agency, give the reason why and her/ her security clearance number.

Ta da! Records are secure from "anyone with a Lady Gaga CDR-W" and you have accountability for who accessed what for what reason. For the sake of expediency, you can let folks with high level security clearances have more carte-blanche access.

If I actually thought about this for more that 3 seconds, I could probably come up with something better.

47 ""Eric Holder said they're going to be looking into this.

Top men.  Top.  Men.""



Oh thats funny, I was thinking the same thing.

48 My question is.. Why the fuck would State Department cables ever in this world be allowed to get on to the same database as military info?  WTF?

Where the fuck is any crossover, even in the wildest stretch of imagination?

What it tells me is that we are so fucked over by all of the warring factions in the dozen or so intelligence departments that we are likely in worse shape than before 9/11.

49 Can't wait to see the hoops I might have to jump thru the next time i try to access a DOD computer? Thanks alot Wikileaks and you panzie soldier

50 If they had been allowed to ask the little ball-licker one simple question - "Are you now or have you ever been an homosexual?" - then none of this would ever have happened.

Well, the government has ignored Islamism and has had a few incidents of Sudden Jihad Syndrome, and they've ignored gay extremists like Manning and now may be paying the price for that too....

51 Oh: And welcome back, Ace!  Hope you are rested and recuperated..

52 did any of the leaks mention Plame ?

53 46 I've met about 3 compulsive liars and 1 or 2 kleptos in the Army. The mother fuckers would steal socks, pens and be caught red handed wearing other peoples shoes. Like not just big ticket items, small useless stuff.

54 So to sum it up, we're fucked.

55

We're back to living in a 9/10/1901 world.

Front page of the NY Trib, 9/11/1901:

"Great Plot Suspected. Gov't Takes a Hand in War on Anarchists."

Three days later, TR would be president.  Plus la change, baby. 

56 Screw all that unnecessary bureaucratic horseflop.

The threat of long term jail sentences will deter the majority of these punks. Slap them with 10+ year minimums for each and every memo leaked.

Issue international arrest warrants and offer huge bounties on the heads of the prime movers within wikileaks organization.

57 Can we sell tickets and make a buck off of this? Posted by: nevergiveup at November 29, 2010 12:32 PM (0GFWk) Unfortunately the Obama budget for the event will cost 10x more than the receipts off the sale... but they "could" have cost 11x more, so he saved money.

58 Front page of the NY Trib, 9/11/1901:

"Great Plot Suspected. Gov't Takes a Hand in War on Anarchists."

Three days later, TR would be president.  Plus la change, baby. 

Posted by: A Liberal Arts Major at November 29, 2010 12:36 PM (hrwMe)

Crazy/Evil never sleeps.

59 What the hell happened to the "Need to Know" requirement?

He was an intelligence analyst -- that was his effen job.

60 I think you are missing something. A piece of information that you or I may think is trivial and would never restrict can turn out to be very important indeed. And the opposite holds true as well.

Classification of information is incredibly difficult.

This.  The classification of information often involves a number of variables, may not have a lower classification equivalent, and information with the same classification level may not have the same distribution.  This is especially true when it comes to the release of information to foreign governments.  As a result, requiring the person who writes the original Top Secret report to write multiple copies of the report to satisfy different classification requirements would be a nightmare waste of time and effort.

61
Posted by: Damiano
----------

Naaah.. those ideas were rejected early on as being too "practical"..

62

Can we sell tickets and make a buck off of this?

No tickets, admission should be free but concession sales are fine with me. 

63
That's interesting. Anarchy was all the rage back then; very fashionable.

Who were those two perverted cocksuckers who killed that boy? Leopold & Lowe?

It was chic to support them way back then.

The more things change...the more things stay the same.

64 #61 (continued)

He even had access to JAG files. Yeah, even.

65
And there were those Italian anarchists who bombed Wall Street.

They (He) were treated like heroes, too.

66 First I don't understand how the network did not show such huge downloads taking place.  That's a tip off right there.  Secondly, quickly relieving the person who steals classified information and the person who releases it from the ability to steal our precious oxygen would be a great deterrent.

67

Where the fuck is any crossover, even in the wildest stretch of imagination?

There is plenty--Afghanistan/Iraq...ring a bell?  Quit hyperventilating.

I said in the morning thread (welcome back, Ewok) that we need some better security algorithms about who is accessing what and to what extent.  The fact that Manning could makes copies of gigabytes worth of individually small files without resulting in loud whooping sounds and flashing red lights should be the alarming thing here, not the access itself.

 

68 I find it hard to believe that there isn't some electronic library card available that keeps track of who is accessing what material and when they do it.  Set a trip threshold and lock out their access when someone downloads files or information outside of their specialty more than the prescribed "incidental" limit.  It should be relatively easy to electronically know when a forward deployed Army PFC reads state department cables and when a low level diplomat in Prague is accessing detailed battlefield reports. 

69

The mother fuckers would steal socks, pens and be caught red handed wearing other peoples shoes. Like not just big ticket items, small useless stuff.

Right - they don't do it out of any Dickensian "orphans-starving-in-the-streets" sense of biological urgency or necessity [i.e. steal or starve].

They do it because they are evil, sadistic bastards who seize every single opportunity [that presents itself] to make other people suffer a living hell.

My guess would be that in a real [shooting] war, a significant percentage of them get fragged as soon as possible.

STAY AWAY FROM THE MENTALLY ILL.

THEY WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE.

 

70 We should put anyone with access to confidential data through a naked scanner.

That should do the trick.

71

"anyone with a Lady Gaga CDR-W"

I went to see GWAR this weekend and they Slaughtered Lady Gaga on stage after making her eat her own feces.  

Good Times.

72 Maybe the Feds can utilize the software program from the State Department that reports any employee who looks at Obama's and other celebrities passport records. Funny how that was found and prosecuted quickly, isn't it?

73

Three million? I call bullshit.  That's probbaly the total number of people who have that kind of clearance, but actual acess?

74 Posted by: Circa
-------
Sorry, I don't buy it.  A low-level military analyst having access to upper level State Department communiques?  Ridiculous.

75 It should be relatively easy to electronically know when a forward deployed Army PFC reads state department cables and when a low level diplomat in Prague is accessing detailed battlefield reports. 

Posted by: 2549 at November 29, 2010 12:41 PM (kvxPn)

Oh, I'm sorry, I clicked on the wrong URL.

76

Assange and Manning?

 Hang them.  In public. 

Posted by: garrett at November 29, 2010 12:31 PM (vVqZy)

That was my thought too. Those 2 sons of bitches should be swinging from the end of a rope right now. How is Manning not under arrest?

77 BTW, I should make it clear, you need both the security clearance AND the need to know . . . the latter being something those three million don't have.  Assuming the rules are being followed, of course.

78 I wonder exactly how much damage the stupid "Let's cover up for past failures" aka The 9/11 Commission did, long term.

Instead of coming out and saying: "People, including Previous Presidents, did not take Islamic Terror seriously enough.  We need to take Islamic Terror more seriously and find effective ways to combat them" they had to take hundreds of pages to avoid making any hard accusations- a lot of that same mentality (since the DHS came into existence before the Commission's report was completed) went into this same problem: rather than say "Hey, INS, why aren't you deporting: or at least investigating, people who over-stay their student Visas?" They say that "information couldn't be shared." 

Given that the Goerhelick (sp?) wall was mostly a "Cover up for Clinton" thing, it could simply have been removed without also mandating so much loosening of security standards.

So, how about this: when the FBI asks INS or CIA for information, INS or CIA provides them with that information and logs what they gave, to who, and why.  Now, the FBI doesn't have carte blanche access to everything the other departments have, but they can get the information they need in a relatively time-effective manner.

And re-institute CIA Wet works teams.

79 The stock of Double-Post Inc just went through the roof!

80

Three million? I call bullshit.  That's probbaly the total number of people who have that kind of clearance, but actual acess?

Posted by: TRO at November 29, 2010 12:44 PM (DZXKW)

This. 

Plus the vast majority of low-level types, and most of the mid-level types wouldn't even know how to access it even if they did have access.

81

Yay, you're back! *glomps*

What I'm wondering is why no one noticed Manning's behavior earlier...the guy clearly has some serious issues. Jeez, have you read his old journal where he's constantly referring to himself in the 3rd person?

82

What I'm wondering is why no one noticed Manning's behavior earlier...the guy clearly has some serious issues. Jeez, have you read his old journal where he's constantly referring to himself in the 3rd person?

Posted by: EmilyM. at November 29, 2010 12:48 PM (jVGvd)

What's the big deal?

83 Yes, Ace, you are missing something.

You expect competency from the incompetent. 

84
Can't wait for Jon Stewart to tackle this story tonight and mug for the camera after he rolls his eyes at government incompetence!

85 The fact that Manning could makes copies of gigabytes worth of individually small files without resulting in loud whooping sounds and flashing red lights should be the alarming thing here, not the access itself.

Posted by: Circa (Insert Year Here) at November 29, 2010 12:41 PM (B+qrE)

Look, I was sure there was intel in there on the General's request for (whatever).  If you don't want me to do my damn job, tell him.

86 Manning is under arrest. He was just shipped to a DC facility from an Army pen in Kuwait. Per this morning's story from the UK Independent (I think).

87 From this point forward, I've classified my Junk Scans as "Eyes Only."

Baby.

88

This happens because too many people today don't enforce the current rules.  Those of us with clearances have seen probably numerous times where a cell phone will ring in the middle of a secure brief when you were supposed to leave your cell phone in the car or at the duty desk.  Does that guy ever get hammered with a violation?  Rarely.  Gotta follow the current rules, make violators pay dearly and tighten up access.  That's the road ahead.  Also, we have too many redundant organizations that need to be chopped.

89 "STAY AWAY FROM THE MENTALLY ILL.

THEY WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE."

 

What? I can't hear you with these severed penises in my mouth.

90

Maybe the Feds can utilize the software program from the State Department that reports any employee who looks at Obama's and other celebrities passport records. Funny how that was found and prosecuted quickly, isn't it?

For the record, that was Obama's own man, John Brennan, who was making sure that there was no record of Obama having travelled on an Indonesian passport after his 18th birthday.

Not only was Brennan not prosecuted [he is now "Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism" and "Assistant to the President"], but the associated murder of the Lt. Quarles Harris Jr. remains unsolved.

[Just as the murder of Trinity Choir Director Donald Young remains unsolved...]

91 "More than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material..." I wonder if that is just a poorly-written sentence, and that the reality is that more than 3 million people were cleared to access *at least one of the documents* that were leaked, but not necessarily all of them. That would make more sense to me, and wouldn't be surprising given the quantity of documents that were leaked. Because if there really are around 3 million people who were already cleared to access the entire portfolio of private diplomatic cables that were just leaked, then yeah that's crazy and a problem in itself.

92

Sorry, I don't buy it.  A low-level military analyst having access to upper level State Department communiques?  Ridiculous.

In theory--I agree.

However, with the relatively simple classification tree and the melding of different systems (some within the same agency), the path of least resistance was chosen since time was of the essence after 9/11.

We can put tech fixes in place realtively easilty to ring alarms when someone does something weird with files, but I'm not sure that we can develop the kind of tailored "need to know" exclusions that everyone seems to want.

93 What I'm wondering is why no one noticed Manning's behavior earlier...the guy clearly has some serious issues. Jeez, have you read his old journal where he's constantly referring to himself in the 3rd person? Posted by: EmilyM. at November 29, 2010 12:48 PM (jVGvd) Agree strongly! The ONLY way to keep would-be leakers from leaking information is to PROFILE them. Remember the magic word: "MICE" for Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego. Anybody who applies for a security clearance should be completely vetted AND PROFILED along each one of these issues. If there's a problem with any of the issues no clearance.

94 "On top of that, the huge number of people thus required to process all this information and choose the appropriate classification levels and need-to-know protocols becomes the next big security risk, since each of these people could leak their little treasure trove, if they wanted. And they would all be sort of low-level, marginal sort of employees, not professional spymasters, because do you want your top professional spy-guys out collecting and analyzing information or do you want them sitting in a cubicle in a huge room making routine classification decisions?"

Not true, Ace.  It's not a huge number of people selecting the eyes and the people that handle them aren't low-level and marginal.

95 He was an intelligence analyst -- that was his effen job. Posted by: more than just a whistleblower at November 29, 2010 12:37 PM (ZJhGK) More likely he was a gofer for a real analyst

96 What sort of bloated clusterbang do we have in government when so many people have access to this information. If you told me there were 3 million federal employees TOTAL - as in - THAT'S EVERYONE ON FED PAYROLL, I'd shit! That's 1 federal employee per 100 citizens. 1% and STILL TO MUCH! But, this 3 million are just those with access. WTF!

97 "I went to see GWAR this weekend and they Slaughtered Lady Gaga on stage after making her eat her own feces. " I love seeing GWAR in concert. When I saw them last they decapitated the Pope, had sex with a dead dog, and must've used 200 gallons of fake blood both on stage and also to hose down the audience.

98 Posted by: Lincolntf at November 29, 2010 12:55 PM (Z6Mgb)

I believe that he's been at Quantico for months.

99

77, 84, I'm with you. I had a Confidential-Sensitive rating for years, and there was no way in hell I could get access to anything outside my specialty.

The military and federal law enforcement, similarly, could not get at my stuff. When they needed something, they'd have to call, hat in hand as it were, and we would talk all around why they needed it and how I knew it, both sharing as little as possible, in the friendliest possible way. One never knowingly obstructed their mission, but both parties thought it to be in the best tradition of civil service not to get all fraternal either. 

I will suggest forcefully that it was the stylishness of agency-wide conversions to corporate IT platforms that opened all these portals. My department had its own leased cabling, its own physical storage site, and its own tape silos. Never the twain met. When all that went onto a windowsy-looking thing (ancient history now), a handful of us pounded various tables with various fists and used the term "spreading our legs." It's so long ago: I threatened that someday a disaffected contractor would walk out the security gate with a film can under his arm...

Needless to say such concerns were not considered a career enhancer.  

 

 

100 If a site like megaupload can limit not just how much you download and speed based simply on IP address the government ought to be able to do that at least. The idea that anybody, even with clearance, can download more than a few hundred MBs at most with out a big flag going up with computer security is ridiculous.

101 Posted by: nevergiveup at November 29, 2010 12:59 PM (0GFWk)

Yeah, basically a paralegal, I suppose.

102

Welcome back, Ace.

 

Obama's not mad that Wikileaks will hurt America. He's been doing that all along. He's mad that they might hurt Obama.

103 ace: "The raw versions of the reports wouldn't even be digitally accessible." Of course they would. Nothing is done on pencil and paper now. The original rough draft is digital, the completed version is digital, all the redacted versions are digital. It's just the way it is.

104 Can't wait for Jon Stewart to tackle this story tonight and mug for the camera after he rolls his eyes at government incompetence!

Yes, and the results will be that I'm so much more smarter than you right-wingers.

105  I've read a bunch of stories today, and they're all blending together, but this
 is the quote from today's Telegraph in the UK.

"...Yesterday Mr Manning, who is reportedly on suicide watch, was transferred from a military jail in Kuwait to a prison in Washington DC, as the Pentagon called in the FBI to assist in the hunt for the source of the leak...."

http://tinyurl.com/2be6lb9

106
yes, because intelligence "analysts" are usually lowly privates.

No college degree. Who needs that shit when you're only analyzing secret intelligence data?

107
So what was Manning, really?

A clerk? A filer?

108 Politely raises hand and clears throat. If 3 million people had access to this information why is it only one lonely, love spurned homosexual male stationed in a foreign land the only one who 'leaked' the information?

C'mon give 3 million people access to that type of information and the odds are better then Willie the Wino winning the lottery of somebody trying to make a name for themselves.

109

The idea that anybody, even with clearance, can download more than a few hundred MBs at most with out a big flag going up with computer security is ridiculous.

'Zactly.

110

Within the military at least, creating varying levels of classification for the same document is relatively easy. Within any given classified document, each page and paragraph is marked at the appropriate level. For example, if an entire book contained one sentence that was Secret, that paragraph would be labelled with a (S) before it and the entire book would be classified at the highest level it contains. This makes it very easy to simple scrub a document, remove any paragraph that is classified, and create an unclassified document for release. This happens all the time within the military.

However, this sytem has no bearing on databases which contain the full classified documents - they have to be kept somewhere. The problem lies with accessability and enforcement of standards. There are strict rules that must be followed when accessing secure systems, and especially when dealing with removable media, such as a CD-ROM (in fact, many terminals don't even have a CD drive at all).

111 How is Manning not under arrest?

Posted by: TheQuietMan at November 29, 2010 12:45 PM (92heR)

He has been under arrest since July.

112 @112 - I think that's part of what people are saying: there's a difference between "clearance" and "access."  In theory, if the rules are being enforced, that 3M number is not actually representative of the number of people who actually have "access" to the data.

That is, if I'm reading others' comments correctly.

113 Politely raises hand and clears throat. If 3 million people had access to this information why is it only one lonely, love spurned homosexual male stationed in a foreign land the only one who 'leaked' the information?

C'mon give 3 million people access to that type of information and the odds are better then Willie the Wino winning the lottery of somebody trying to make a name for themselves.

Posted by: Maxwell Smart

 

Missed that observation by this much.

114 Daniel Ellsberg

J William Fullbright - (Clinton's mentor)

George McGovern

Mike Gravel

Freedom-friendly names from the past.

Watch for a DOJ mistrial.

115 Hillary news conference on now, blabbing about Wikileaks.

116 Intelligence Analyst MOS 96B-

Prepares all source intelligence products to support the combat commander. Assists in establishing and maintaining systematic, cross-referenced intelligence records and files. Receives and processes incoming reports and messages. Assists in determining significance and reliability of incoming information. Assists in integrating incoming information with current intelligence holdings and prepares and maintains the situation map. Assists in the analysis and evaluation of intelligence holdings to determine changes in enemy capabilities, vulnerabilities, and probable courses of action. Assists in the preparation of Order of Battle records using information from all sources and in the preparation of strength estimates of enemy units. Assembles and proofreads intelligence reports and assists in consolidating them into military intelligence. Prepares Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB) products.

117

Intelligence Analyst MOS 96B

If you have read Sebag-Montefiore on Stalin, or Chang & Halliday on Mao, then you know that these low-level-grunt traitors are absolutely essential in a megalomaniac's drive to seize & maintain & project power.

Mao had guys like this throughout Chiang Kai-Shek's organization, and during WWII, Stalin even had guys like this in the Japanese high command.

 

118 Posted by: Lindsey Grahamnesty licking Rahm Emanuel's salty shaven balls at November 29, 2010 01:27 PM (pfMMA)

We've kept an innocent pout pounder in hell all these weeks.

119
"Over 250 supporters crammed the hall while hundreds more watched through the streaming webcast ..."

It looks like Michael Moore is continuing his rapid descent into utter irrelevance. It must be a pretty tiny hall if it's "crammed" by only 250 people. And "hundreds" watching on a webcast? Reruns of "My Mother The Car" would draw a larger audience.

120 If this information made Bush bad these same idiots would be silent on the issue. To bad Obama time to face the piper you ball-less wonder !!!

121 Posted by: A Liberal Arts Major

Thanks for your insider view.. Too bad no one listened!

The world of computing and networks has changed so drastically  in the last decade or so.. it is almost inconceivable that security measures (especially for sensitive government and military data) haven't kept up.

Removing a Gig of data 10-15 years ago would have been an all day project.. one that would not have gone undetected in an environment with the least bit of supervision.. nowadays it can be done in seconds.

122 The same grunt who uploaded all this info to a flashdrive could have downloaded a virus into those same computers. Stuxnet anyone? Based on these events and China diverting high-level government internet functions at will, it is clear our government is completely unsecured from a computer standpoint.

123 The fundamental component of security is loyalty. If these Wikileaks-feeding douchebags were truly loyal American civil servants and soldiers, they would not be blithely dumping classified information out there. Those idiots are screwing with us and the rest of the free world so they can "speak truth to power" or prove their own self-righteousness, or something.

Not that I have a lot of sympathy for Shrillary and Obummer anyway. The Left has been applauding leaks of sensitive information since the Pentagon Papers. During Dubya's terms they were encouraging news media leaks and personal disclosures along the Valerie Plame line. This time they are the ones getting burned, and apparently they now think leaks are wrong. It sucks whenit's on you, eh libtards?

124 Ace, hope you and the other guys and gals had a little R & R. Glad to have you back; the posts are rolling again! 

125

Soooooooooooooo... Because it affects the "Chosen One" it is time to prosecute.  Typical Commie BS !!!!!!

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Justice Department will prosecute anyone found to have violated U.S. law in the leaks of classified government documents by online whistleblower WikiLeaks, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday.

"This is not saber-rattling," said the attorney general, who declared that the Obama administration condemns the leaks.

Holder said the latest disclosure, involving classified State Department documents, puts at risk the security of the nation, its diplomats, intelligence assets and U.S. relationships with foreign governments.

"To the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law, who put at risk the assets and the people I have described, they will be held responsible; they will be held accountable," Holder said at a news conference on another topic. He called the WikiLeaks probe "an active, ongoing criminal investigation."

126 Ace, glad you're back. Missed you and your typos. I understand several hobos have gone missing lately.

127 I'm pissed there's 3M feds...

128 The same grunt who uploaded all this info to a flashdrive could have downloaded a virus into those same computers. Posted by: Chicago Jedi at November 29, 2010 01:49 PM (WZFkG)

He didn't use a flashdrive -- that is illegal and would have been noticed/detected.  He used CD-ROM. He was allowed to listen to music on a classified PC and that's what they thought he was doing.

129 Ace, what you are missing is simple: one of that small select group of people has to go TDY.... and the general wants a follow-up tomorrow. So select-guy asks his assistant to pull it together. Assistant has the clearance, so he gets the access.... and since this is going to happen again, he keeps it. Pretty soon, lots of people have access... and any given access on any given day is "just checking my facts before the briefing", etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseam, ad infinitum nauseam....

130 As far as being able to detect when you start downloading massive amounts of data...

Here I am, sitting in a hotel room in Melbourne, Australia, reading posts by other morons.  It's slow now, because if you exceed 100Mb per day the hotel will charge you a premium download rate if you wish to continue to download at the higher bandwidth.  I opted out.

If a commercial program can monitor by download rate and the amount I download, why can't State and the DoD?

131 Posted by: John P. Squibob at November 29, 2010 02:31 PM (Y49HJ)

Assists in the preparation of Order of Battle records using information from all sources and in the preparation of strength estimates of enemy units.

132 62 Exactly, and 110 -- kiss my fat, old ass.  Most of those "non college educated privates" as you so sneeringly put it are, if you would notice, not leaking information (and as I have repeatedly said: Manning is not unique -- there have been others, often higher ups, who have leaked information).  I bet they do a better job with our country's secrets than a lot of those special college educated peers of theirs (no offense to anybody whose kid is in college, but don't be offensive to those "privates" Soothsayer seems to want to go all John Kerry on).

133
Damn, he's back from his weekend Gitmo's...

134

And I would say to a certain extent the egg is on the face of SD right now -- and our nonmil intelligence agencies.  They can't get a freakng handle on the Wikileaks folks, who else are they doing a piss poor job of tracking?

Manning was just the stupid, traitorous patsy -- execute him and be done with it after you pull what info out of him that you can; Wiki are the ones doing the leaking -- and State and the rest are not keeping an eye out for who is shopping around for this sort of information (I'm sure we have worse than Wikifreaks wanting a taste).  Talk about playing catch up.  And Hillary is looking as incompetent as frak (of course, what's new).

135 There's transparent government, and then there's transparent government!

136 And whoever was in charge of his shop needs their ass on a plate right now.

137 99 No, he was a real analyst.

138
So, we hang the traitor, and stream the live video of it via Wikileaks? I'd go so far as to make it mandatory viewing by those 3 million with access: this is what happens if you purposely leak this shit.

139

144 Other than we don't hang people anymore (I don't think) yeah -- patsy or no, he's a traitor, and deserves a traitor's punishment.

Although part of me has a sneaking hunch he isn't the only leak, no matter what Wikifreaks say.

140 Assange and Manning are known. People need to start disappearing who have had more than momentary conversations with those two -- people who gave them material support, fellow travelers, arrangers and fixers, info fences....

This needs to continue until the only proper response to "*ring*, *ring*, Hello, it's Assange...." is "Jesus Christ! *click*" -- followed immediately by the phone being ripped off the wall or the cell phone dropped into the nearest body of water. If Assange walks into an office building and asks to speak to an individual, that individual's first thought should be to bail out a back door.

Only after all his accomplices and enablers are cut off, should he picked up.

141 Nice to have you back.

142 The converse to everything said here is that your average private in the Army isn't going to be sifting through millions of diplomatic cables looking for the clue to the next terrorist attack. Too much data can be just as bad as no data at all. I don't see any reason why this day-to-day State Department banter should be available to a PFC in the Army. If there is a compelling reason, then grant mid-level officers easy access to it, allow them to share the information with subordinates freely or grant subordinates access to the system, and cut down on the number of disgruntled gay privates who are more likely to unilaterally leak information than prevent terrorist atrocities. I also don't understand why it's been so difficult for law enforcement to definitively finger Manning. Don't these systems identify those who logged into them, the date, and the computer used? Really, rather than have redactors tediously sort through the junk, they just need to rethink their whole system of information classification and sharing. Hire a solid, sensible security consultant like Bruce Schneier to develop a better system.

143 And on a positive note, 2,999,999 didn't do a damn thing with that access.

144 Asked why such sensitive material was posted on a network accessible to thousands of government employees, the state department spokesman told the Guardian: "Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is such an ignorant dolt that we pretty much do as we please with the sensitive material, and she really doesn't care about it one way or another."

145 Skipping forward so forgive me if this has been addressed. He was allowed to listen to music on a classified PC and that's what they thought he was doing. He shouldn't have been allowed. No MP3 players, thumb drives, etc. on classified PCs. Hell, you can't even bring your cellphone into a SCIF. These "low level" personnel know that nothing, or very little, will happen to them for leaking the information, however, so they have very few compunctions about so doing. This is simply not the case. The consequences for revealing classified information are very severe - anywhere from losing your job to serving a life sentence. Moreover, when you are granted a clearance you agree that you will never - not even on your deathbed - reveal the classified information. It can take anywhere from six months to two years to be granted a security clearance. The government basically sticks a microscope up your ass and the ass of nearly everyone in your family. Clearances can cost thousands of dollars. Moreover, there are multiple levels of clearances - from secret to Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information with Full Scope Polygraph - which restrict or grant access based upon sensitivity of information. "asked why such sensitive material was posted on a network accessible to thousands of government employees" Which network? You've got NIPRnet - used to exchange sensitive but unclassified information between "internal" users as well as providing users access to the Internet; SIPRnet - used by DoD and State to transmit secret information and basically the classified version of the internet; and JWICS - which is used chiefly by the intelligence community to transmit TS and SCI info. SCI info is processed and used only in a facility called a SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility), the construction and operation of which is very, very tightly controlled. As in, you can't even walk in to empty the garbage pails unless you're cleared to that level. My point, and I do have one, is that clearances are not handed out like candy bars on Halloween. Those to whom the clearances are granted are told in no uncertain terms just how painful life can be if leaks happen - intentionally or otherwise. Anyone who has to have even the most tangential access to classified info - even the payroll clerks and the budget analysts - need to have security clearances.

146 No the solution is no computers that handle classified Info should have any kind of removable media drive installed, have one maybe two computers that do have the drives and have them in a locked controlled space with only one or two people having access as I recall the little assweasel walked into the scif with his cd's of music and a few CDRW's underneath them.

147 Listen to MDH3. He knows of which he speaks.

The part that seems to be escaping most analysis I've seen online is that it could have been much worse.

Looking at what was leaked, the highest classification was not all that high. And the reason Manning didn't leak the super secret squirrel stuff was because he didn't have access to it. Sure, it's embarrassing. And it will have some minor long-term consequences. But it's not like he uploaded a copy of Area 51's yearly report.

That idea of multiple versions of a document at different classifications? Already done. That's not the problem. The problem is that an untrustworthy asshat had access.

148 The asics running is a hot seller this year.The new asics gel shoes is on hot sale.