Posted on 07/11/2013 4:16:11 PM PDT by Barry Cratus
From a U.S. DoD command to its employees, who have clearances to look at classified material:
All Hands,
WARNING: CLASSIFIED INFO ON PUBLIC WEB SITE - DO NOT OPEN!!
There is a posting on "The Washington Post" home page titled "The NSA slide you have never seen" and another on the Drudge Report titled "Upstream: US Taps Undersea Cables." DO NOT click on either of these links, 'cut and paste' the website address into another browser, or view by any other means, as this will cause a classified spillage or an incident, based on from where you accessed the information. Please note required actions below, based on if/where you accessed the article, website or information via any means.
A. Govt computers, equip. (inclusive of PEDs, etc.) or any computers/equipment used for official government business
- If you have accessed the article, website, or viewed the informatin via any means, please consult your Department Security Representative (DSR) or Department Information Office (DIO) immediately to begin filling out an Electronic Spillage Action Form (ESAF).
B. Home computers or any other equipment, including PEDs, etc. (not GFE or not used for official govt business)
- If you have accessed the article, Website or viewed the info via any means, please.....
(Excerpt) Read more at defense.gov ...
In this bizarro world, U.S. secrets on Wikileaks and other publicly accessible sites are forbidden to federal DoD employees who hold clearances and are empowered, generally speaking, to view classified material while that material is held in controlled workspaces.
Although this note does not say so, we have also been told that we are required to refrain from looking at this material from our personally owned computers at home.
The fear is spillage, i.e., the placement of classified material on a government device not approved to hold it.
This is madness.
This has happened before. I seem to remember that notice a couple of times before retiring (11 yrs ago).
American secrets, plans and weapons are ONLY
for the Moslem Brotherhood and al Qaeda
under the undocumented First Moslem Marxist.
Either you take classified material seriously or you don’t. It isn’t worth the hassle to make a “mistake” with it.
Personally, although I’ve worked in the nuke field, most of the classified material I’ve seen wouldn’t be worth 7 cents a pound as parrot cage lining. I think loads of stuff is classified “just because”.
Exec Order 13526, I think, is where this stems from. Just because classified information has been disclose does not mean that it’s been declassified. Clearance holders are still bound by the agreements they signed upon obtaining their clearances.
Fwiw.
There's no fear. You signed an agreement that forbids mishandling of classified material regardless of where you think the material came from. It is very simple, either you adhere to the agreement or you do not.
Then whole net is shut down.
Each computer is purged just in case.
No backups —they are compromised too.
Takes lots of time.
Meanwhile, get back to work... How?
A person I know cabled me the order this very day. Isn’t this akin to locking the barn door.....?
There are two pieces to being able to access classified information.
The first is that a person is cleared at the appropriate level. The second is need to know. The people targeted in this email may have the former, but due to how classified projects are compartmented probably (almost certainly) do not have the latter.
So would this mean that someone accessing FR from home would have to report it if they saw a page posted in a thread comment ?
Egads....
Yes, it can be seen that way. But it doesn’t remove the obligations and responsibilities of those granted clearances. Or the duty to keep the material off of the non classified internal networks.
Additionally, it serves as a deterrant to people mass remailing the classified info to peers etc.
“Although this note does not say so, we have also been told that we are required to refrain from looking at this material from our personally owned computers at home. The fear is spillage, i.e., the placement of classified material on a government device not approved to hold it.
This is madness. “
I was on classified projects and this is consistent. They don’t want you confirming anything. Just because it’s out there and it’s right doesn’t mean the other team believes it. Corroboration is incredibly useful.
Not a web page link, but an actual document page....
The full interpretive directive above truncates ... and the link goes to the Dod.gov main page (I think, can’t get it to open right on my smartphone) so I can’t see what it says to do wrt personal devices. My guess is that yes: if you are a clearance holder and see a jpg of a classified document on the internet you are obligated to report it. But again I’d have to see the directive text beyond where it cuts off.
When an employee or a military assignee is granted a TS/SI (and above) clearance, he or she signs the oath that they will never divulge classified information to unauthorized recipients. Snowden broke that oath. Off with his head.
Yup.
The reasoning I have heard is:
A. that you may see something classified for a program on which you are not cleared
B. you may discuss something you saw online and reveal MORE classified information
C. seeing confidential data from multiple sources + what you already know = knowing a top secret bigger picture
D. seeing classified data online and saying that it is classified to others may lead to others knowing what IS classified, valuable information to those doing intelligence work
Re: items B and D
And if the page already has secret plastered all over it and some Wikileaks (insert pejorative descriptive here) has put it up on the web and there’s links all over the web to it..... and one of those links winds up on a thread here....
And the viewer says to themselves “egads”, navigates away, and forgets exactly what they saw, just where they saw it....
Not sure what gets done in that case....
> Yup.
You didn't mishandle it. You stumbled upon it.
Furthermore, for all you or anybody else knows, it is merely a document with classification labeling. This means nothing to you or anybody else except the few who are read-in to the program.
And lest we forget, literally every single person in the entire world of five billion people, can examine it and hold it on their hard drive and print it without consequence, while you, the cleared employee, with (after taking some steps) permission to view it and hold it, are forbidden to do so and subject to (kinda) serious consequences.
Furthermore, if some unfortunate cleared person happens to stumble upon an item with classified labeling, that org and its IT shop will now go through the ridiculous and unnecessary spasm of wiping entire systems cleans, instead of simply deleting the few occurrences.
You want to screw up the DoD? Here's what you do: send an email with the words "top secret" in it to several mailing lists of DoD employees and DoD contractors.
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