Posted on 11/28/2010 5:07:33 PM PST by PhilosopherStone1000
An innocuous-looking memory stick, no longer than a couple of fingernails, came into the hands of a Guardian reporter earlier this year. The device is so small it will hang easily on a keyring. But its contents will send shockwaves through the world's chancelleries and deliver what one official described as "an epic blow" to US diplomacy.
...
The US military believes it knows where the leak originated. A soldier, Bradley Manning, 22, has been held in solitary confinement for the last seven months and is facing a court martial in the new year. The former intelligence analyst is charged with unauthorised downloads of classified material while serving on an army base outside Baghdad. He is suspected of taking copies not only of the state department archive, but also of video of an Apache helicopter crew gunning down civilians in Baghdad, and hundreds of thousands of daily war logs from military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
The new Congress needs to hold hearings!
I agree that he may not have acted alone… he may very well have been assisted from various quarters. And that includes people above him with higher security clearances who may have been blackmailed, manipulated or even cooperated with foreign intelligence agencies of their own free will.
The way I see it, there are a bunch of equally plausible ways this may play out, and we may never find out the real one. This is a real mess.
Ask yourselves this question, if he did it himself, why has there not been any arrests for dereliction of duty for those who were asleep at the switch?
Excellent movie
This is the government that wants all our personal medical records to be stored as “securely” as our state department cables.
You just don’t walk into an open office and sign on to a secure communications link. The access to secure information and files is controlled in a Comm Center that is limited by access control. If it wasn’t, then there are far more people in trouble over this than Master Manning.
Yes...USB ports are still active on military computers...both on the SIPR and NIPR nets. Now...since the Chinese worm introduced via a thumb drive a couple of years ago...thumb drives have been banned...and if you get caught using them on a gov't computer you will get in big trouble. However...they are still functional. I have watched an army major transfer data from an army NIPR machine to an Army SIPR machine via a thumb drive...because he was too lazy to burn it to CD...and this was after the ban.
However...what I find more surpising about this story is they say the data/cables was up to the "SECRET/NOFORN" level. That really isn't that high of a classification. I have seen some on here question how does a PFC get ahold of that data...well...you HAVE to have a SECRET clearance in most cases just to get on the NIPR net. Matter of fact...if you are AD Air Force...if you CAN'T get at least a secret....you can't be IN...because you can't get on the NIPR. So...getting ahold of SECRET/NOFORN is not that big of a deal. I am SHOCKED that cables that are THIS sensative are ONLY secret/NOFORN. I would think something that could bring disgrace to the nation should be at least TS with a DoS tag or something like that. That is the definition of TS.
Right, that is pretty much the point I make in my post at number 59…
We can start drilling down into various conspiracies and possible explanations that go one layer 2 layers or 10 layers deep… but the simple fact that our security apparatus has been completely watered down and destroyed to the point that it is insignificant is equally plausible as any of those conspiracy theories.
There are a lot of 22-year-old people who understand computers very well, how they are defended, and how to gain access to them. Government agencies including the military, State Department, and nearly anything else are enormous bureaucracies with thousands and thousands of people who have to go through background checks etc.
I think the mistake that a lot of people make is what they see in the movies, and they think our portals to sensitive intelligence archives is guarded in ways that would require you to rappel down from a heating vent through lasers and various layers of wondrous technologically advanced motion detectors that would set off alarms and send guys in black coveralls wielding automatic weapons causing the intruder to fall into a moat containing sharks with frikken laser beams attached to their heads where they would converge on him and destroy him.
I think the reality is far more prosaic… it’s just humongous computer systems holding enormous amounts of data that thousands or tens of thousands of people have access to to varying degrees. In the process by which people are granted access is completely worthless and full of holes.
Yep. I work in medicine, and THAT Is precisely how I see it as well. This government is out of control.
What if you’re an Able Danger open-source coder who needs a patsy?
Depends on which federal system you are logged into.
Some monitor all users very carefully.
Others apparently do not.
Yes. So you see it as I do. The mechanisms governing classification of documents, the computer systems that they are being stored in, the process of granting various users access to that data, and the physical security and set up of those systems is very likely completely and totally hosed due to the enormous bureaucracy associated with managing this.
You sound like you get it… not that others don’t, but I just don’t think that is apparent to some people that that might very well be the root of the problem.
Or maybe this kid simply blackmailed someone for access...
This gay troop was downloading Lady Gaga. To me, that is the equivalent of telling as in Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.
Agreed. As another poster noted, perhaps the process of vetting documents and storing them allowed these documents of the sensitive nature to be stored in the damned system that was accessible to the State Department. One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that many in the State Department do not have the best interests of our country at heart at worst, and at best, are simply incompetent and using systems set up by people who are incompetent.
actually a bullet in the back of the head of treasonous entities, after a trial and being found guilty, would shortcircut this sort of behavior
That is absolutely 100% possible. This guy has a sexual affair with someone above them who to all external appearances is completely straight, a career military person and a family who has no idea.
Blackmail? That is an absolute possibility, and it is yet another reason why homosexuals should not be allowed to serve openly. I know that there are many who would say that if they were allowed to serve openly, that type of thing would not happen.
That is a pipe dream, because it assumes that because people are allowed to serve openly as homosexuals, it will matter if someone is a known homosexual or not. And that is far from the case.
I mean...I cannot TELL you (but I imagine that you know...or have experienced) how many secret/noforn briefs I have been in that showed up on CNN the next day. SECRET/NOFORN is the standard classification that all the intel weenies use...and most of the time...it should certainly be secret/relcan...or secret/relnato...
WHO in their right mind puts this stuff at secret?
According to Ya’acov Lodzowick, Julian Assange is anti-American. WikiLeaks does not expose the world’s most repressive regimes - where that would do a lot of good. Its embarrasses the greatest democracy in the world. That’s all you need to know about that outfit.
If this stuff was stored at the "SECRET/NOFORN" level...and he was an intel weenie...then he most likely had a TS clearance...and it would be a piece of cake for him to get it.
So...two things need to happen: 1) Hang him and 2) Figure out what idiot stored info that could be an epic blow to the US if released...at the SECRET level.
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