Posted on 12/03/2010 10:10:36 AM PST by Slyscribe
One big question following the leak of over 250,000 State Department cables this week is whether some in U.S. intelligence will argue for going back to the old way of doing things.
In other words, siloing classified or sensitive official information in secure computers at separate government, military and intelligence agencies and making it harder for anyone to access it at one time.
This is what the government did during the Cold War. The FBI, CIA and others jealously guarded their secrets, sometimes from each other.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.investors.com ...
Certainly there is a compromise between letting no one have access and letting a 21 Year Old PFC download entire data bases onto a CD?
No one needs to know everything.
Information is power, but it should be gained by effort and not forced out by dictate.
Information is knowledge, knowledge gained by labor is more conducive to the wise utilization of that knowledge.
MY military trasining taught me that there is something called "the need to know."
Might this also lead to Cold War punishment standards for treason? It turns out the Rosenburgs actually WERE guilty.
I’d like a return to executions for treason in the Army.
When I had a clearance, I went out of my way not to know classified information and steer clear of it. Just know enough to do my job. Luckily being a Sys Admin, it was easy to do. There was classified info on the systems but I didn’t know where to find it and didn’t ask and I told people that I prefer not to know it either. Safer that way and with human nature, you cannot blurt out what you don’t know !
One contract I was on, I knew quite a few safe combo’s and this was also the bad manager I worked for. He wanted me to have access to the COM-SEC safe and there are harsh audit requirements and I said no ! P!$$ed him off but I refused. When I went to my last contract position, I told one of the people that I don’t want to know any safe combos and I never got them in the two years there ! When I left, they didn’t have to change any of them since I didn’t know them.
> My military training taught me that there is something called “the need to know.”
Good! Why would we ever have compromised security to the extent that some freak with a grudge could collect so many secrets.
And after all we WON the cold War, right?
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