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I wonder whether or not there should be a rule on HN about linking to classified information. I am an extremely harsh critic of the american security state and
by ixtli 9y ago
I wonder whether or not there should be a rule on HN about linking to classified information. I am an extremely harsh critic of the american security state and the IC in general, but lower level employees can be fired or even charged with crimes for viewing things they're not supposed to and I don't think its right to disregard the effect on the individual. Obviously, in this case, it's only a single word, but i've seen leaked docs here before.
- jadedhacker 9y agoI understand your concerns, but we can't not publicize the information, that would violate the public interest. These leaks have little effect if they are not broadly distributed. However, out of concern for individual workers in the bureaucracy, I would support a tag on such stories to warn them before clicking. EDIT: On reading the other comments here, I don't think even a tag is warranted for this story as no leaking has occurred.
- lifeformed 9y agoI guess a "NSFW" tag technically fits - it's not something 100% safe to view at work.
- jadedhacker 9y agoI would prefer something like (LEAK) or (CLASSIFIED LEAK). NSFW means that many ordinary people that aren't subject to the logical contradictions of the classification system won't look because they think it's porn or something.
- astura 9y agoNSFW isn't enough, if you possess a security clearance it's not safe to view at home either as 1) you can't access classified information if you don't have a need-to-know and 2) you aren't authorized to access classified information from an unclassified computer.
- timb07 9y agoNothing has been leaked here. The source document has been publicly released. Insufficient care has been taken in redacting parts of the document. Responsibility for that falls to whoever redacted the document, not for whoever was able to deduce the redacted content.
- ixtli 9y agoAh. I wasn't aware that the source document had already been released. But whether or not someone could get in trouble for viewing an un-redacted doc is an open question afaict. The quality of the redaction probably doesn't matter.
- willstrafach 9y agoI agree with you regarding this in general, maybe a tag would be useful, but in this case the president has declassified the source document. The attempts to guess what was redacted would not count as classified information.
- ixtli 9y agoAbsolutely. This wasn't the best hill to plant this flag on but it's still something I think the community should be aware of. It was more applicable when people were linking directly to wikileaks dumps for thousands of indexed, TS docs.
- sneak 9y agoIf you’re extremely harsh on the IC in general, then you wouldn’t be saying this. Those people chose to get those clearances, and voluntarily agreed to ridiculous and insane terms like “reading things other people say I can’t is now grounds to put me in jail”. Such people do not deserve special workarounds by the rest of society because of their terribly poor judgement.
- ixtli 9y agoNah i just differentiate between the thing and its components. Would we see it as some great victory towards disarming the surveillance state if someone clicked on a link and happened to get caught for it? Thats a very "spray'n'pray" sort of approach which I think could do more damage than it's worth.
- willstrafach 9y agoReading classified things will not be grounds to put anyone in jail. Not sure where you got that.
- ixtli 9y agoI have some old friends that work in the american intelligence community (CIA, NRO, etc.) and they've explained to me that you consent to a lot of things when you join the military and get clearance that don't apply to civilians. I asked why the Army/Navy completely block access to wikileaks, and I was told it's because people can "get in serious trouble" for looking at things that they don't have clearance for so blocking makes it much less likely there'll be a mistake when sites that host that content are all over the news.
- astura 9y agoLeaking classified material doesn't make it unclassified, leaked documents are still classified material and must be treated as such if you have a security clearance - but only if you had/have a clearance. That means not only not accessing it if you don't have the proper clearance and need-to-know, but also never transmitting it over unclassified channels or download or storing it onto an unclassified computer. Since its never authorized to access classified information from an unclassified network, it makes sense to block access to classified materials from unclassified networks.