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Transmission of classified documents to unauthorized persons does in fact break federal law. Why wouldn't that also be included, then?

tptacek 12y ago
One reason is that it's extraordinarily expensive to enlist Google and Microsoft in the pursuit of government secrets compared to the alternatives. The USG (like most F-500 companies) invests a lot of money in patrolling the borders of its networks for breaches of sensitive information. For commercial entities, there's a whole class of product ("data loss prevention" systems) that do this out of the box. Since (a) the information the USG is watching for is generated from within their network borders, and (b) USG isn't comfortable sharing that information or artifacts of that information with third parties, it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to invest a huge amount of effort (both technically and legally) to come up with some cockamamie scheme to have Google look for those secrets without knowing what the secret is. Instead of engaging with the intractable problem of having Google dragnet GMail for documents Google is not allowed to read, the USG is much more likely to just subpoena the accounts of people it suspects to be trafficking in those documents.
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  Not that I have much faith in the idea that something being extraordinarily expensive prevents the government from pursuing a particular course, but what you say would cover most cases. But let's say instead of classified documents, we're talking about al-qaeda-training-manual.pdf. One can easily imagine such a document violating federal laws. Say there are various documents the government catches during a raid, on say Bin Laden's compound for example. Say the government would like Google to look around and see who has trafficked in these documents. They don't have to tell Google what the documents are, exactly, just provide hashes/file sizes/ etc. Why wouldn't this happen?
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I don't know. Maybe it would. And, my comfort level with that happening depends a whole lot on the circumstances.

tptacek 12y ago

One reason is that it's extraordinarily expensive to enlist Google and Microsoft in the pursuit of government secrets compared to the alternatives. The USG (like most F-500 companies) invests a lot of money in patrolling the borders of its networks for breaches of sensitive information. For commercial entities, there's a whole class of product ("data loss prevention" systems) that do this out of the box. Since (a) the information the USG is watching for is generated from within their network borders, and (b) USG isn't comfortable sharing that information or artifacts of that information with third parties, it doesn't make a lot of sense for them to invest a huge amount of effort (both technically and legally) to come up with some cockamamie scheme to have Google look for those secrets without knowing what the secret is. Instead of engaging with the intractable problem of having Google dragnet GMail for documents Google is not allowed to read, the USG is much more likely to just subpoena the accounts of people it suspects to be trafficking in those documents.

waterlesscloud 12y ago
Not that I have much faith in the idea that something being extraordinarily expensive prevents the government from pursuing a particular course, but what you say would cover most cases. But let's say instead of classified documents, we're talking about al-qaeda-training-manual.pdf. One can easily imagine such a document violating federal laws. Say there are various documents the government catches during a raid, on say Bin Laden's compound for example. Say the government would like Google to look around and see who has trafficked in these documents. They don't have to tell Google what the documents are, exactly, just provide hashes/file sizes/ etc. Why wouldn't this happen?
- tptacek 12y ago
  I don't know. Maybe it would. And, my comfort level with that happening depends a whole lot on the circumstances.