It's amazing that the tactics in the big world are exactly the same as the tactics in cults. This is no different to Girard telling members of the Fellowship not to read the blog. And it seems to work in the long run unless something more human is strong enough to overcome the difficulties.
http://gawker.com/5705639/us-military-in-iraq-tries-to-intimidate-soldiers-into-not-reading-wikileaks
U.S. soldiers in Iraq who try to read about the Wikileaks disclosures—or read coverage of them in mainstream news sites—on unclassified networks get a page warning them that they're about to break the law.
A tipster wrote to tell us that "the Army's unclassified, NIPRNET network in Iraq has blocked every major news website because of the Wikileaks issue," going on to say that Foxnews.com, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, the Huffington Post, and a variety of other sites are blocked on the Army's unclassified network. A spokesperson for U.S. forces in Iraq disputed that claim, saying that the web sites aren't actually blocked—it's just that attempts to access them on the unclassified network brings up a warning page saying that you're about to break the law:
[U.S. forces in Iraq have] not blocked any news websites from being read. Because of the Wikileaks release of secret documents and their easy availability on the web, USF-I has posted a warning page NIPRNet computers go to first. This page simply warns the user that the website they are about to view may contain classified documents and that such documents should not be viewed, downloaded, or distributed on NIPR computers. There is a button at the bottom of this warning page that then allows the user to go to the website.
The feds have clearly lost it. Many of those soldiers receiving the warnings have security clearances that would have granted them access to the State Department cables
beforethey were leaked. It's not the first time the military has threatened servicemembers with sanctions if the view Wikileaks documents—back in August, the Department of the Navy
issued guidance warning sailors and marines against looking at the Afghanistan documents leaked by the site—but it seems to be the first time it's tried to prevent them from reading news stories
about leaked documents.
And the State Department has—informally, it seems—been putting out word that people who write about the Wikileaks cables on Twitter or Facebook shouldn't bother applying for State Department jobs in the future. According to the Arabist, a blog on Arab culture and politics,
Columbia University's career services department sent an alert to studentsrelating a call the office got from a Columbia alumnus and State Department employee:
The documents released during the past few months through Wikileaks are still considered classified documents. He recommends that you DO NOT post links to these documents nor make comments on social media sites such as Facebook or through Twitter. Engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government.
To repeat: Do NOT make comments about Wikileaks on Twitter or mention them at all or you will be considered a security risk and never be good enough to work at the state department.
No comments:
Post a Comment