How White House's 'No Commenting' On Media Leaks Policy Makes Life Difficult For Professors
from the making-life-difficult dept
Last week, we wrote about the Obama administration's bizarre decision to ban any current or former intelligence community officials from even discussing media reports of leaked documents. The whole thing, coming from James Clapper, seemed bizarre (and likely unconstitutional). It's also just stupid. Denying people the ability to talk about information that is publicly being discussed serves no good purpose. And the impact is being felt in a variety of places. Famed crypto expert Matt Blaze is talking about how he's now in a tough spot, because if he assigns students to read content concerning media leaks, he puts intelligence community students in an "untenable position." And that's ridiculous. Denying the students the ability to even discuss very relevant, timely information that everyone else is discussing seems like a dangerous restriction -- especially on people who you should want to be involved in those discussions.
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Filed Under: intelligence community, james clapper, matt blaze, odni, surveillance
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How to tell which of your friends have an active clearance
Your friends who will not discuss it have active clearances.
It used to be difficult to identify those with clearances. Now they've been told to excuse themselves from the conversation and leave. That's as hard to spot as a croc in an alligator pep rally. (credit: FamGuy.)
Ehud "I have many friends with DoE Q and DoD TS clearances and now I can make the party end early just by saying Snowden Snowden Snowden" Gavron
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It's not a tough place for the prof
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And no, don't say, "they could have just not accepted the position," as not everyone has that opportunity, or were ever warned that they would be censored at some point in future.
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Well there's your problem
That's the thing though, they don't want there to be a discussion. If they thought they could get away with it, I'm sure they would have no problem at all flat out ordering not only those with security clearances, but everyone else, to stay silent on it all, likely using the standard excuses of 'National Security' and/or 'Because terrorists!'.
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Of course there is continuing education, even in the government.
Now if only they would learn something.
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With these rules, and their retroactive weight, anyone who has ever discussed classified information with people who don't have clearance will never be allowed to hold official positions.
That's a pretty limiting career move.
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I had an uncle who was a senior partner in one of the big eight accounting firms (when there was such a thing) who went to school for 3 months every year, and that was just to keep up with the tax code.
Cryptography would be another area that undergoes a tremendous amount of change, and to be top notch, one has to go back to school and learn the new stuff.
I agree that not being able to discuss timely stuff is really sad. The irony has not struck the President fully yet. Since he does not listen to the public, he won't hear it either.
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Seriously, the whole "rules is rules" trope is woefully overused. The point of democracy is to be able to change the rules if you don't like them.
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"OK, we need to... Uh, look into what that guy we don't talk about did, and try to figure out how many... things he took when he did the thing we don't talk about."
"Which guy we don't talk about, sir?"
"You know, the guy that did the thing!"
"Sir, we've had this conversation every day for the last six months and we're still not getting anywhere."
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Security clearance == you know less
Now, it seems having a security clearance means you have access to less information than the non-cleared public.
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