Military Prefers To Keep Its Head In The Sand: Bans All Employees From Visiting The Intercept

from the because-that'll-work dept

Not this again. A few years ago, the US military blocked access to a bunch of news sites, including the NY Times and The Guardian, in an attempt to block military members from reading the news because some of the news included the leaked State Department cables that Wikileaks had released in conjunction with those news sites. Last year, the Defense Department blocked all access to the Guardian after it started reporting on the Ed Snowden leaks. And now, The Intercept reports, the military has also banned access to The Intercept. Of course, no one in the military will know that the public knows about this, because they're apparently not allowed to read about it. Oddly, this time around, rather than just putting in a filter to block such browsing (though that's there too), the military has distributed the ridiculous memo above, telling people to avoid visiting the website. I guess that's so they know "not" to visit the site from a personal computer or device as well. A (not surprisingly) confidential source told The Intercept just how nutty this directive is:

“Even though I have a top secret security clearance, I am still forbidden to read anything on the website,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. “I find this very disturbing that they are threatening us and telling us what websites and news publishers we are allowed to read or not.”

As we've said in the past, this is just silly. And, yes, I know the rationale that defenders of this kind of ridiculous argument will make. There are rules about how classified material is handled, and if a classified document gets on a computer when it's not supposed to be there, it's a massive horrible emergency and creates a huge mess for the IT folks. But let's take a step back from that and deal with reality. As we've noted, when it comes to things like non-disclosure agreements in corporate settings, there's always a clause that says if the same information becomes public through other means (i.e., not the signing party releasing it), the information is no longer considered confidential and subject to the agreement. That is a sensible, reality-based policy.

If classified documents are being reported on in the press, they're publicly available. Continuing to pretend that they're still classified is just ridiculous. It means that those in the military are suddenly less informed about issues that they often need to know about. I can't see how that makes any sense at all.

Filed Under: classified, journalism, leaks, military, snowden
Companies: the intercept