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Scotty Starnes
| December 4, 2010 at 9:07 PM | Tags: classified information,
Department of Defense, do not read, Federal employees, federal workers, government contractors,
Obama adminstration, Obama White House, Office of Management and
Budget, WikiLeaks | Categories:
Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-3Hw
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The MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION....EVER?
This administration takes it's time on the most
important issues. Afghanistan, extending the Bush tax
cuts, the economy. No big deal was made when WikiLeaks
released their first batch of documents that exposed
our soldiers and put their lives in danger but now
that these leaks are exposing the Obama administration
they move quickly to suppress the truth.
Ordering Federal workers to not read the WikiLeak
document dump. Wow. Sounds more like a dictatorship
than a free republic.
From the NY Times:
WASHINGTON — In a classic case of shutting
the barn door after the horse has left, the Obama
administration and the Department of Defense have
ordered the hundreds of thousands of federal
employees and contractors not to read the secret
cables and other classified documents published by
Wikileaks and news organizations around the world
unless the workers have the required security
clearance or authorization.
“Classified information, whether or not
already posted on public websites or disclosed to
the media, remains classified, and must be treated
as such by federal employees and contractors,
until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S.
Government authority,” said the notice
sent on Friday afternoon by the Office of Management
and Budget, which is part of the White House, to
agency and department heads, urging them to
distribute it to their staff
The directive applies to both government
computers and private devices that employees or
contractors might carry in their briefcases and
pockets or have in their homes. It does
not advise agencies to block WikiLeaks or other
websites on government computer systems, a White
House official said Saturday. And it does not
prohibit federal employees from reading news stories
about the topic. But if they have “accidentially”
already downloaded any of these documents, they are
being told to notify their “information security
offices.”
The Department of Defense, in its own
directive to military personnel and icontractors,
says that simply reading these documents, without
proper authorization, will violate long-standing
rules even though they are accessible to the
public at large on Internet sites.
"Viewing or downloading still classified documents
from unclassified government computers creates a
security violation," a spokeswoman said in a
statement on Saturday.
It's OK for the rest of the world to read the
documents but the government doesn't want federal
employees to read the WikiLeak document dump. Maybe
this administration should have moved on Julian
Assange after the first dump. Now that it involves
secrets that damage the Obama administration, its time
to restrict the truth. See no evill. Speak no evil.
Hear no evil.
The effort, while understandable, seems entirely
futile, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of
the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a
Washington nonprofit group that has combated
government efforts to keep certain government
documents secret.
“It just may be a little too late for the
government to push these documents down the memory
hole,” Mr. Rotenberg said, adding that his center
did not support the initial public release of the
material. “This is Orwell thought police in the
age of the Internet, as these are already so
widely accessible on servers around the world.”The
Library of Congress has joined in the push,
blocked visitors to its reading rooms, or anyone
else using its computer system, from accessing the
WikiLeaks site, noting that “unauthorized
disclosures of classified documents do not alter
the documents’ classified status or automatically
result in declassification of the documents.”
Continue reading>>>
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