Senate Offices Told to Avoid WikiLeaks

[Joanne98]

“Do not visit the WikiLeaks site,” the Office of Senate Security told Senate employees and contractors in a memorandum (pdf) that was circulated to Senate offices this week.

Senate employees are free to access news reports that may discuss classified material, but they were instructed not to download the “underlying documents that themselves are marked classified (including classified documents publicly available on the WikiLeaks and other websites).”

The “Updated WikiLeaks Guidance” was issued by the Office of Senate Security. The one-page memo is undated, but a Senate staffer said it was received in Senate offices this week.

In a paradoxical way, the WikiLeaks project is dependent upon the very secrecy system that it works to disrupt. Without secrecy, after all, there cannot be leaks. So why doesn’t the U.S. government try to “disarm” WikiLeaks by pro-actively disclosing the cables that WikiLeaks has already obtained? Instead of passively enduring months or years of selective disclosures, the government could seize the initiative back from WikiLeaks. Voluntary disclosure would permit it to present the most sensitive information with whatever explanatory or contextual material it wished to add.

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2011/01/senate_wikileaks.html

Stoopid!

[pmorlan1]

1. K & R

Thanks for the info.

[barbiegeek]

2. Can someone explain this to me. I do NOT get it

[ThoughtCriminal]

3. If you walk through a mine field, close your eyes and plug your ears

Equally effective.

[lcdnumber6]

4. I got the DOI boilerplate of this notification at work today....

And I was fingered for accessing the site, likely via NYT before the official fed notification. Boy was the IT Dude in there quick to scrub my computer. The song "Brazil" has oddly been stuck in my head since then....