Having just completed a conference presentation on the history of the law of breach of confidence and control of government information, I am very interested in the recent release of confidential US government cables by media site Wikileaks. Wikileaks’ own website has this to say about their organisation and aims:
WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public. We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box). One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth. We are a young organisation that has grown very quickly, relying on a network of dedicated volunteers around the globe. Since 2007, when the organisation was officially launched, WikiLeaks has worked to report on and publish important information. We also develop and adapt technologies to support these activities.
WikiLeaks has sustained and triumphed against legal and political attacks designed to silence our publishing organisation, our journalists and our anonymous sources. The broader principles on which our work is based are the defence of freedom of speech and media publishing, the improvement of our common historical record and the support of the rights of all people to create new history. We derive these principles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In particular, Article 19 inspires the work of our journalists and other volunteers. It states that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. We agree, and we seek to uphold this and the other Articles of the Declaration.
The frontman is Julian Assange, an Australian who has garnered controversy since his rise to prominence over the 12 months. The latest news is that the Swedish government has asked Interpol to issue a warrant for Assange’s arrest in relation to allegations of rape and sexual assault. Apparently Ecuador has offered him asylum. The Washington Post also reports that the US government is investigating whether Assange has violated US laws, including the Espionage Act 1917, passed in the wake of WWI.
Of course, leaking of confidential secrets is not new. One of the first governmental breach of confidence cases, Commonwealth of Australia v John Fairfax & Sons (1980) 147 CLR 39, is “WikiLeaks in a non-digital age”. In that case, some journalists sought to publish a book called Documents on Australian Defence and Foreign Policy 1968 – 1975. It contained Australian government memoranda, briefings, cables and assessments of sensitive issues such as the East Timor Crisis, the ANZUS treaty, the renegotiation of US military bases in Australia, Australia’s support for the Shah of Iran and the security of the RAAF base in Butterworth, Malaysia. Various newspapers were going to publish excerpts from the documents, but were prevented from doing so when the Australian government obtained ex parte injunctions against them. The Australian government then sought to suppress further publication on three bases: breach of s 79 of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth), breach of confidence and breach of copyright. It was not able to gain an injunction on the basis of s 79 because this was a criminal law provision for which it was inappropriate to grant an injunction. Nor was it possible to gain an injunction on the basis of breach of confidence. Mason J confirmed that breach of confidence did extend to government information (see also Attorney General v Jonathan Cape Ltd (1976) QB 752), but he said that special considerations applied to restraining publication of government information (at pages 51 – 2):
The equitable principle has been fashioned to protect the personal, private and proprietary interests of the citizen, not to protect the very different interests of the executive government. It acts, or is supposed to act, not according to standards of private interest, but in the public interest. This is not to say that equity will not protect information in the hands of the government, but it is to say that when equity protects government information it will look at the matter through different spectacles.
It may be a sufficient detriment to the citizen that disclosure of information relating to his affairs will expose his actions to public discussion and criticism. But it can scarcely be a relevant detriment to the government that publication of material concerning its actions will merely expose it to public discussion and criticism. It is unacceptable in our democratic society that there should be a restraint on the publication of information relating to government when the only vice of that information is that it enables the public to discuss, review and criticize government action.
Accordingly, the court will determine the government’s claim to confidentiality by reference to the public interest. Unless disclosure is likely to injure the public interest, it will not be protected.
It is presumed that government transparency is an important aspect of government (that is, the people are entitled to know what government is doing on their behalf), and thus there is an extra public interest requirement before government secrets will be restrained from publication.
Of course, there are also a whole bunch of cases related to the Spycatcher book by Peter Wright (an ex-MI5 agent who wrote an autobiography critical of the Secret Service). However, the Spycatcher cases show that governments may cause more harm to themselves than good by seeking to suppress the release of information. Ultimately the UK government was unsuccessful in taking action against various newspapers and publishers in both Australian and New Zealand under either the Official Secrets Acts 1911 (UK) or breach of confidence. They were largely unsuccessful even in the UK because Wright had subsequently gone to publish his book in the United States, where he was protected by the Constitutional freedom of speech guarantee, and thus any confidential information published by newspapers had largely lost its confidential character after the US publication. The main effect of the various cases was to bring the book to top of the bestseller list. There’s nothing which will lead to better book sales than to tell people that the powers that be have tried to ban this book. People are naturally curious, and if you tell them that they are not allowed to see something, they immediately wonder why not, and want to see it.
So, governments do have to be careful with these kinds of actions. The last thing they want to do is to draw attention to the very thing they were seeking to conceal. It comes through loud and strong in these government secrecy cases that governments don’t tend to like people who disclose their secrets very much (not only in the Spycatcher cases, but also in cases like US v Snepp and Attorney-General v Blake). It has always been a problem for whistleblowers – they are often perceived as disloyal, even if they disclose terrible secrets about an organisation.
I must confess that I am ambivalent about WikiLeaks, regardless of whether any proceedings are brought against Assange or not. In one of the cases involving a breach of contract by a former CIA agent, United States v Marchetti (1972), Haynsworth CJ said at 1315:
Citizens have the right to criticize the conduct of our foreign affairs, but the Government also has the right and the duty to strive for internal secrecy about the conduct of governmental affairs in areas in which disclosure may reasonably be thought to be inconsistent with the national interest.
One has to carefully balance freedom of information with other interests. Disclosing information is not always a good thing. And it’s natural enough that the views a government expresses in private communications differ from the views it expresses publicly (this happens with individuals too: it’s called tact). There was a good post at The Drum by Craig McMurtrie on the recent leak:
The problem here is that his main target so far has been the pluralist though, of course, flawed US democracy. Is he so naive to hold Washington to a transparency standard unmatched anywhere else? Does that really make our world safer?
It is a terrible responsibility he takes on himself.
In the aftermath of the WikiLeaks dump Hillary Clinton told reporters that there was nothing laudable about it and confidential communication is essential to government business.
An inevitable consequence of this episode is a security crackdown, which according to some diplomats will mean less transparency, not more, in global affairs.
If governments such as the US feels like they are under siege, they will go into “lockdown” and even less information will be available. Thus, there will be a short-term gain in information but a long-term loss. What do others think of WikiLeaks? Do they feel as ambivalent about it as I do?
Update:
More posts around the traps at Club Troppo, Jim Belshaw, Lorenzo at Thinking out Aloud, and Derek Barry at Woolly Days. All worth reading.
52 Comments
I’m ambivalent about it. An entertaining look behind the curtain.
I’m starting to think Asange has gotten too big for his boots and has taken on more than he is really capable of. Exposing abuses of power or corruption is one thing. Releasing a whole bunch of information that (potentially) has a very destablising effect politically isn’t really that helpful I don’t think.
And then, as you point out, there will be the inevitable lockdown. Worse – there may be greater government surveillance on the grounds of protecting government secrets.
The timing is also terrible. N.Korea is trying to flex its muscles and get attention in all the wrongs ways and the US needs China to help it keep N. Korea in check. Screwing wiht US-China relations publicly is probably not helpful at the moment.
I guess I’m seeing a whole lot of bad coming from the carte blanche way they are releasing all this stuff whilst it is still so recent.
Heath, yes I agree. I think the whole thing’s gone to his head after the Iraq War video earlier this year. Judicious and careful leaking of information to the public is a good thing. Just dumping masses of stuff out there without any thought to the consequences probably isn’t.
P.S. but I also can’t help looking at it. I’m one of those people that, if you tell me not to touch something, I’ll immediately touch it to find out why (as my poor grandfather found out when I was 3 and he banned me from touching his razor).
The concentration of assange is predictable distraction.
wikileaks is driven by supply, so claims it is “targetting” the US are spurious. One thing I haven’t seen discussed is if this is what a non-profit can aquire, what else has been aquired for monetary gain, and without the leaked-from organization knowing what was copied, and no longer under its control? The unknown unknowns…
The interesting thing will be the politician’s reaction to the next megaleak regarding Bank of America. I reckon that’ll worry the politicians more than 99% of the “berlusconi is a wannabee priapus” stuff… More awkward questions will be raised, and fewer distraction strategies available unless there is an admission that keeping unwarranted confidence in bank behaviour generally is more important to the parties than diplomatic stuff … Especially if the stuff on N Korea pushes the debate along for better quicker action.
I think the man should be given the Nobel Peace and Economic Prizes
Jim Belshaw gave a very good summary in a comment on his blog about the ramifications of this from the perspective of governments who wish to retain necessary confidentiality. I hope he frontpages it for future reference.
For my part, I think any government which treats as secret the inane observations of its diplomatic outposts, and builds a huge IT complex to sort and record such rubbish is bound to fail; bound to lose control. There was a very long article in the Washington Post back in July about the complexities now built into US intelligence gathering.
The earlier dump from Wikileaks apparently lead to specific deaths of specific informants in the Middle East, and that is an enormous shame. However Wikileaks, and Assange are being held to a higher moral culpability than the intelligence activity which resulted in the accidental bombing of schools, and wedding parties – so-called collateral damage. Who ever is held culpable for those?
Wikileaks main problem now is that it is a small, specific target, and will suffer accordingly. Problem solved?
Snap! I have just posted on Wikileaks too. But it was more on what was revealed than the revealing.
On which point I am, like you, profoundly ambivalent. But, as you can see from my post, what has been revealed in some ways is the world the Pentagon Papers created, and that was a release that, in the long run, seems to have done much good.
(I particularly urge reading Secretary Gates’ email: as the most informed, and sanest, comment I have seen on the whole thing.)
This year alone during two different cases where I represented parties as an Attorney/Professional Advocate the issue of that I could be imprisoned was the subject of the hearings where I did no more but expose the rot that went on. While courts cannot be a above the law and public scrutiny nevertheless we find that it uses powers inappropriately to seek to prevent exposure of its rot as do Governments. Governments are to act as “agents” for the people and hence the people are entitled to know what governments are up to as this is the only form of democracy that can provide for a true representation of the people! We should never fear the truth and we must never concede to oppression to conceal the truth. Despite that I have never been to Wikileaks website I recognize it is an important part of our democracy. As a CONSTITUTIONALIST I am well aware that the Australian Constitution has embedded in it “Political Liberty” and “Civil rights” and we must never allow this to be diminished in any way, shape or form, as the moment we permit this then democracy doesn’t exist.
This is also the basis of the Streisand Effect, and the origin of the remark “tell a man that there are 400 billion stars in the universe and he’ll believe you. Tell him that a bench has wet paint and he’ll have to touch it.”
Wikileaks does no more than distribute already leaked material to the widest possible audience. It’s the original leak (and, probably more importantly, the poor security that allowed it) that causes whatever bad effects flow from the loss of confidentiality, be they deaths of informants or a chill on internal communications. Once the original leak occurs, anyone who can misuse the information will get hold of it. Wikileaks just allows the rest of us to see it too.
The people attacking Assange know all this. He isn’t the target. Rather, it’s just PR to bury the story, distract attention from the government’ poor security and make the reputable media hesitate.
Just an apology for the delay with letting people out of the spammer; I’m preparing for Faculty of Advocates’ exams right now and would dearly like to comment in proper detail… but it’s a wee bit difficult!
Anyone thinking that Lieberman is starting to sound a bit McCarthy-ite in this article http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/amazon-stops-hosting-wikileaks-website/story-e6frgakx-1225964371390 .
So now they’re going to go on a witch hunt for any internet host that might have in some way done something that might be construed as helping wikileaks? Add this to some of the recent anti-piracy/IP law proposals the US has put forward and they are starting to look even more like control freaks than promoters of a free internet.
To KVD @ 7. I have done as you asked.
One of the things I love about blogging is the way it helps me learn,
I have followed all of LE’s links through and refined my views. I didn’t actually know, for example, that the US had so centralised information that it created the pre-conditions for the whole affair!
Here is an interesting alternate view, which suggests some potential downsides to the transparency ideal:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/opinion/wikileaks-just-made-the-world-more-repressive/article1818157/
Myrddin, that is very interesting.
In other news, there are moves to shut down Wikileaks.
I was about to comment but Jeremy Gans has said what I was about to say.
Assange is just a conduit.
I will add though that if, as it seems, the allegation is intercourse with a condom, I am beginning to understand Assange’s paranoia.
Really? Did you know that China is more or less okay with the concept of a united Korea? How would that effect the complete lunatics running NOk?
How about the bombing in Yemen where the government ascribes the action to itself when the US is actually doing it.
Did you know this?
Such claims don’t seemed to be backed up by any evidence.
Rather than governments going into lockdown, which is what I thought they were already in, I suspect that this will encourage them to share the ugly truth more openly (and diplomatically). For instance rather than privately telling the US it should consider force, Rudd should have told the Chinese publicly that they should avoid conflict.
Au contraire Terje, it seems fair to say that exposure of two-faced hypocritical squirmy mugs like Rudd is the one real upside of this.
Patrick – I’ve yet to see anything specific that has a downside. Not saying that there won’t be something but I haven’t seen it yet.
Oh for someone to leak the cables now being sent having Assange as the subject.
Would these become available under 30-years rules and the like? What excuse for them NOT being released according to those rules.
The reported behind those claiming to be victims – bragging in tweets and sms, throwing a party for assange after the alleged crimes are said to have happened.
If the crime revolves around a condom breaking during sex, then either that element of proceedings are a farce, or swedish condoms are the most reliable in the world.
John Howard adds his 2 cents worth:-
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8178811/prosecute-leakers-not-assange-howard
I’m wondering what the status of evidence published by wikileaks (or indeed msm) would be in a criminal trial after an investigation initiated because of the leak. Would it stand up or have to be discounted? If tainted and tainting, would nasty folk pre-emptively anonymously leak about themselves?
Dave,
I’d assume it’d be treated like any other published information from an anonymous source. Cops have been getting anonymous tip-offs long before wikileaks or the internet. It’d could potentially be enough to justify further investigation, but like all evidence it’s credibility, accuracy etc. would have to be considered on its own merit.
I’m still unconvinced by the smear-campaign conspiracy claims. I think it’s quite plausible that an ideologue with a boosted ego from recent successes, overstepped the mark or misread messages from others. Particularly given he would have been dealing with the personal impact of a recent rise to celebrity status. The priority prosecutors and police are giving the case does reek of special treatment, although not any particularly injustice.
The public commentary by politicians against wikileaks and Assange, along with the actions of the ISPs and financial institutions smells of something particularly rotten. I couldn’t support extradition to the US regardless of the alleged crime as I doubt he’d get a fair trial.
I am sure that he would get a fair trial in the US – I can’t think why not. Any suggestions desipis?
Thanks Terje. Geez Howard was a great bloke for a politician. He made more sense more of the time than nearly any other of this generation.
As for the evidence, in the US it could well be inadmissible since they have the ‘fruit of the poisoned tree’ doctrine. In Australia it clearly would be admissible, but the question would be of probative value, or the weight to give to it given the difficulty of proving its authenticity.
I can’t see that Assange has committed a crime under Australian laws
However, I can see that he might have committed a breach of confidence against the Australian government by passing on the information about our lovely KRudd and his views on China. It’s analogous to the Times serialising Wright’s book before it became generally known in the Spycatcher.
I saw that Assange wanted to sue JGillard for defamation because she said his conduct was “illegal”. Whether her comments were accurate or not depends whether you mean “illegal” in the sense of criminally illegal, or merely that he has breached a civil law obligation (which arguably, he has).
Kevin Rudd adds his 2 cents worth:-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/12/08/3088461.htm
That implies the media has a general duty of confidence to the government, which is a rather disturbing notion for a supposed liberal democracy.
It also seems Gillard is already trying to weasel out of it.
Yes indeed. The duty only arises in specific circumstances. Taking Lord Goff’s speech in the Spycatcher case:
Of course, the courts are painfully aware of the public interest in transparency in government (as the quote from Mason J in the main post above shows), and therefore if a government claims breach of confidence against a media outlet or the like, they have to show that there is a countervailing public interest which is greater than the public interest of the people. Most of the time, the public interest in “knowing about stuff” (to use the technical term
) prevails.
Still…I can’t help thinking that this reminds me of Spycatcher case where The Times excerpted massive slabs of the book wholesale, knowing that the government didn’t want it published and exercising considerable deception to stop the government from knowing about it, and exercised no journalistic care as to what information might be sensitive… The House of Lords found that The Times was in breach of confidence, because it did not turn its mind to the public interest at all, or the government’s countervailing interest. What was the remedy? The Times was stripped of its profits for that particular day of sales.
Of course, this doesn’t work as a deterrent if you don’t actually make any profits (as in another case called Lord Advocate v Scotsman Publications) or if your profits aren’t in the jurisdiction (why they couldn’t strip profits from Wright in the Spycatcher case, much as they dearly wanted to.) Ultimately, I presume that there are no profits to strip from Assange in Australia, even if he has breached a confidence.
Incidentally, initially I didn’t think there was any breach of confidence against the Australian government because I hadn’t seen any information deriving from the Australian government to which an obligation of confidence might attach. But beloved KRudd’s memo to Clinton might just do it?
(Aren’t the US observations about KRudd fascinating, btw? What I wouldn’t give to see their observations about our beloved PM and Opposition Leader!!!)
Interesting post by Anna Winter at LP about the rape allegations.
From the Spycatcher judgment (interesting read):
If you’re comparing to the Spycatcher case I think it’s important to acknowledge that wikileaks has only released a very small fraction of the 250,000 odd cables it’s received. Given they are apparently performing some assessment of the public interest associated with each cable, I’m not sure it’s so clear cut. I think there’s a strong enough public interest in knowing our leaders are considering actions of war, in contrast to the harm to national interest of revealing that, to justify publishing that particular memo (although others may see differently).
I’m also wondering whether this duty of confidence applies to non-Australian citizens or residents when it comes to Australian government secrets. It’s quite possible that it wasn’t Assange or an Australian who had the authority within wikileaks to release the Australian document(s). Would the Australian court claim that foreigners, who have never even been in Australia, have a duty of confidence to the Australian government or be required to serve the Australian public interest?
More broadly (and because my last comment is in moderation), I think this is an area where the law and politics will need to change and catch up with the social implications of technology. Wikileaks is just the tip of the “freedom of information” cultural iceberg. There’s is a broad cultural movement towards both strong anonymity and free access to source information; the ideals that underline the philosophy of wikileaks. There’s a number of other prominent names such as the Tor network, freenet and Anonymous that come to mind. It hasn’t had such success in such a short amount of time because it’s a group of fringe radicals out on their own.
Strong cultural and economic ties are believed to reduce the ability of leaders to justify war. This same shift in moral allegiance from national to regional or global will reduce the tolerance for nation states to engage in secrecy, deception and unchallenged propaganda; particularly now that the ability to combat this behaviour is demonstrably within the public’s grasp. The facebook generation who will grow up with so much of their lives being made known to the public will tire of the excuse that people can’t have free and frank discussion because others might be listening.
To me it seems a bit like King John and the Magna Carta. It doesn’t matter whether the current regime wants it or not; it doesn’t matter if it’s in the best interests of the public or the nation; it doesn’t matter if it’s legal or not; all that matters is that enough people with the ability to change things are prepared to do so.
I know this makes me sound like an old fart, but I spent the better part of 25 years consulting to large law firms on management information systems. That all finished about six years ago, but it was quite a few years before that when we were able, through advances in technology, to institute computer systems which were accessible to all, but copyable by only the data security staff.
There are many lawyers reading this; so how many of your present or past employer firms would allow the lowliest copyboy, or even the managing partner’s PA to take a CD or memory stick complete copy of your firm’s data?
I am not a fan of conspiracy theories, but that is what we are being asked to accept in this case, and I find that quite laughable.
kvd,
It all comes down to efficiency vs risks. If you place a bureaucratic barrier (technical or otherwise) in front of an ‘analyst’ they’ll be able to function with a fraction of efficiency of someone with unfettered access to the raw data. Of course this also means harmful actions are also more efficient.
There’s probably no benefit from lawyers to having access to private details of other cases, so strong technical boundaries shouldn’t be an issue there. Although I wonder how many lawyers would outsource their IT systems without fully vetting their suppling company and all its staff.
Desipis, it’s a question of jurisdiction in part. You simply couldn’t sue a foreigner if they didn’t come back to the jurisdiction – I’m assuming Assange will want to come back here to see his family at some point
It’s less likely that a non-Australian owes a duty of confidence to Australia (because they might not realise the significance of material anyway) and as the Spycatcher case shows, countries have real problems trying to restrain publication in foreign countries (in the case, the UK was largely unsuccessful in former Commonwealth countries). Information will come out in another jurisdiction anyway…by which point it will lose its confidential character.
I do agree with you, Desipis – there’s an inevitability to it all, and once it all starts to come out, there’s very little governments can do to stop it…
depsis@37, are you saying that in order for the present suggested “culprit” to do his job properly he was able to take a dump of sensitive data off site? If that is your level of understanding of basic data security then I am available to your firm at a reasonable daily rate, although I think Dave Bath’s knowledge is more up to date than mine.
What you suggest is basically the “it’s just not cricket” rule. Which is fine for cricket, but not matters of national security leading to cries of treason and espionage. Or even for any law firm which respects the confidential affairs of their clients.
kvd,
No I’m suggesting that setting up mechanism to prevent it, consistently across a wide variety of organisations spread across the global, each with their own strong culture of independence might not feasible. Particularly when you don’t know which data any particularly user might need access to, or how they might need to use it to do their job.
You can set the most sophisticated policy of informational security you want but if the people, who are selected for their ability to actually do their job not implement IT security policy, don’t understand it, ignore it or subtly undermine it, it’s not going to have a particularly positive effect.
So therefore it’s ok to make a quick copy (of all the diplomatic cables of the most powerful country in the world, including stuff so sensitive that our PM and other talking heads fear for the very future of the world), so you can keep working at home after an hour at the pub?
Thank you for clearing that up for me.
Anyway, my comment was on a minor side issue which happens to interest me because of the complete implausibility of the scenario from a data management perspective. Cheers
kvd, I know one of Australia’s largest professional services firms pitched to work for Google. As part of the pitch google attempted to crack their security and failed. I know for certain that a copyboy could connect a USB key to the computer.
Once you can do that anything is vulnerable.
Patrick@42 “I know for certain that a copyboy could connect a USB key to the computer.”
Ummm, (1) the physical workstation can have selected devices disabled (2) actual work can run in a virtual machine or virtual desktop (sitting on a server) with no connectivity other than the keyboard, the monitor and the mouse passed through (centralized policy, even someone with complete access to the physical workstation cannot do anything about it).
The latter is more elegant and robust – easily implemented by running virtualbox.org or xrdp in the secure machine room with the appropriate settings.
Could be, DB, but isn’t.
If you can access it you can copy it. Worst case you take a photo of the computer screen. The secret to keeping secrets is to only give access to people you trust. Oh, and don’t trust anybody.
I didn’t say it’s ok. I said it was difficult to put measure in that will prevent such a thing happening without significantly reducing the efficiency of the intelligence analyst. In military intelligence such a loss of efficiency can cost lives; this means that there will be a strong motivation to work against any imposing security protocols or standards being pushed down from the top.
Also, what TP said.
TerjeP@45
You are right, but even photographing the screen can be made difficult with older style monitors (and associated screen driver config) by having refresh/interlace settings that a human can integrate in the brain, but a camera might find difficult (unless you use a tripod, longish exposure and small aperture). Such shenanigans aren’t worth it for highly sensitive stuff, which the wikileaks cables weren’t.
To a large extent, it is laziness:
* not having properly labelled documents that define the audience (metadata does this)
* not setting up the viewing to use role-based-access (this is a once-only do-it-once-do-it-right-thing)
* if they’d put an internal google engine (pretty cheap – about 1 or 2 cents per indexed document), it’s trivial to set up access on roles that let you (a) not know a document exists (b) know a document exists but are prohibited from seeing it (b) know a document exists and can see it.
Convenience v security, as franklin said.
If you are going to be angry about release of secrets, then lock them properly. If you’d be angry about your car being stolen, lock it. Otherwise, as Rudd said, it’s your own fault if the data (or the car) goes awol.
desipis@46 (my apologies for incorrectly spelling your name earlier) again I acknowledge that this is a side issue, but I would note the following points:
This from The Independent UK:
Note that this is discussing the Afghanistan leaks – not the latest 400,000 plus diplomatic cables, HOWEVER there is this – from a data security and all-things-IT website:
So desipis, I stand corrected. The world really does apparently work on the “it’s just not cricket” method. My humble apologies; somewhere along the line since I retired the word “stupid” has been redefined.
Also, what DB just said.
Who, exactly, is going to have the responsibility for labelling the huge amount of classified data currently stored and continually being generated? Are these people going to have sufficient information about what everyone else is doing to know who might have a legitimate need for the data?
You could default to only having it available to those who clearly do need the data, but that lack of sharing was criticised as one of the problems that let 9/11 happen.
Well obviously it’s either Julian Assange or Bradley Manning. Next question?
desipis@49:
Actually, it doesn’t take THAT much that isn’t already known: author is obvious, as is, for cables, the country concerned. Automagic scanning can find keywords (google can) and add labels allowing “you can look at stuff on Oz, but not Russia”…
Not difficult to do programmatically actually, with minimal if any human intervention, and getting the permissions 99% right.
As for writable CD-ROM!!! Why wasn’t that turned off? Not too difficult, and again, if they’d been running virtual workstations, even with writes through USB enabled, the documents couldn’t have been taken, just screen dumps (very painful – and obvious “over the shoulder” observers).
Seriously, there is no excuse of this apart from shoddy management. Ties limiting oxygen supply to the brain again.
As for sharing, metadata labels give not only protection, but allow for easier discovery and sharing.
Government management fails to do some elementary stuff. What a shock
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[...] …One has to carefully balance freedom of information with other interests. Disclosing information is not always a good thing. And it’s natural enough that the views a government expresses in private communications differ from the views it expresses publicly (this happens with individuals too: it’s called tact). Wikileaks and the brave new world of freedom of information [...]
[...] Wikileaks und die schöne neue Welt der Freiheit der Information Lorenzo von Thinking Out Loud glaubt, dass die Leaks Leben gefährden und vergleicht sie mit den berühmten Daniel Ellsberg Pentagon Papieren während des Vietnamkrieges: Diese Entladung von Wikileaks Dokumenten kann Gefahren für bestimmte Personen darstellen. Das ist beschämend und zeigt die Bösartigkeit von vieler Nahost-Politik. Doch unabhängig davon, was man von Julian Assange und seinen Aktionen denkt, was er eigentlich offenbart hat ist eine reichlich normale und ziemlich gut informierte diplomatische Welt. [...]
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[...] …On doit soigneusement faire la part des choses entre la liberté d’information et les autres intérêts. Révéler des informations n’est pas toujours une bonne chose. Et il est naturel que les opinions qu’expriment des gouvernants dans leurs communications privées diffèrent de celles qu’ils expriment en public (même chose pour les individus : ça s’appelle le tact). Wikileaks et le meilleur des mondes de la liberté d’information [...]