Don’t Mention the Cables, Future Diplomats

This isn't some paranoid crazytalk from a government driven mad by Cablegate. It is a fact that classified data isn't declassified by nature of having been published. Apparently, contractors who are cleared for handling classified data (here you learn that Matasano doesn't do government work) are quizzed on this routinely.

It's apparently a basic rule of information hygiene that you can't ignore classification just because something becomes public, so, ignoring the fact that data is classified may demonstrate to a prospective employer that you don't understand how to take classification seriously.

While it's not paranoid crazytalk, it certainly looks like typical bureaucratic foolishness to me. Maybe I'm missing something here, of course.

I can sort of see the logic: if you are working for an organization whose classified data got leaked, but the organization has not declassified that data, you must still treat it as classified to avoid leaking any other related data by accident (for example).

But these students don't work for the government yet. Discussing leaked cables does not necessarily imply they don't understand classification.

> you must still treat it as classified to avoid leaking any other related data by accident (for example).

That is not quite the reason. The real reason is that those who have clearance can be prosecuted for a willful security violation if they:

* store, process, or view classified data on an un unauthorized machine (home laptop)

* grant others access to the classified data

* discuss classified information where others who are not authorized would overhear or see it.

* prying into or accessing classified info for which they don't have a need-to-know

* creating unauthorized copies of classified info

The warning not to access this info is basically a helpful tip or reminder so those who hold or will hold clearance could be subject to harsh penalties.

This is just as much about protecting the classified info as it is the protect those who have a clearance.

These rules and laws have been deliberately written to be broad and wide so that a potential spy can be easily prosecuted as they are usually found in possession of classified info in their house or on their laptop for which they have no authorization to have.

There is simply no exception for the case when thousands and thousands of classified docs have been spread over the internet and are just as easily accessed as driving directions to a restaurant.

EDIT:

This is actually a great example of how a broad and overreaching law (by virtue of not being updated to specifically exclude leaked info) can be used to selectively prosecute certain individuals at will. Chances are some of those who have a clearance have read excerpts from Cablegate on the web just by reading the news. An overzealous prosecutor can turn that into a "willful security violation" if they really want to. This is in the same category as "obstruction of business", "obstruction of justice", "disruptive behavior" charges.

I suppose. A side effect of this policy, though, is that it rules out any future employees who are passionate enough about an incredibly important issue to discuss it publicly after it's appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Seems wrongheaded to me.

Pursued to its logical conclusion, this means that the 800,000 or so US citizens with some level of security clearance have been forbidden from reading newspapers, watching the Daily Show, or discussing politics for the last week or so. Really? I mean, I know that reductio ad absurdum isn't a successful defence against dumb law, but this seems a bit excessive.

Especially considering that a big part of what's been released so far has been ho-hum stuff that just reinforces what a lot of people have speculated was true---"Eh, they don't really think that'll work."---and now making a comment like that means you're propagating classified information and thus ineligible for a State Department job?

I mean, it has shades of the old Khrushchev line ("3 years for insulting the premier, 20 years for revealing state secrets.") It's one thing to say that a leak that one person saw does not automatically declassify something (trade secret law works the same way), but when the leak is on this kind of scale and has been commented on so publicly, it seems hard to justify.