WikiLeaks sparks info-sharing chill
Source: Agencies |
December 1, 2010, Wednesday
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AFTER the latest WikiLeaks revelations, the United States government is setting in motion a new information "big chill," reversing almost a decade of post-September 11 efforts to nudge officials into sharing sensitive documents.
The Pentagon has detailed new security safeguards, including restraints on small computer flash drives, to make it harder for any one to copy and reveal so many secrets. The clampdown parallels efforts at other agencies.
For the military it represents a throttling back of initiatives to let other agencies see more of the vast trove of data the Pentagon collects. The new attitude may also make intelligence information less widely available to low-level soldiers serving at "the tip of the spear" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The tightening of sensitive information comes as President Barack Obama's administration on Monday branded the leak of more than a quarter-million diplomatic memos an attack on the US and raised the prospect of criminal prosecution against the online clearinghouse WikiLeaks.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said WikiLeaks acted illegally in posting the material. Speaking in between calls to foreign capitals as she made amends for the posting of the unvarnished memos, Clinton said the administration was taking "aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information."
Attorney General Eric Holder said the government was mounting a criminal investigation. The latest disclosures, involving classified and sensitive State Department documents, jeopardized the security of the nation, its diplomats, intelligence assets and relationships with foreign governments, Holder said.
Lawyers from across government agencies are investigating whether it might be possible to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others under the Espionage Act, a senior defense official said yesterday.
The official, who spoke privately in order to address the ongoing probe, said that lawyers from the departments of Justice, State and Defense are among those in discussions over whether the Espionage Act applies, what individuals it might apply to, whether it is possible to use it against the WikiLeaks organization.
US officials say they already see the information chill setting in. One official in contact with US military and diplomatic staff in Iraq said the State Department and other agencies are tightening information-sharing and restricting access between the Army and non-military agencies.
Access to much of that diplomatic material had been loosened after the September 11 attacks. The success of the al-Qaida plot was blamed in part on evidence that the US intelligence community had adequate information on the impending attacks but failed to connect the dots because it did not share its intelligence.
After the 2001 attacks, various government agencies were given access to terminals in each other's data systems. That loosened access may have helped enable a lone Army private to obtain sensitive files. Bradley Manning is being held in a maximum-security military jail at Quantico, Virginia, and though he has so far not been charged in the latest release of internal US government documents, WikiLeaks has hailed him as a hero.
Officials said Manning is the prime suspect in the leaks partly because of his own description of how he pulled off his heist of classified and restricted material. "No one suspected a thing," Manning told a confidant afterward, according to a log of his computer chat published by Wired.com. "I didn't even have to hide anything."
The Pentagon has detailed new security safeguards, including restraints on small computer flash drives, to make it harder for any one to copy and reveal so many secrets. The clampdown parallels efforts at other agencies.
For the military it represents a throttling back of initiatives to let other agencies see more of the vast trove of data the Pentagon collects. The new attitude may also make intelligence information less widely available to low-level soldiers serving at "the tip of the spear" in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The tightening of sensitive information comes as President Barack Obama's administration on Monday branded the leak of more than a quarter-million diplomatic memos an attack on the US and raised the prospect of criminal prosecution against the online clearinghouse WikiLeaks.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said WikiLeaks acted illegally in posting the material. Speaking in between calls to foreign capitals as she made amends for the posting of the unvarnished memos, Clinton said the administration was taking "aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information."
Attorney General Eric Holder said the government was mounting a criminal investigation. The latest disclosures, involving classified and sensitive State Department documents, jeopardized the security of the nation, its diplomats, intelligence assets and relationships with foreign governments, Holder said.
Lawyers from across government agencies are investigating whether it might be possible to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others under the Espionage Act, a senior defense official said yesterday.
The official, who spoke privately in order to address the ongoing probe, said that lawyers from the departments of Justice, State and Defense are among those in discussions over whether the Espionage Act applies, what individuals it might apply to, whether it is possible to use it against the WikiLeaks organization.
US officials say they already see the information chill setting in. One official in contact with US military and diplomatic staff in Iraq said the State Department and other agencies are tightening information-sharing and restricting access between the Army and non-military agencies.
Access to much of that diplomatic material had been loosened after the September 11 attacks. The success of the al-Qaida plot was blamed in part on evidence that the US intelligence community had adequate information on the impending attacks but failed to connect the dots because it did not share its intelligence.
After the 2001 attacks, various government agencies were given access to terminals in each other's data systems. That loosened access may have helped enable a lone Army private to obtain sensitive files. Bradley Manning is being held in a maximum-security military jail at Quantico, Virginia, and though he has so far not been charged in the latest release of internal US government documents, WikiLeaks has hailed him as a hero.
Officials said Manning is the prime suspect in the leaks partly because of his own description of how he pulled off his heist of classified and restricted material. "No one suspected a thing," Manning told a confidant afterward, according to a log of his computer chat published by Wired.com. "I didn't even have to hide anything."
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