Leaked: US government strategy to prevent leaks

I am one of those that administers such tests, and i can tell you right off the bat they are highly unreliable . It takes a baseline of questions in order to find if someone is hiding something and for the most part the people who lie are the ones that believe those lies themselves .
 
The document was unclassified, so if it was leaked or not it is not against law to publish it.

Since WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks and similar sites are here and probably will also stay, I think it is a good policy to build a strategy for these kind of leaks.

I think similar action should be done by all governments and corporates.

Not only policy and strategy to avoid leaks, but also plans what to do after.
 
"And to qualify for a Secret clearance involves nothing more than checking your criminal and credit history which can be done online in 5 minutes. "

This is incorrect. TS requires background/credit checks, but involves actual interviews conducted by the DOD. They don't simply type your name into a database and clear you; you actually get an interim clearance while they check you, which takes several months to over a year.

I now question the authenticity of the rest of your post - as should others.
 
Freeze access? What a great idea. And the CIA, DIA, NSA, whoever, they're just supposed to stop working for a year while their clearances are reevaluated?
 
Excuse my ingnorance on this matter, but does that mean the young man (Specialist Bradley Manning, 22yr)currently held in custody in the States over this, could effectively walk?
I mean if access to the info is, as you say, easy to come by, how can they pin the entire leak on him.
I otherwise fear for this man potentially being scapegoated.

AD from Downunder.
 
How about just not screwing up big time instead and having nothing to hide?
 
This memo is available to the public:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/memoranda_default
Not a good idea to call it leaked.
 
Just a little personal note: When I was in graduate school, I applied for a summer job at the NSA. Since, if hired, I would have been working on improving the SAC nuclear release codes, I needed to upgrade to a "Presidential" security clearance. (I already had a "secret" clearance from work I'd already done for NASA.)

Since I would only be working there during the summer break, the clearance process was "expiated," and I went to the NSA buildings outside Washington in early December for the required polygraph test and interview with a psychologist. The polygraph test was so boring that I fell asleep in the middle of it, and the psychologist seemed, um, well, inept.

But, all in all, they managed to come to the correct conclusion: They told me "thanks for asking, but no job."

The point in this story is two-fold: First, there are many levels of classification more restrictive than "Secret," and, second, access to data classified at those more restricted levels is much more controlled than access to data only classified as "Secret" or "Confidential."

In fact, I was told that the (approximately) twenty levels between "Top Secret" and "Presidential" were classified.

Judging from what has been disclosed in the various recent leaks, perhaps too much has been classified for no good reason, but, still, the higher levels of classification seem to be secure from leaks and not used without some objective, reviewed, reason.
 
I have 25 years of IT experience. I currently write web-based software, but I've done it all, including system and network security.

Based on what I've read about govt security protocols, I think most departments would fail miserably if subjected to a simple audit from any online credit card processing agency.

In other words, if our government was required to pass basic security requirements that Visa, for instance, applies to merchant account holders, they would be shut down immediately.
 
<blockquote>It's actually quite easy to track releases. All they have to do is send out a slightly different letter (change some words around) to each agency. Then compare the one leaked to the media to the agency that leaked it. This is not rocket science.</blockquote>
No, it's not. It's the backstory to Tom Clancy's main character, Jack Ryan.
 
This is a ridiculous article with a ludicrous headline. The memo was published by ISOO ( http://www.archives.gov/isoo/ ) on the day it was released and by OMB shortly thereafter (link above).

If all you wanted was to drive traffic to your site, congratulations. If you wanted to report news, then better luck next time. Loss of respect, and trust, for the site and writers here.
 
Seems to me that the assesment process here is a wise precaution, but may have some holes in it that could be detramental to some government employees. None the less the breaches have increased in number but have been less exposing with the exception of Wikileaks of course.
 
@TomSea:

Did you view this Iraq video from an Apache helicopter shooting down at least 13 civilians including 2 Reuters journalists? How can it be defended this incident should be secret in the first place?
And hundreds if not thousands of incidents like it, where innocent blood is spilled?

And what about one of the latest cables about Israel, where an israeli diplomat states that they keep the Palestinian economy at the lowest possible level, without actually causing widespread starvation (while malnutrition is still common).

Maybe if there weren't so many coverup by the US, less people would feel morally obliged to leak these things.

Maybe these things really ought to be brought in the open, and the damage in that some of those cables really should have remained secret can be viewed as, well collateral damage.

And before you think I hate the USA: yes I hate a lot of the things the US does, but I don't hate the american people. Also I fear that America's actions and attitude are bringing about her downfall. And then we have China to worry about, whose abuse will probably ten times as worse than that of the US.

For the world's sake, the USG needs to open up like Obama promised, and stop the bullying, the wars, the tortures and renditions, the pollution and the economic warfare.
 
1) This memo says nothing about a new policy or posture, it seems more like a battle damage assessment.

2) Psychologists* not psychiatrists
 
"Lie detectors are not reliable. All they measure is fluctuations in blood pressure and respiration."

True. There have been numerous psychological studies showing that lie detector tests only are a little better than a random dice toss. Couple that with the fact that they produce more false positives than negatives (i.e, they falsely conclude that someone is lying more often than they falsely conclude that someone is telling the truth), and that anyone can train themselves to cheat lie detector tests, they do a lot more harm than good.

In many cases, lie detectors are only used to intimidate or trick the suspect - for example, two American police officers tricked a criminal into confessing by hooking him up to a copying machine and telling him it was a lie detector, and on other occasions suspects have "accientally" been told that the lie detector test won't work if they don't wash their hands after going to the bathroom, and then been secretly watched.

Lie detector tests are not used in most courts here in Europe, btw.
 
We've gone from Dubya to Damya in 10 long years. Can't anyone in Foggy Bottom remember what the U.S. Democracy is supposed to stand for? Where's Bubba on all of this? In the middle of this crowd. :=(
 
What really doesn't matter is that lie detectors don't work, so using them for important stuff is not exactly smart.

There's a reason they are not accepted in court in many countries (Australia, France, etc.).
 
Here, let's make it simple for them:

1. Don't write anything online
2. Don't write anything on a computer
3. Don't write anything on paper without a fire source nearby.
4. What, you need more than this?
 
Yeah. You DO know this was published on the OMB White House website right? Is it still a leak or casual and indifferent journalism.
 
Its going to be the same as in Soviet Union?
Everybody was taught to tell to "offices" about anything suspicious. Otherwise you would be enemy as well, who just didn't said anything about something you knew.
As well, what they going to do with "danger" employees? Reduce their possibilities, just based on opinion of those funny psychiatrists?

Cmon! Look around, they still sitting and do whatever they want: start a war with someone, steal oil, kill people because they are "danger" to them. They try to reduce all the risk, just cutting of resources from people, who is a bit smarter then others, who can see a bit more then others - is danger for them!
Its wrong, and I really upset about that quality of education was long time ago reduced with target of easier control - and they have it now. Most of US citizens, doesn't have own opinion, they don't try to think globally, just sitting in their small world, and live dependently on someone's "political" wishes!

I'm not against most of citizens of US, because its would be stupid, I'm against small part of em, who is very powerful and smart.

So based on that text, if I would be from US, what would happens next? Few "men in black" would knock my door after 30 minutes, or just report my boss (if he exists), that I am potentially danger.

People. Please, THINK!
 
You wrote:
" I'd freeze all document access for people carrying a Secret or lower classification until they had passed a personal interview and lie detector test"


And that is why you spent 20 years in the military - your solution is to lock everything down from everyone with Secret clearance. Rather than address the problem which is the ease at which this information is transmitted, you blame the people.

The problem here is with security not the people. If all the secrets were written on parchment and stored in a vault this wouldn't be an issue. But since these documents are stored on a computer network, our government is completely incapable of restricting how they are transmitted from one location to another. Your solution: restrict access for everyone rather than restricting what can be done to the documents. Sounds like a government operation.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

A
The US government has a new plan for slashing greenhouse emissions from buildings
2
Replies
26
Views
340
Kam7r
K
A
US cyberdefense agencies NSA and CISA disclose top 10 security misconfigurations
Replies
3
Views
346
MaXtor
MaXtor
midian182
US federal agencies must appoint chief AI officers, according to new guidelines
Replies
7
Views
117
NumberNine
NumberNine

Latest posts

Back