Are Government and Media Clueless about Technology

[Stravo]

This arises out of the Wikileaks scandal. As I watch more and more media coverage concerning the Wikileaks issue I've noticed a trend that has sort of always been there under the surface whenever issues regarding technology and its applications arise. There is a surprising lack of knowledge in the mainstream media in relation to technology especially when the focus is on computers.

I've seen talking heads on the Sunday talk shows get facts just plain wrong about the Wikileaks such as one pundit claiming the soldier who leaked the info downloaded them onto Lady Gaga CD's so he was listening to them as he downloaded the data (?!). In reality he dumped them onto regular CDs and labeled them as Lady Gaga to avoid scrutiny. How they can get facts like this wrong points to an obvious tech gap with many of the media folks. In many instances they do not understand how the technology they are reporting on works. I always like to see how uncomfortable they get when trying to explain some cyber-crime or other tech related issue to the public. It's obvious they are just as computer illiterate as their audience.

The government also seems to have some issues in relation to computer security and technology. The fact that a low level grunt was able to access all of this data points to some obvious flaws in their system. Also the governemnt is not really grasping how the digital age is making information so fluid and accessible. They are trying to clamp down on it like it's still the era of file folders in sliding drawers.

You could say how is this at all important? So what if the news at 6pm can't accurately describe Wikileaks? Well, if your primary source of information is the news and you are Joe Plumber how the hell are you supposed to form an opinion on something if the news can't get you the correct information? How can there be any form of good debate on topics if the information regarding something as important as technology and computers is flawed or lacking? Doesn't that also promote the general computer illiteracy that has taken root in large segements of the population? If Wikileaks mission is to make all information free yet no one knows how to access it then that makes things very silly doesn't it?

It also leads to the conspiracy theorist idea that if the government can't limit the flow of information thanks to the internet and digital technology they'll just keep people in the dark as to how to access that information by keeping them computer illiterate.

As to who cares if the government is not technically adept that's even worse. You have countries like China running armies of hackers that can do all kinds of shit if allowed to run rampant especially in times of economic crisis. What defense does the US have for that? They recently ran a war game with this scenario in mind and the US did not do well.

It is not only an issue of national security but economics as well. You have senators who don't even use a computer trying to find ways to tax the internet or regulate it. They have no clue about what they are messing with yet are treating it like it's a turnpike.

I could just be talking out of my ass. What are your thoughts? Is the media and government clueless about computers and technology?

[Tribun]

Trust me, your nation is not alone.

We also have the computer-illiterate politicians who nonetheless want to try and control the whole thing. Of course they are wholly unsuccessful, as again seen during a recent debate about age verification. They honestly spoke about broadcast timeslots for the internet.

But our media isn't much better, either. Whenever one debate about violence in video games sparks up, they dig up the ultra-old Counter-Strike.

[Cecelia5578]

The government also seems to have some issues in relation to computer security and technology. The fact that a low level grunt was able to access all of this data points to some obvious flaws in their system.

How is this a problem? IIRC, Manning's MOS is 96B, intelligence analyst, so at a minimum he's going to have a TS/SCI clearance, and while he may not have briefed generals at the Pentagon, simply because of the nature of the job he was going to have access to tons of classified information. Because of the scope and size of the national security apparatus, there are going to be plenty of low level types with clearances and access to such information. I suppose you could limit MI jobs in the Army to officers, warrant officers and senior NCOs, but that is nonsense.

RE Chinese hackers-how do we know we don't do the same thing to them?

[Mr Bean]

Stravo you seem to be under a misconception RE:Mr Low Level grunt.
Information in our government is classified on 3 levels, Confidential, Secret and Top Secret. In addition there is top Secret SCI as in your Top Secret clearance does not give you access unless your also in that SCI (Think of it as a section)

Because of the way out Government handles information, we tend to end up with lots of Top Secret. The minutes of a meeting where some Secret material might be discussed normally end up as Top Secret because classifiers are lazy and with only three layers to work with they default to the highest security level. If you want more information there exists some studies of this which might or might not be available off the Internet.

But the main problem we have is that the US is not like Hollywood thinks the US is. We don't have double triple OMEGA THREE level security clearances. We have Confidential, we have Secret and we have Top Secret. Nearly anything classified ends up Top Secret because you have to justify down but not up.

[Stravo]

Well Bean, there's another point about media information. I read a paper or see the news and hear "A private first class somehow got access to all this information" makes sense to me, layman, right? Now you come along with the actual knowledge and experience to let me know that my source of information, the one millions are relying on to make (hopefully) informed decisions was dead wrong on this point.

[Cecelia5578]

Well Bean, there's another point about media information. I read a paper or see the news and hear "A private first class somehow got access to all this information" makes sense to me, layman, right? Now you come along with the actual knowledge and experience to let me know that my source of information, the one millions are relying on to make (hopefully) informed decisions was dead wrong on this point.

Or, look at it this way: it'd be the exact same thing if Manning had graduated from a prestigious university and was an entry level analyst at (insert 3 letter agency). Its just that people don't associate that sorta thing with low ranking enlisted people in the military, cause they aren't college educated Jack Ryan's or something. The nature of the beast that is the military means that you can be young and low ranking and non-degreed, and have responsibilities that in other circumstances, might require a degree and experience

[spartasman]

As far as the media goes, it ties into the general lack of intelligent reporters that has gripped the industry recently. Also, most news casters and such are likely to be above the age of forty (or at least late thirties), and therefore are less likely to have experience or knowledge pertaining to computers. This works out actually, as most people who watch the news tend to be older as well, and are therefore more comfortable with low-tech knowledge that does not confuse them.

Also, I don't understand why you would think that ineptness in the media directly effects the computer acuity of the military, as most people joining the military tend to be young (and therefore more informed and experienced with computers). The cables that Pvt. Manning released were not particularly secret anyway, and as Mr. Bean pointed out, a relatively low level soldier can easily get access to that sort of info as long as he has security clearance at that level.

[Mr Bean]

Well Bean, there's another point about media information. I read a paper or see the news and hear "A private first class somehow got access to all this information" makes sense to me, layman, right? Now you come along with the actual knowledge and experience to let me know that my source of information, the one millions are relying on to make (hopefully) informed decisions was dead wrong on this point.

Well it points back to the point that Experts stopped being experts awhile back and started being talking heads. For example what's a Republican(Or democrat for that matter) "Strategist"? If you watch your average cable news show at least 1/3rd of people have that title.

But what does it mean? What topics can you speak about with an expert opinion as a "Strategist"? Pay attention when people are ID only as being insert party "strategist". What it means in reality is nothing. But in Cable news being a "strategist" lets you speak on subjects from is Pluto a planet to Iraq War timetable's for withdraw. Experts stopped being experts on every single cable news show a long time ago. Hell more and more weather men are just normal TV reporters not meteorologists in my own personal observation. Which means the average hour of news is made up of lets say 70% Journalists, 20% Politico's and 10% other (Strategists fall into the Journalists area, most of them do have journalism or similar degrees).

There is lots of news out there to cover on Wiki-leaks but despite the fact they have 24 hours of news to fill the major networks don't even try. You don't know about Confidential, Secret and Top Secret and the issue that you can classify something Top Secret easily but Secret requires you to do legwork to prove it's not top Secret (Up not down remember?) because that news story requires actual reporters to go talk with people and CNN/MSNBC/FOX have very few of those. What they all have is lots of good news actors.

[Dave]

Stravo you seem to be under a misconception RE:Mr Low Level grunt.
Information in our government is classified on 3 levels, Confidential, Secret and Top Secret. In addition there is top Secret SCI as in your Top Secret clearance does not give you access unless your also in that SCI (Think of it as a section)

Because of the way out Government handles information, we tend to end up with lots of Top Secret. The minutes of a meeting where some Secret material might be discussed normally end up as Top Secret because classifiers are lazy and with only three layers to work with they default to the highest security level. If you want more information there exists some studies of this which might or might not be available off the Internet.

But the main problem we have is that the US is not like Hollywood thinks the US is. We don't have double triple OMEGA THREE level security clearances. We have Confidential, we have Secret and we have Top Secret. Nearly anything classified ends up Top Secret because you have to justify down but not up.

To expand on that briefly, SCI stands for (IIRC) Special Compartmentalized Information. The example I was given was the inner workings of an electronic warfare package on an airplane. A person with SCI on the EW box will likely be able to know everything about how that box works, and probably what input will come into the EW box (probably from the radar system, but he can't know) and what output is required from the EW box (probably to a signal processing box, but he can't know). So this hypothetical person with SCI on the EW box will know how the box works and maybe that, when installed in <whatever aircraft it's installed in>, it must weigh less than, say, 5 kg and use less than 25 W power consumption max, but nothing else about the environment the box is operating in.

Anyway, the other thing people ask about is need-to-know. A simplified security policy designed to protect confidentiality has two parts: Clearance Level and Need-To-Know. Keeping track of clearance level (electronically) is easy -- you just need to store what security level a user has, and what security level a document has. When someone wants a document, you make sure that the clearance of the user >= clearance of document and go.

Keeping track of need-to-know is much more resource intensive, since now you (basically) have to keep track of which users should have access to which documents, and what they can do with the document (read, write, delete, append etc), for every single document and user. This gets out of hand quickly, in a (number of users * number of documents) kind of way. Sure, for 5 people and 10 documents it's ok, but try 300 users with a thousand documents...

You can cut this down by grouping the documents, and adding users to multiple groups, but you still have to store which groups a user can access and which groups a document belongs to. If the user doesn't belong to every single group a document belongs to, they don't get access, because the document could contain something they aren't cleared for.

And you have to check this every single time anyone tries to access anything in any way, and you have to watch for unauthorized communications ("Oh, you need this document? I'll just copy it into Yahoo! Mail and forward it to you..." etc.), and you have to... you get the idea.

Computer security is a big and complicated field, and it's very hard to do right. It's very tempting to take shortcuts. ("Sure, we'll add all the new guys on this mission to every group that the document is in, so they can access it." And so the new guys now have access to the groups NUCLEAR, SUBMARINES, and RUSSIA, and every document in those groups or any mixture of those three groups.)

And that's one way security (confidentiality) breaches can start.

[Keevan_Colton]

Strangely this makes it seem like googledocs has better information management going on than can be mustered for matters of national security.

[Zixinus]

I think this is simply part of the generation gap. A lot of TV journalists and the like grew up with computers being a specialist interest, something belonging to fields that require actual thinking some work specialized knowledge to use and understand. These people also think that they understand anything about computers by being able to use Microsoft Word and press the on button. If they have a problem, they just call for the "tech guy".

The same issue is probably present with a good deal of government workers too. I wouldn't be surprised if entire government facilities still run on floppies (which funnily enough are no longer made) and Dos, if not typewriters. Upgrading to modern systems and training people to use modern systems is expensive, especially when the equipment you have now still works and you see a field that changes every year (why upgrade now if it will be obsolete in five years?). In some places (research, communications, etc) that becomes a different question with a very real need for upgrades and the necessarily training that would lead to, but not uniformly. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing happens in the military too.
So you have a very large pool of tech-illiterate people who you cannot afford to and don't really need to all properly train, but require merely to get their job done. Security already suffers.

Young people who have experience with computers does not necessarily translate to computer literacy. At best, they are users who do not really understand the limitations of their technology, merely able to use the GUI.

So we do have is a good deal of people that suddenly have a crisis on their hands the only way they can.

So when confronted with this kind of news, they truly don't know anything because they would need the "tech guy" to properly explain what is going on, but hey, he's not a journalist and he can fuck himself if he thinks he can do my job.

[Broomstick]

A lot of managers and executives who make policy decisions are tech stupid, not just tech illiterate. They have lower level flunkies to do the computer work and just read the results, maybe get their e-mail on black berries or phones or whatever. So they're trying to make policy about things they don't understand. Ditto for quite a few of the TV talking heads - they're paid to look good and speak without stuttering, not for their tech skills.

[Thanas]

Double post deleted.

[Phil Skayhan]

Because of the way out Government handles information, we tend to end up with lots of Top Secret. The minutes of a meeting where some Secret material might be discussed normally end up as Top Secret because classifiers are lazy and with only three layers to work with they default to the highest security level. If you want more information there exists some studies of this which might or might not be available off the Internet.

But the main problem we have is that the US is not like Hollywood thinks the US is. We don't have double triple OMEGA THREE level security clearances. We have Confidential, we have Secret and we have Top Secret. Nearly anything classified ends up Top Secret because you have to justify down but not up.

Actually, you need to justify any classification according to the guidelines of the relevant organization, or at least the advisory officer should be doing that; the laziness you mention is a definite factor. Also regarding the minutes example, it is common because, while the materials discussed individually are SECRET, in combination they become TOP SECRET.

On the "low-level grunt" topic, is it known if he procured all these documents on his own?

[Bakustra]

Because of the way out Government handles information, we tend to end up with lots of Top Secret. The minutes of a meeting where some Secret material might be discussed normally end up as Top Secret because classifiers are lazy and with only three layers to work with they default to the highest security level. If you want more information there exists some studies of this which might or might not be available off the Internet.

But the main problem we have is that the US is not like Hollywood thinks the US is. We don't have double triple OMEGA THREE level security clearances. We have Confidential, we have Secret and we have Top Secret. Nearly anything classified ends up Top Secret because you have to justify down but not up.

Actually, you need to justify any classification according to the guidelines of the relevant organization, or at least the advisory officer should be doing that; the laziness you mention is a definite factor. Also regarding the minutes example, it is common because, while the materials discussed individually are SECRET, in combination they become TOP SECRET.

On the "low-level grunt" topic, is it known if he procured all these documents on his own?

He claimed to have done so in the IMs released by the guy who turned him in, but any interrogation results would almost certainly, and ironically, be classified themselves.

[Mr Bean]

Actually, you need to justify any classification according to the guidelines of the relevant organization, or at least the advisory officer should be doing that; the laziness you mention is a definite factor.

Theoretically you do, in practice you don't. Requesting classification of Secret material in Secret and below only area will be rubber stamped, requesting Top Secret in a TS shop will be rubber stamped. Requesting Secret or Confidential in a TS shop gets officers involved asking why it's not TS.

Also regarding the minutes example, it is common because, while the materials discussed individually are SECRET, in combination they become TOP SECRET.

No it does not! And your part of the fucking problem!
Secret+Secret DOES NOT EQUAL Top Secret! It equals fucking Secret! Adding Secret to Secret makes it fucking Secret! That's the point! No matter how many enlisted's records all of which will be stamped Confidential, if you stack that shit to the moon they will never become Top Secret. You classify at the highest level. If one sentence is TS/SCI document it's either redacted or the entire document becomes TS/SCI. Period end of fucking story. If minutes contain Secret level discussions they are supposed to be Secret level classified but will be TS classified because you don't get punished in our business by going on the side of caution.

You will instantly lose your job and get all kinds of shit if you classify something Unclassified that should have been Secret (Even if it's only one sentence) but making minutes of a meeting TS despite the fact no classified discussion took place will result in zero punishment.


*Edit if you want you can dig up the relevant instructions from the Internet or you can go look at Wiki because it contains the same information copied verbatim.

[MKSheppard]

We have Confidential, we have Secret and we have Top Secret. Nearly anything classified ends up Top Secret because you have to justify down but not up.

Don't forget code word compartmented so that only those with a genuine need to know get to know.

[Mr Bean]

Don't forget code word compartmented so that only those with a genuine need to know get to know.

That's SCI part of Top Secret. It's like Top Secret except it has need to know built in rather than assumed.

[Beowulf]

No it does not! And your part of the fucking problem!
Secret+Secret DOES NOT EQUAL Top Secret! It equals fucking Secret! Adding Secret to Secret makes it fucking Secret! That's the point! No matter how many enlisted's records all of which will be stamped Confidential, if you stack that shit to the moon they will never become Top Secret. You classify at the highest level. If one sentence is TS/SCI document it's either redacted or the entire document becomes TS/SCI. Period end of fucking story. If minutes contain Secret level discussions they are supposed to be Secret level classified but will be TS classified because you don't get punished in our business by going on the side of caution.

There are bit of Secret, that when combined with other bits of Secret, are Top Secret. I haven't seen any personally, but I've heard of such existing at previous assignments. I think it's because the two bits together can strongly imply what is actually TS. So long as the bits of Secret aren't in the same place though, it's all good.

[Mr Bean]

There are bit of Secret, that when combined with other bits of Secret, are Top Secret. I haven't seen any personally, but I've heard of such existing at previous assignments. I think it's because the two bits together can strongly imply what is actually TS. So long as the bits of Secret aren't in the same place though, it's all good.

Then they should would be given the SCI subclass which means they are Top Secret in all but name already.

[Lord MJ]

I've seen instances where combinations of unclassified material even in the case that the unclassified material is publicly available results in a classified document.

Reasoning being the individual pieces may not be harmful, but the aggregate of those pieces produces something that would be harmful if disclosed.

[Lonestar]

There are bit of Secret, that when combined with other bits of Secret, are Top Secret. I haven't seen any personally, but I've heard of such existing at previous assignments. I think it's because the two bits together can strongly imply what is actually TS. So long as the bits of Secret aren't in the same place though, it's all good.

That is a...stretch. It does exist but I haven't seen it used a lot. Of course, I don't issue classifications(but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night).


My understanding is that Brad Manning released stuff he yanked off of SIPRNET. To be perfectly blunt, a trained Chimpanzee can be granted a interim SECRET clearance to work on SIPRNET. As it was he had a TS/SCI, but that he didn't yank anything off of JWICS/NSANET/Other networks tells me he may have been restricted from having access to those networks(and I've heard that he was a bit of a problem child, so that may be true) or that he didn't have burnable media privalges in that cell.

By the By, it is quite a *lot* more complilicated than the 3-level of classification that Bean mentioned. Besides the SCI added, you have counter-intelligence polygraphs and fullscope polygraphs(not everyone gets either of those), certain program words nessecitate another background check, even if you are already working on that program in another capacity or limits on foreign contact. I've seen someone who got married to a foreign national and as a result he lost his well-paying contractor job that day.

[Phil Skayhan]

Actually, you need to justify any classification according to the guidelines of the relevant organization, or at least the advisory officer should be doing that; the laziness you mention is a definite factor.

Theoretically you do, in practice you don't. Requesting classification of Secret material in Secret and below only area will be rubber stamped, requesting Top Secret in a TS shop will be rubber stamped. Requesting Secret or Confidential in a TS shop gets officers involved asking why it's not TS.

Then direct them to the relevant guidelines and/or the Classification Advisory Officer. And if things are being consistently over classified, then perhaps some remedial training is required.

As I think you're trying to point out, the problem is if something is over classified then dissemination becomes more limited and people who might need it won't see it.

Also regarding the minutes example, it is common because, while the materials discussed individually are SECRET, in combination they become TOP SECRET.

No it does not! And your part of the fucking problem!

If this is your understanding of the classification process, it might be the other way around.

Secret+Secret DOES NOT EQUAL Top Secret! It equals fucking Secret! Adding Secret to Secret makes it fucking Secret! That's the point! No matter how many enlisted's records all of which will be stamped Confidential, if you stack that shit to the moon they will never become Top Secret. You classify at the highest level. If one sentence is TS/SCI document it's either redacted or the entire document becomes TS/SCI. Period end of fucking story. If minutes contain Secret level discussions they are supposed to be Secret level classified but will be TS classified because you don't get punished in our business by going on the side of caution.

Beowulf already seconded and gave the reason why, but you should have already known that.

You will instantly lose your job and get all kinds of shit if you classify something Unclassified that should have been Secret (Even if it's only one sentence) but making minutes of a meeting TS despite the fact no classified discussion took place will result in zero punishment.

Classification Advisory Officers exist for a reason. Use them.

*Edit if you want you can dig up the relevant instructions from the Internet or you can go look at Wiki because it contains the same information copied verbatim.

Are you serious? Basing how things should be classified off instructions from the public Wikipedia?