This Really is Big Brother: The Leak Nobody's Noticed | Hacker News Reader

This Really is Big Brother: The Leak Nobody's Noticed

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187 pointskelnos52 comments

These requirements for pairing and that everyone working in sensitive intelligence work will now have to spy and tattle on their fellow workers is interesting in that it includes the Peace Corps in the directive. Peace Corps being added to the list of organizations that have to spy on each other for disclosure of classified information is interesting since in 1996 the white house announced that the CIA had not been using the Peace Corp for spying for over 20 years. Currently the Peace Corps requires applicants to promise they have never worked for the CIA. Not the NSA though, other intelligence agencies, or subcontractors of the CIA. Just directly for the CIA.

http://www.peacecorps.gov/jobs/workingpc/eligibility/

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Peace_Corps

http://clinton6.nara.gov/1996/07/1996-07-17-press-briefing-b...

Peace Corps being a front for US military and intelligence operations has been called a myth, but including them in this directive about classified information is going to smash the claim this is really a myth.

Remember that having a global humanitarian organisation that is seen to be an arm of the US government or military can make the organisation useless. People in far off countries which are/can be targets of US military attacks are highly unlikely to cooperate with an organisation that they think is going to spy on them and report back.

Peace Corps is not working in any countries which are targets of US military attacks. They do work in some countries where local politicians scapegoat the US.

It works out OK, because volunteers are not conducting espionage inside government ministries, they are doing things like teaching classes on how to dig better toilets. It seems to take an American or a European to be so paranoid that even this can be cast as a sinister activity.

It seems to take an American or a European to be so paranoid that even this can be cast as a sinister activity.

They know their history. The possibility that their governments would do something as underhanded as hide a person with ulterior motive inside a humanitarian organization is not irrational.

You do know the US Government set up a (sorta) fake vaccination centre to catch Osama Bin Laden? The original post we're commenting on is how the US can't really be trusted. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccina...

When I see the freaking Education Department on the same list I have to wonder if something else isn't going on. Where is national security implicated there? For that matter, the Social Security Administration?

Now, there's good reason to suppress certain types of leaks from those organizations, they have a lot of private data on Americans (Obamacare put all government guaranteed etc. student loans going forward into the government, and a quick skim of Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_the_United_Sta...) indicates the DoEducation is naturally involved).

But that's not been a problem as long as I can remember, so I somehow doubt that's the intention of this insanely broad program. As I've mentioned in other akin discussions, I remember Nixon, and this feels like Nixon to the Nth degree.

Its important to understand that from some people's perspective, the whole point of Federally funded education is indoctrination. In which case it would be very important to identify those who are, "frustrat[ed] with co-workers or the organization."

But the private data you mention isn't all that private. The government doesn't care about leaking your private data, it cares about information getting out that will politically damage or embarrass those in charge.

You don't know what you are talking about. Peace Corps volunteers do not have access to classified documents to begin with. They are required not to have ties to intelligence gathering activity, even a relative in the intelligence industry will get you thrown out of the application process.

This issue threatens the lives of Peace Corps volunteers and I find it disgusting that you are willing to endanger them on the basis of conjecture and hearsay.

Another example of authority protecting itself by invoking national security scares, patriotism, etc.

Quite disgusting that the idea of outing internal wrong doing or failure is some how helping enemies. Its not the outing that helps enemies, its the wrong doing that help enemies.

Besides, "what has the government got to hide"...... Yeah, fecking loads, just like we all have!!!! Difference is, we individuals have the right to make mistakes and, well, be human, but when a government does it, it has no right to hide. None.

Whistle blowing IS a duty, NOT treason. Treating decent citizens as the enemy is treason. In a "democracy", the people are the country, not the government.

This is a very chilling article. One element of the fallout of Snowden's escapade will be that private industry will be required to participate in and be a part of the same security policies; and this will be true of companies of all sizes and in all industries.

Right now you think of responsible positions dealing directly with mission critical information as being those where a security clearance is required. But if this trend continues it will soon be hard to find ANY job that pays reasonable wages and does not require a security clearance. Hotel maids, busboys, janitors on up the scale.

And let's be clear; this would be welcomed by many employers because it provides legitimacy to a whole panoply of abusive practices.

It will also have other subtle chilling effects on our ability to innovate as a country. Does your startup make technology with security implications or applications? Are you going to turn down a meeting from In-Q-Tel? If you take a contract to supply data management tools to the DOE, and one of the conditions is that people on the project must have some specific level of background check? You can pass a background check now; but what if they interview someone who hates you? Or worse, if the person who is conducting and grading the background check wants to fail you; with career ending consequences if they succeed...

This is a very ugly thing that is loose and growing now; it will touch each and every one of us who is actively involved in the economic life of America.

You have missed it, but private industry was already required to participate in governmental security policies long ago, when we began to privatize intelligence work to companies like Booz Allen. It shouldn't be surprising that the government will make compliance to its security policies a condition of this kind of contracting.

I don't see any reason to think that random maids at La Quinta in Little Rock, AR are going to need security clearances.

The point I was trying to make is that there are some powerful forces that will drive the expansion of "security culture" far beyond what seems reasonable to us now.

The .gov has always required contractors working on sensitive matters to have clearances. But the point I'm focussing on is the broad expansion of what qualifies as "security sensitive information".

And maids have physical access to rooms where people may be storing both personal, corporate and government information; it's easy to imagine someone making an argument that they should be subject to a criminal records check and possibly more stringent requirements for the luxury suites...

Especially since the security process gives management extreme leverage in labor negotiations and ensures that there is an absolute power imbalance between employees and employers.

This started since Wikileaks. Remember when they wouldn't allow government employees to even read Wikileaks-related articles on Facebook, and risked being fired if they were sharing them?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/world/05restrict.html?_r=0

How is he able to say that info is still classified after it was made public? I thought that once a classified document is leaked to the press and made public, it becomes public knowledge and can't be called classified anymore. Did that law change in the past few years or something?

No, absolutely the opposite. Only way a classified document becomes unclassified is when they say it's unclassified. In fact, often times they can't even say something that is classified is classified. You're just supposed to report it to your security officer and then they send it up the chain of command. If you have the ability to yank it down, you do.

Senate Staffers Told To Pretend Top Secret Documents Are Not Widely Available On Web

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/06/14/senate-st...

If they refuse to confirm the leaked info, it leaves a shadow of doubt. There is plenty of bogus leaks out there, and plenty of real leaks. Official sanctioning would be a way to distinguish them.

I wouldn't say nobody has noticed, the right of center blogs I follow or maybe Drudge linked to this. Those of you who follow the MSM can tell us if it's getting any coverage there.

Side note: you really know this is out of hand when the Department of Education has such a program. Really hard to see any national security implications of leaking there....

It's all quite surreal, isn't it? At least people seem to be waking up. Bravo to HN for keeping up the coverage and not letting these outrageous revelations fade to a whimper.

Surreal? Perhaps.

For me, it reifies all I learned Nth hand about things like The Big Lie. Growing up and studying WWII history I had to accept that it worked, but I never really understood how until ... hmmm, went to college in 1979, read/skimmed the Boston Globe that my student group had a subscription to and e.g. saw how much it lied through omission. The 21st Century has taken this to the Nth degree in the US.

That was when I switched to really detailed study of the Protracted Conflict (the Bolsheviks vs. the world) and it was e.g. easy to understand what the big deal about revolutionary truth vs. bourgeois truth was about.

<< A Defense Security Service online pamphlet lists a wide range of “reportable” suspicious behaviors, including working outside of normal duty hours. >>

Certainly the only plausible explanation that salaried gov employees are working overtime is that they are spies -- at least we can all agree on this.

It seems like the more draconian and restrictive the rules for TLA employees get, the more TLA work ends up getting done by outside contractors whose chief qualification to do it is that they aren't bound by stifling TLA restrictions.

Unquestionably disturbing. Imagine what hasn't been revealed to us yet.

what's the old wives tail go? Throw a frog in boiling water and he'll jump right out. Put the same frog in a pot but slowly raise the temperature and he'll boil. Slowly and surely they'll attempt to chip away at our rights for our own protection in a misguided attempt to make their lives and duties easier to perform.

Also, a frog is smart enough to jump out of the water irl.

The world is turning to shit.

Shit makes the best fertilizer. Decay and regeneration is the basic cycle of life.

It already happened, but now people are starting to recognize the smell.

The worst bit is the one that says that you are supposed to turn yourself and others in for failing to report reasonable suspicions.

Let loose a directive like that in a large bureaucracy, and the guaranteed result is a lot of CYA behavior. Which, ironically, will lessen how much information flows.

That's exactly the environment in my country in the 40's to mid 70's. You were obliged to inform the state of suspicious activities of your fellow citizens (things like reading the wrong sort of books or indulging in private gatherings) and were promptly compensated when you did so, whether you were being truthful or just really didn't like your neighbor. The infamous PIDE (secret police) is considered one of the most effective police forces in history, partially because of these sorts of tactics and how they managed to creep their way into every aspect of society. This is not something I'm proud to be associated with our history.

Of course that was dictatorship era Portugal. More than 40 years ago. I wasn't even born. But things have a way to come around again, one way or another, when we let ourselves get too comfortable and forget history or just trust too much on the competence of others.

> “If this is done correctly, an organization can get to a person who is having personal issues or problems that if not addressed by a variety of social means may lead that individual to violence, theft or espionage before it even gets to that point,” said a senior Pentagon official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.

Looks like there's some senior Pentagon officials who have a peer they can snitch on.

>“Hammer this fact home, ...punish those who fail to report their security suspicions"

Not Gotwin, but STASI Law. Here, today, is mom's good ol' apple pie USA.

I see a propoganda machine at work. As far as I'm concerned, Obama is still the best president we have had in my adult life. He makes decisions based on reason and not belief. This is bad for politics as usual and this is why this slander campaign exists. Obama is not communist, Muslim, a dictator or anything like that. I am really surprised that even hacker news readers are being infected by right wing propoganda. When did it become cool to be a conservative? Please don't let fear enable an abandonement of logic. I operate off of proof and bottom line is, most of the allegations against Obama cannot be proven with facts but only hearsay. What I see is logical people being turned into the sheep they once despised.

Do you see the 4th Amendment in tatters? Is that the propaganda machine at work? It seems like there's plenty of blame for both sides of the aisle and blindly defending the Administration with platitudes seems counterproductive.

The constitution has been in trouble for a long time. There has been a consistent degradation. Obama absolutely did not set these programs into motion, most of these secret programs are relics from the war on terror that fear enabled. Do I see a degradation in the 4th? Sure as hell I have but it's been happening for a long time. Now your pissed about it because the media tells you so. This is the right wing fear factory at work.

What if I told you... That there are people who opposed these programs when they were first put in place, and continue to oppose them now.

I'm one of them. I just don't think that it's all Obama's to own. All the recent presidents should be blamed collectively.

Some people have been upset for awhile, and many of them now see the potential for change given the increased visibility of the issues. Personally, I'm not angry because of what the media tells me. If anything, I'm more frustrated with what they don't report. But mostly I'm frustrated because our government seems comfortable disregarding our rights at will. That's not a partisan issue, nor is it the media hype factory at work. Framing it as such is deeply counterproductive.

I agree with your sentiments but to not recognize that there are political agendas at work is not only counterproductive but also extremely naive.

Right-wing propaganda? The libertarians are frothing, but the Tea Party doesn't seem to know what it thinks and the Washington Republicans are mostly keeping their heads down. The majority of the US population appear not to be all that concerned.

As propaganda campaigns go, this seems high cost, low pay off.

They are keeping their heads down and waiting for the next election. Fox News style reporting has become the norm. Why get your hands dirty when you can use YouTube, Facebook and network news? Fear enables an abandonement of logic and they pumping the country full of fear through very specific channels. This propoganda campaign is truly a work of art that has fooled the masses. The same people behind the industrial military complex are behind this onslaught of blurry information.

Down votes? Hard to hear the truth...

I suspect the down votes are for lumping in Muslims with communists and dictators in a derogatory way. That's pretty offensive stuff.

You obviously did not read my comment. I am not saying these are derogatory terms. I'm just saying that they are being falsely applied to an individual for political gains. To conservatives, which I am not, these are derogatory terms.

I can technically agree, but that's just because i'm 22.

To me Obama showed much promise, but he's really been just as horrible as every other president that's graced the White House, if not worse.

When you were 17-18, you were allowed the naivety of youth. Now, not so much.

Those of us who noticed where he came from (the Chicago political machine), or his 2008 campaign's signature thuggishness (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732465940457850...) are not in the least surprised.

If you're still using the same media sources that didn't report the above back then, perhaps you should broaden them. Of course, who knows when the government will start telling your friends that you're reading unapproved sources, right now that sort of thing is limited to donors of money but "If This Goes On—"

Lol. Seriously? The wallstreet journal... Wallstreet is full of crooks, with highly politicized agendas.

"Crooks"? Seriously, their political reporters like Kimberly Strassel are criminals, who should be in jail instead of engaging in subversive political speech?

Well, thank you for demonstrating why this up to now cold civil war is not going to be resolved peacefully, when opposition is by definition illegitimate; YOU are part of the problem.

And you don't have to take her word for it, all the incidents are trivially discoverable with your favorite search engine; I read them contemporaneously, and only cite her article now because she puts them in a neat package.

I mean, it's really a bunch of falsifiable propositions. E.g. did or did not Bob Bauer, general counsel for the Obama 2008 campaign, try to criminalize simple opposition to the campaign, core 1st Amendment political speech, in these specific cited examples?

Let me close with another Wall Street Journal writer's words, although she's a notorious Palin hater and is an only half-reformed Obamacon (Obama "conservative"), Peggy Nonan (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732441260457851...):

"What does it mean when half the country—literally half the country—understands that the revenue-gathering arm of its federal government is politically corrupt, sees them as targets, and will shoot at them if they try to raise their heads? That is the kind of thing that can kill a country, letting half its citizens believe that they no longer have full political rights."

Man you've been sucking the propaganda up. Yes, crooks. Who do you think politicians work for? It's not the constituents. It's the financial elite. Where do the financial elite work? Wallstreet. What do the financial elite read? Wallstreet journal.

I'm starting to think I'm the only one with a political science degree here.. But hey, you guys know better.

If that's where you got your manichean world view I've very glad I didn't take any polysci classes in college.

Don't worry. It shows.

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