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Comment by Tangokat | Hacker News Reader

According to the Intercept, the U.S Military has banned employees from visiting First Look because there could be classified information on the site. [1] [2] (extra source since you can't see the real one..)

Maybe that is what you are experiencing?

[1] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/20/u-s-military-b...

[2] https://thebulletwire.com/u-s-military-bans-glenn-greenwalds...

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The U.S. DoD is banned from accessing firstlook.org (among others) from government-owned computers. In fact a memo was sent explicitly permitting DoD members from accessing these websites from personally-owned systems.

There is a memo from a few years ago that prohibited accessing Wikileaks from personally-owned computers, but the order was rescinded.

That's similar to the wikileaks ban. I don't understand this policy: If something is accessible virtually from everywhere, what do you gain by not allowing your employees to access the info?!

The only thing I can think of, is internal issues at political level (who said what lies to whom to achieve more funding about his work, etc.) which even that won't take long before the interested party eventually finds out.

It perpetuates the mythology of classification and information control. If you have clearance, you can lose it by accessing classified information improperly. That would probably mean losing your job. If you don't have clearance, you should be considering all the information you can get your hands on. Not doing so, would be poorly doing your job.

nicely explained, thanks :-)

Of all the people I would expect to be following the rules (even the "stupid" ones), it would be actual employees of the government and military itself.

Once the military decides that they get to ignore laws which are silly, they will decide they can ignore laws which are unenforceable in practice, and then the Republic will fall.

You either have a culture of civilian control of the military, and a nation of laws, or you don't. The Church Committee is what resulted from the last time the Intelligence Community decided that laws are silly; is that what you want to go back to? Before you answer, keep in mind that the NSA was actually following the laws this time, so the situation as you see it post-Snowden could easily have been far worse.

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