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Comment by gnu8 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if CIA personnel are actually forbidden from reading or possessing some of the Snowdrn related books. If they contained any leaked classified material, that would be a violation for anyone possessing a security clearance.

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I remember reading an article that said military bases began blocking the Guardian, as most information was still classified and despite being public soldiers weren't allowed to read it.

I think it was this one: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/01/us-military-blo...

That's not just closing the barn door after the horse has fled, but beating any others that may have died in the escape attempt.

It is also completely true. As you might expect, .mil unclassified public networks are still strictly controlled and monitored, with all the invasive filters and MitM certificates you could ask for. I recall seeing mass-distribution e-mails "reminding" cleared personnel that they should not even be visiting WikiLeaks or Guardian.co.uk using their own equipment when they return home from work.

They actually expected people who saw classified material distributed from the web on their home computers to call and report it, so that the "spillage" experts could examine every bit of their privately owned hardware and permanently delete the classified material. It sounds ridiculous, but they were completely serious.

I cannot even imagine the sort of brain damage that would allow a person to have such an expectation.

How is that a violation? My understanding is that it's a violation to disclose classified information. It doesn't really make any sense to prevent cleared people from reading these things because then who's going to be able to figure out the extent of the information leaked.

Because it's still technically classified. When you hold a security clearance, you're not only agreeing to keep things classified, but also to not pursue any classified information you don't need to know.

This was a big issue when WikiLeaks started leaking info. There were regular memos circulated in DoD and DoE environments reminding people they weren't to be reading classified documents.

As is so often the case with government bureaucracy, that's pretty ridiculous (although I'm not disputing its truth). I can totally see it being a violation to knowingly look at documents that are clearly marked or otherwise denoted as something for which you don't have the need to know. But with something public that probably doesn't have classification markings, how can you possibly know?

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