Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com