WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

Does that mean that anyone who read the WikiLeaks on the New York Times or the Guardian is also subject to prosecution? That's getting to be an awful lot of us.

I didn't read the WikiLeaks site but I read those 2 papers online. Now what?

JPB wrote:

Wandel and FA, I'm glad you're both here. I'm curious about the tenor and directions coming from within the government over all of this. Are you able to share, without damaging your own positions of course, whether government employees are being given talking points and/or encouragement to discuss the WL situation with their non-government friends/families/contacts?

I've been given no talking points. It is not as if this issue monopolizes the daily operations of my job. I have however discusses this amongst DoD and IC individuals, and read the local blogs on our networks (we have internal things similar to things on the WWW). My feeling is that many people are very upset, but upset most about the incompleteness of the picture and their inability to clarify anything. This is the whole partial truths aren't honesty bit.

The only direction we get is to not visit the site. This isn't a reactionary policy despite what the media is saying. Disclosed classified documents are still classified unless declassified, and viewing classified docs on an unclassified network/system (like my laptop) has always been a security violation. If gov officials or contractors have the clearance and need to know, they can already access these documents via the appropriate channels. People who are portraying this policy as being tailored especially due to the WL controversy are uninformed or being dishonest. This policy out dates WL and the public internet itself.

I have not been encouraged or discouraged from talking about this topic.

A
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(a) Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting
the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the
information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to
the advantage of any foreign nation, goes upon, enters, flies over,
or otherwise obtains information concerning any vessel, aircraft,
work of defense, navy yard, naval station, submarine base, fueling
station, fort, battery, torpedo station, dockyard, canal, railroad,
arsenal, camp, factory, mine, telegraph, telephone, wireless, or
signal station, building, office, research laboratory or station or
other place connected with the national defense owned or
constructed, or in progress of construction by the United States or
under the control of the United States, or of any of its officers,
departments, or agencies, or within the exclusive jurisdiction of
the United States.....

.......h)(1) Any person convicted of a violation of this section shall
forfeit to the United States, irrespective of any provision of
State law, any property constituting, or derived from, any proceeds
the person obtained, directly or indirectly, from any foreign
government, or any faction or party or military or naval force
within a foreign country, whether recognized or unrecognized by the
United States, as the result of such violation.

18 U.S.C. § 793 : US Code - Section 793: Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information

The 251,287 cables, first acquired by WikiLeaks, were provided to The Times by an intermediary on the condition of anonymity. Many are unclassified, and none are marked “top secret,” the government’s most secure communications status.

I actually see it as a threat to gov't employees to "behave". There was one article linked when we were discussing this that the outcome is that gov't employees end up being the least informed people on the planet.

[Strange conclusion in that article. Most people would agree that Failures Art is one of the better informed people on A2K.

..... The British embassy in Washington said it had not received any requests to visit Manning in jail.

Usually the UK government would not intervene in cases of dual nationality where the person is held in the other country, but there are exceptions on humanitarian grounds, including claims of inhumane treatment.

Amnesty International has today called on the UK government to intervene on Manning's behalf and ....

We were told last night that Bradley Manning has been held in solitary confinement for almost 300 days.

What's going on with that. The kid is no traitor. A fool maybe. A joker even. A complete idiot possibly.