An intelligence analyst appears to have been arrested in Kuwait for leaking classified data via Wikileaks. It appears this individual was responsible for leaking the recent helicopter attack video, but it also appears that they may have additionally leaked a massive volume of diplomatic communications.
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Assuming that his original story wasn’t a load of hot air, and assuming that the documents are still in the wild, how big a deal is this? It sounds like a hugely serious and embarrassing story, but I’ve not come across any mention of it by mainstream news.
Aren’t there supposed to be procedures in place to stop individuals who might do this kind of stuff from attaining this level of security clearance, and limit people’s access to high security documents that they don’t require access too?
It’s a good bet that anything like a “quarter of a million” documents probably means personal emails or something. Knowing humankind, almost all of that is going to be stuff like people emailing their wife to ask what time they should be home, or other innocuous stuff. But who knows. I suspect that anything particularly secret is encrypted and potentially goes through an entirely separate system than the regular email system (presuming it to be the email server that he dumped), so while there might be stuff compromising to the individuals in his base and around Iraq, probably there won’t be much to compromise any missions.
Since it seems likely that he was a bleeding heart type, it’s unlikely that he would have sought to leak anything more than stuff that could be used as anti-military propaganda.
I dunno. A “whistleblower” at a place I once worked (a Fortune 100) company) once leaked one of our VPs entire email database, with thousands of messages and attachments to blow the cover on what he thought was a major scandal. Fortunately the reporter he sent the file to realized what a hot potato he was holding and the newspapers’ and our lawyers and IT folks worked out the deletion of database and any copied that may have been made.
This was back when the web was young, so the leak was made via a copy on a zip drive. Og knows how many copies there would have been if it had been passed via email.
Not only did the database contain a few emails about the potentially scandalous issue (which was really nothing illegal, and no more than a minor embarassment) but also contained all kinds of information that would be very useful to competitors, customers and stock arbitrageurs.
None of that contradicts what I said. It’s very possible that major stuff has been released even if it is just personal emails, and it’s certain that the guy didn’t check through a quarter of a million files by himself to vet each one. I was just saying that it seems unlikely that mission files, target data, etc. are in there. So it’s just a question of what can be determined about missions, targets, etc. from combing through personal emails of people involved in those missions.
Diplomatic cables can involve point by point discussions on meetings of embassy officials, sometimes among themselves or with others. If the US Ambassador to Nowherestan meets with their Prime Minister and discusses his government’s new policy toward Freedonia, then a cable would be written up and sent to the State Department, Defense Department, the US Embassy in Freedonia, and probably a number of other Embassies that have interests in Nowhereistan-Freedonian relations. Conversely, if the State Department needs to send strategy updates to its embassies, those are done by cable, too. IIRC, old cables are archived in an electronic system so they can be pulled up if need be.
Because of the volume of traffic among embassies, I would strongly suspect that this goes beyond personal emails and may indeed involve the leaking of actual, substantive information that is important to our foreign relations. Now, we’re probably not talking about the crown jewels of our most sensitive foreign policy secrets, but I strongly suspect these are NOT classified emails about the Ambassador needing to pick up a gallon of milk on his way home.