“Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.
We knew it was inevitable; that it'd just be a matter of time before U.S. government would take
prosecutions persecution of whistleblowers to the next level. Face it, Edward Snowden was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. The power hungry apparatus in Washington has been roundly exposed and embarrassed over and over again by leaks in recent years. By the unexpected leaks anyway. From
Mark Klein to
William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe (all three were back in the Bush administration) to
John Kirakou. From
Thomas Drake to
Wikileaks to
Bradley Manning, all have exposed secretive programs and endemic criminality within our government in recent years.
The Obama White House thinks it has a remedy for "national security threats" dissent.
The Insider Threat Program has been in the works for a while now. To me, it's akin to the neighborhood watch-type terrorism detection whisper campaign started by the Bush administration after 9-11. But that's just me.
It's a recipe for systemic mistrust, disloyalty and general negativity in the workplace. It could also stifle creativity and productivity. When employees don't trust their co-workers, feeling like they have to look over their shoulder all the time, they become distracted, their attention diverted from the task at hand. The program also exhorts managers and supervisors in the workplace to punish everyone who fails to report suspicions.
Just guessing here but casual Fridays may devolve into a whole new paradigm.
President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.
Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.
To highlight the perceived problems with leaks in government agencies a recent online tutorial,
"Treason 101" was produced for instruction purposes to agency heads of both the Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Wow, subverting the government from the Department of Agriculture? Interesting strategy. And yes, the above link actually takes you to the aforementioned tutorial currently being used to instruct employees at the Dept. of Agriculture.
Truthout has the story:
The Obama administration is expected to hasten the program’s implementation as the government grapples with the fallout from the leaks of top secret documents by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the agency’s secret telephone data collection program. The case is only the latest in a series of what the government condemns as betrayals by “trusted insiders” who have harmed national security.
“Leaks related to national security can put people at risk,” Obama said on May 16 in defending criminal investigations into leaks. “They can put men and women in uniform that I’ve sent into the battlefield at risk. They can put some of our intelligence officers, who are in various, dangerous situations that are easily compromised, at risk. . . . So I make no apologies, and I don’t think the American people would expect me as commander in chief not to be concerned about information that might compromise their missions or might get them killed.”
This is the second time in two weeks that Obama's words evoked in my mind the image of George W. Bush. The first time was when he said, "We're not listening to your phone calls."
But, rest assured budding young whistleblowers, the president also called for greater protections for you who choose to take the proper channels route in reporting official waste, fraud and abuse. Of course, that did nothing to quell the concerns of some national security experts and former and current officials, who fear the program won't only put a damper on whistleblowing but also impede the public's right to know, and national security in general. Somehow, I don't feel any less uneasy either.
The program could also exacerbate the problem of over-classification of information potentially vital to the public, and spark spurious investigations into innocent Americans. Already, a number of non-intelligence agencies are urging employers to watch their co-workers for "indicators" of stress, divorce and financial problems.
So, manifestations of stress-filled workplaces and suspicious co-workers including divorce and other social maladies will now constitute "indicators" of leaking information deemed harmful to national security? Can't make this stuff up, people.
“It was just a matter of time before the Department of Agriculture or the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) started implementing, ‘Hey, let’s get people to snitch on their friends.’ The only thing they haven’t done here is reward it,” said Kel McClanahan, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security law. “I’m waiting for the time when you turn in a friend and you get a $50 reward.”
The Defense Department anti-leak strategy obtained by McClatchy spells out a zero-tolerance policy. Security managers, it says, “must” reprimand or revoke the security clearances – a career-killing penalty – of workers who commit a single severe infraction or multiple lesser breaches “as an unavoidable negative personnel action.”
Employers are required to turn themselves and others in for failing to report breaches.
“Penalize clearly identifiable failures to report security infractions and violations, including any lack of self-reporting,” the strategic plan says.
No strangers to leaking classified information themselves, Congress is said to favor tightening restrictions on reporters' access to federal agencies, which could make federal officials reluctant to disclose even unclassified matters to the press.
The policy, which partly relies on behavior profiles, also could discourage creative thinking and fuel conformist “group think” of the kind that was blamed for the CIA’s erroneous assessment that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, a judgment that underpinned the 2003 U.S. invasion.
“The real danger is that you get a bland common denominator working in the government,” warned Ilana Greenstein, a former CIA case officer who says she quit the agency after being falsely accused of being a security risk. “You don’t get people speaking up when there’s wrongdoing. You don’t get people who look at things in a different way and who are willing to stand up for things. What you get are people who toe the party line, and that’s really dangerous for national security.”
The program was originally launched in October 2011 after Bradley Manning took it upon himself to download hundreds of thousands of classified documents and send them to Wikileaks for publication. The internal review Manning prompted found "wide disparities" in the abilities of U.S. intelligence agencies to evaluate security risks
Obama’s executive order formalizes broad practices that the intelligence agencies have followed for years to detect security threats and extends them to agencies that aren’t involved in national security policy but can access classified networks. Across the government, new policies are being developed.
Despite the program, thumb drives and other portable data storage devices continue to pose a problem. Snowden was able use thumb drives to store the data he collected on the surveillance programs.
“Nothing that’s been done in the past two years stopped Snowden, and so that fact alone casts a shadow over this whole endeavor,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the non-profit Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “Whatever they’ve done is apparently inadequate.”
From the administration:
“If this is done correctly, an organization can get to a person who is having personal issues or problems that if not addressed by a variety of social means may lead that individual to violence, theft or espionage before it even gets to that point,” said a senior Pentagon official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
“If the folks who are watching within an organization for that insider threat – the lawyers, security officials and psychologists – can figure out that an individual is having money problems or decreased work performance and that person may be starting to come into the window of being an insider threat, superiors can then approach them and try to remove that stress before they become a threat to the organization,” the Pentagon official said.
The Defense Department does have its share of critics though.
“An argument can be made that the rape of military personnel represents an insider threat. Nobody has a model of what this insider threat stuff is supposed to look like,” said the senior Pentagon official, explaining that inside the Defense Department “there are a lot of chiefs with their own agendas but no leadership.”
(snip)
“It’s about people’s profiles, their approach to work, how they interact with management. Are they cheery? Are they looking at Salon.com or The Onion during their lunch break? This is about ‘The Stepford Wives,’” said a second senior Pentagon official, referring to online publications and a 1975 movie about robotically docile housewives. The official said he wanted to remain anonymous to avoid being punished for criticizing the program.
There's much more at
Truthout.
It's scary as hell but well worth the read.
But decide for yourself.