TOP SECRET DOCUMENTS ARE NOT WIDELY AVAILABLE ON WEB

Kashmir Hill, Forbes Staff 6/14/2013

Senate employees and contractors are still supposed to treat this as classified

The Senate Security Office sent an email around the Hill Friday afternoon asking Senate employees and contractors to try to ignore the fact that top-secret, highly-classified documents are now floating around the Web freely (and, in the case of a terribly designed NSA Powerpoint, getting facelifts.) The email asks security managers to remind Senate employees and contractors that the documents are still technically classified and should be treated as if millions of people haven’t already read them. The email:

Please share with your staff the guidance below.
·       Classified information, whether or not posted on public websites, disclosed to the media, or otherwise in the public domain, remains classified and must be treated as such until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. government authority.

The director of national intelligence has declassified some information in light of the public debate, but the FISA court order, PRISM Powerpoint, NSA brochure, presidential order, as well as the “dozens” of newsworthy documents that Glenn Greenwald still plans to publish remain technically secret even if it’s a secret that anyone with an Internet connection can be let in on.

·      Senate employees and contractors shall not, while accessing the web on unclassified government systems, access or download documents that are known or suspected to contain classified information.

Government employees are not supposed to keep classified documents just hanging around on their computers, but at this point, the battle to keep this particular set of documents secure has already been lost thanks to leaker Edward Snowden and his thumb drive. Rules are rules — even if they make little sense in light of current circumstances and seem like a serious impediment for the staffers tasked with supporting senators who need to have a policy debate about the revelations in the leaks.

·       Senate employees and contractors who believe they may have inadvertently accessed or downloaded classified information via non-classified Senate systems, should contact the Office of Senate Security for assistance.

So, any staffer that’s been reading the Guardian now needs to call the Senate Security Office. Anyone who doesn’t call should be chastised for not keeping up with relevant news.
The Department of Defense sent around a similar email earlier this week, as reported by Wired. It appears to be standard — if inane — procedure after classified docs go viral. In 2010, U.S. agencies asked unauthorized employees not to access the classified material that came pouring out of Wikileaks in the form of videos and State Department cables. It’s a terrible attempt to chase cats around trying to get them back into bags. And worst of all, puts staffers in the uncomfortable position of breaking protocol by following links on Google News.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/06/14/senate-staffers-told-to-pretend-top-secret-documents-are-not-widely-available-on-web/ 
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