You also swear to defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. You further face UCMJ action for following unlawful orders. When the soldier is not qualified to know the difference between a lawful and unlawful order, they default to obeying the orders of senior commissioned officers. Thus the directive from the senior most command. The soldier has no choice but to obey a lawful order and this is meant to clarify the lawfulness. This is making the access of certain unclassified, public systems unlawful according to UCMJ. We are in a position to reject this notion and speak out against it. The soldiers are not. We have an obligation here. I do not believe our obligation is to remind soldiers of the contract.
The soldiers have zero right to use the Internet at all on work hours.
The government could as easily have said "just focus on .mil and .gov sites when you're using government computers for government work".
The military already frequently bans stuff like YouTube when dipshits keep clogging up the network watching Bieber while other people are trying to do work, or things like Reddit.
> The government could as easily have said "just focus on .mil and .gov sites when you're using government computers for government work".
This is a great point. They could have given guidance on avoiding exposure to the leaked documents. Instead, they criminalized the consumption of publicly available information. Keep in mind that a soldier does not keep 'work hours'. They are not off-duty at any point. They are subject to UCMJ, as well as uniform and appearance regulations, even on the weekends. This includes using a personal computer to access the Guardian on the weekend from a Starbucks.
I think the point, made earlier in this thread, is that the access of that information was already criminalized, from before it was released (due to it's classified nature), and that releasing it does not automatically unclassify it.
In that light, the blocking of the Guardian may be viewed as preventing soldiers from accidentally performing a criminal act.
This is making the access of certain
unclassified, public systems unlawful
according to UCMJ.
I think that's indisputable. If the public system has classified material on it, then it is unlawful for someone without the proper clearances to read it.
We are in a position to reject this notion
and speak out against it. The soldiers are
not.
Last I checked becoming a soldier was currently a voluntary act.
It is not my intention to quibble with you. I respect that you see this differently than I do. I wanted to be explicit about this because I do disagree with the conclusions you draw but not because you are drawing them.
The problem with making the access of public, unclassified systems punishable by UCMJ seems obvious to me. I do not think you agree with this being a problem. I'm open to your exposition and I hope you are to mine.
If tomorrow is the day that Greenwald will publish Snowden's leaked information then today the Guardian is a website that a solider can access without UCMJ consequence. The common soldier does not possess a security clearance. Among those who do, they do not have access to the material Snowden leaked. That is highly compartmentalized. Therefore, even soldiers with a Top Secret (TS) clearance would not recognize classified information leaked by Snowden as being authentic. The information is on an unclassified system on non-mil, non-gov domain. Greenwald and Snowden claiming it is leaked classified material isn't sufficient for a common soldier to regard the data as such. This requires verification by senior commissioned personnel. Command must inform unwitting soldiers that the information they are reading is classified. Until they do, the soldier cannot be certain. This is effectively classifying any information published by the Guardian as TS. It is unlawful, then, for the soldier to use an unclassified system to access a classified system. If this was only about justifying a block or filter then there'd be little to discuss. But this is about making the soldier's exposure to classified information unlawful, witting or otherwise. Most problematic to me is the fact that command issued this statement to formally classify the information as the soldier is concerned. That is one shade of grey apart from command divulging classified information to personnel that do not possess the clearance.
Command recognizes that they are partly corroborating Snowden's leak if they specifically refer to the content of the documents. They've been careful to cover their ass, though. Instead of explicitly citing the classified information, they classified the source- the entire system. This is the precedent that concerns me. This is command classifying information to empower them to leverage the maximum authorized penalty under UCMJ. This is worse than censorship. This makes reading certain public domain a criminal act.
To your final point I cannot understand your reasoning. Yes, it is a voluntary act. It is a service that people volunteer for that benefits the entire nation. It benefits many other nations. And for this you want to strip them of something? These individuals volunteered to be engaged in the needs of the military. That's to say they aren't guaranteed they will be or do any particular thing. They will be and do what they are told. In some situations that's compromised the individual in ways that would be criminal outside of service. And to that we say, "you volunteered and signed your life away"?
The soldier volunteered to do a job others wouldn't. In cases like these, the soldier hopes civilians will volunteer to do what they cannot. I elect to speak out against this and demand clarification. I charge this is unlawful and dangerous beyond any soldier reading a website might be because the soldier cannot.
What course of action do you propose to a soldier that might be reading this? If what was happening was unlawful in your eyes, what would you suggest is done by the soldier?
Can you tell me which conclusions I've drawn? I'm just stating fact here. Accessing secret information via public channels is still breaking the law. Is it right? That's a very difficult question to answer since the people whom this affects (people without need-to-know) have entered into that world willingly and presumably know what they've signed up for.
> The common soldier does not possess a
> security clearance.
I'm not sure I follow this. Laws against reading privileged information apply to everyone no? Again, I'm not saying that's right or wrong, only that's the condition that we live in.
> This makes reading certain public domain
> a criminal act.
No one has been charged with anything. The have Internet filters set up to block that site from certain government machines. I'm not sure that this extends to being prosecuted for reading the Guardian recipes section at home.
> want to strip them of something
They are not stripped of anything. They were never allowed to read classified information that they were not given explicit access to. That the entire Guardian site is blocked is more likely a matter of laziness than evil.
> you volunteered and signed your life away
That's a bit dramatic and I never said that. My only point is that they signed up knowing that they are barred from accessing information not meant for them.
> I charge this is unlawful
My point is that I don't think that it is. It sucks for sure.
> what would you suggest is done by the soldier?
I've never been a soldier, so I don't know what their channels of recourse happen to be.
