Army Brass Their Own Worst Enemy
The Army unit responsible for policing official websites has declared the Army’s leadership as the service’s own worst enemy with respect to security leaks. The Electronic Frontier Foundation obtained a copy of the 2007 report and confirmed the suspicions of many that it’s the brass that pose the biggest problem when it comes to operational security. Here’s how Wired summarizes the report:
For years, the military has been warning that soldiers’ blogs could pose a security threat by leaking sensitive wartime information. But a series of online audits, conducted by the Army, suggests that official Defense Department websites post material far more potentially harmful than anything found on a individual’s blog.
The audits, performed by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007, found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites. In contrast, the 10-man, Manassas, Virginia, unit discovered 28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period.
And, in a startling example of “Army Stupid”, the brass appears to be blaming the problem on the very unit that discovered the problem and issued the report.
“My suspicion … is that the AWRAC’s attention is being diverted by the new mission of reviewing all the Army blogs,” reads an e-mail (.pdf) from the office of the Army Chief Information Officer obtained in EFF’s FOIA lawsuit. “In the past they did a good job of detecting and correcting (website policy compliance) violations, but that is currently not the case.”
So, my question is, what happened to the accountability of the leaders that own these official web sites? Are they not supposed to be responsible for scrubbing information before it gets posted under their command masthead? Looks like someone’s lost focus on the ball.
Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary’s Thoughts, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, Nuke’s News & Views, Stuck On Stupid, Webloggin, The Amboy Times, Conservative Thoughts, Inside the Northwest-Territory, third world county, Right Celebrity, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Planck’s Constant, and Dumb Ox Daily News, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
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Bio: I am currently a Professor of Security Studies, hold a BS in Management and an MA in National Security Studies, and am pursuing an MA in Systematic and Philosophical Theology. I've written for Navy Times, Proceedings, Armed Forces Journal and a number of blogs. As a 24-year veteran of the U.S. Navy and Navy Reserve, I attained the rank of Commander, deployed five times for four different conflicts and served as a Foreign Area Officer and a Surface Warfare Officer. During my 7 years in the private sector, I worked in the fields of information technology and publishing, and even ran for public office once.
