US Agencies Ban Wikileaks For Employees
Wikileaks banned for the employees of US government agencies. The White House instructed the agencies to take the proper measures and make sure that their employees which do not have the necessary authorization would not acces the classified diplomatic cables posted on Wikileaks. According to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the disclosure of secret documents caused a demage to the American national security. And, in a message sent to all federal agencies, the employees were reminded that they were still obligated to protect classified information and that the documents posted by Wikileaks had not been declassified, despite the fact that they were made public.
Sensitive information, whether or not published on public websites or disclosed to the media, remain classified and the federal employees must treat them accordingly, unless they had been declassified by an an appropriate US government authority. Moira Mack, an OBM spokesman, explained that the notice did nothing but to restate and reinforce the existing restrictions on access to classified documents by unauthorized personnel or on computers that access the Web via non-classified government systems, preventing sensitive materials to reach non- classified systems.
Among the institutions that blocked the acces to Wikileaks is the Library of Congress or the Department of Defense. Their employees had been warned not to attempt to read the classified cables on Wikileaks either on government or personal computers. Neverthelass they were allowed to read the articles about the documents on media sites. And if, still, they would acces Wikileaks documents, the employees were warned that this would lead to sanitisation of their PC to remove any potentially classified information from your system, and the result in possible data loss.
The libraryʼs communication director, Matt Raymond, said that the decision was taken in order to comply to the law that obligates federal agencies to protect classified information. He also rejected the accusations that the mesures violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution guaranteeing free speech, as providing the information that could be found on Wikileaks would be illegal.
