Comments on: U.S. military security defeated by copy and paste

In the latest example of a snafu with "hidden" electronic text, sensitive data blacked out in a PDF document finds its way into the light.

This brings to mind an old oxymoron

"Military Intelligence." lol

[garbuck]

Military intelligence is to intelligence as ...

military music is to music.

What a shock..

Is it any wonder the world is in the state its in.. goverment "security" morons all across the planet.. versed in 10 year old technology, responsible for modern day systems. Hey.. the Dinasaurs are still ruling the world..

[Brainlock]

Don't Worry It Gets Better

Just think how many people in congress, the senate, the upper people in the Pentagon, and the higher officials in offices for our government really know how to use a computer? So now they decide we need National ID's too! Our Government is over the edge and the poor people in the military are blind followers of leaders that don't have a clue anymore. I feel sorry for out troops I just want them home!

[dstempfley]

Process failures

It's easy to make cracks about the general stupidity of the people involved or the military in general, but the fact of the matter is that there are some pretty smart people that have studied and put in place pretty serious procedures to prevent this type of disclosure. Procedures that obviously weren't followed. I wouldn't be surprised if some commander lost their job over this. I'm not associated with the military anymore, but I feel for the people that had to deal with this unauthorized disclosure.

To give a little insight to those who are not familiar with procedures for handling classified documents in electronic form. An electronic version of the original Secret document should never have touched an unclassified system. The secret and the unclassified system should be separated by and air gap (not electronic connection). The method that should have been followed is to redact the file on the secret system, print it from the secret system, then scan the redacted printout into an unclassified system. With a very small number of exceptions this is the approved way to prepare to release this type of document.

The problem is not the lack of intelligence of the personnel performing the release, they are probably very smart in the areas they have been trained in, but they clearly forgot to pay attention to the rules established by people who are smart in this particular area. I can only imagine how clearly established procedures were bypassed in this instance.