How to stop the next Wikileaks
But the move raises a lot of questions. Couldn’t someone just open a browser, paste more sensitive documents into an email and just send them out that way? What about using something like Dropbox? How hard could it be?
There’s also the issue of how the military’s computer infrastructure is arranged. It’s not like at your business or school where everything is connected. The military has many different computer networks that aren’t really connected very much at all. So people are often loading files onto discs or thumb drives to go from place to place. To take away permission to do that (under threat of court martial) might prevent some leaks but it might severely hinder productivity as well and hurt military preparedness.
We talk to Noah Shachtman, editor of Wired.com’s Danger Room blog. He obtained some of this information about the order to ban use of external recording devices on computers. Noah points out that this measure doesn’t seem to do much to solve the problem of people stealing sensitive information, those safeguards are easily circumvented. But then again, in all of the military, with all those computers and all those people working on them, PFC Manning seems to be the only person who has crossed the line. So is the military overreacting and hurting its own efficiency?
Also in this show, Kathy Valentine first rose to fame as a member of the Go-Go’s, with whom she co-wrote such hits as “Vacation” and “Head Over Heels.” She’s still writing songs, but now she uses the Guitar Tool Kit app on her iPhone.
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