Leaks on Internet a Threat to National Security
The U.S. Army views Wikileaks.org, a website that publishes “secret” government and corporate documents, as a potential threat to national security and has made plans to marginalize the website’s effectiveness.
Last week, Wikileaks published an Army report, published internally in March 2008, which examined the website and its possible implications for national security. The counterintelligence study said that there is “The possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere in the U.S. government are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org cannot be ruled out”.
The report concludes “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army.”
It also claims that Wikileaks runs on the basis of anonymity, and that, if effectively broken, the website will lose its sources. Wikileaks uses “trust as a center of gravity by protecting the anonymity and identity of the insiders, leakers or whistleblowers”, according to the report. It recommends that DoD undertake “The identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site”.
Following the publication of the report by Wikileaks, a spokesman for the U.S. Army confirmed that the report was genuine.
“It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release,” Julian Assange, editor of Wikileaks, said. “It contains the analyst’s best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done.”
Perhaps the most important aspect of the report is the recognition that the proliferation of Internet and information technology, coupled with this leaked information, could pose potentially hazardous for U.S. military personnel overseas.
“The proliferation of access to Internet, computer, and information technology technical skills, software, tools, and databases will allow the rapid development, merging, integration, and manipulation of diverse documents, spreadsheets, multiple databases, and other publicly available or leaked information. Possible enhancements could increase the risk to US forces and could potentially provide potential attackers with sufficient information to plan conventional or terrorist attacks in locations such as Iraq or Afghanistan,” the report said.
Terrorists are increasingly turning to the Internet as a medium for intelligence gathering. As more data is available via the Internet, it becomes easier for terrorists and foreign intelligence agencies to access classified U.S. documents.
Most cyber experts are already concerned about the threat for cyber espionage, with foreign intelligence services, such as the Chinese, exfiltrating data from U.S. networks. When that data is published in an open domain, it becomes much easier to collate the information.
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