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| People walk down Wall Street on November 30, 2010 in New York City. US Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that the Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation of Wall Street. In a further blow to the financial district, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has told Forbes that he plans to release documents early next year related to a large US bank. AFP |
The full extent of the diplomatic fallout is still unclear but the leaks threaten to erode trust of crucial US allies, who justifiably may now fear speaking candidly with Washington if those private revelations might be made public.
From a global perspective, the system now in place to guard U.S. secrets has lost credibility and Washington may need to take major steps to show its secrets are safe, observers say.
"This is a colossal failure by our intel community, by our Department of Defense, to keep classified information secret," said Peter Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.
"This database should never have been created. Hundreds of thousands of people should not have been provided access to it," he told CBS's Morning Show.
U.S. officials, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, believe that WikiLeaks data from the latest leak and previous dumps of hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Iraq war logs were gleaned from the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, known as SIPRNet.
The network gives access to documents at a lower level of secrecy to US national security officials, including the Defense Department and State Department.
"You get on the SIPRNet and you have access to tons of (more) stuff than just a few years earlier, when you were dealing more with paper," said Paul Pillar, a former CIA official now with Georgetown University.
A Pentagon spokesman acknowledged that efforts in the post-9/11 era to give diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to data "have had unintended consequences - making our sensitive data more vulnerable to compromise."
The White House appeared to take a small step toward more secrecy, ordering government agencies to tighten procedures on handling classified information. The Office of Management and Budget said it aimed to ensure "users do not have broader access than is necessary to do their jobs effectively."
The Pentagon and State Department also said they are tightening up procedures to prevent more disclosures.
"This will be a force in swinging (the pendulum) in favor of less sharing and more control," said Pillar, adding in the short term he saw pressure for "more restrictions."
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| Julian Asange |
WHAT WENT WRONG?
The U.S. investigation into the disclosures so far has focused on Bradley Manning, a former low-level US Army intelligence analyst in Iraq charged with leaking a classified video showing a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists. He was also accused of downloading state department cables.
In the wake of Manning's arrest, US officials have been struggling to explain how a low-level analyst in Iraq could have had access to so much sensitive information. "The administration must identify how someone was able to leak such a large amount of classified information and build safeguards to ensure this does not happen again," said Howard McKeon, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking to reporters in July after the WikiLeaks document dump on the Afghan war, said if the security breach had occurred at a rear headquarters or in the United States, it would have been detected.
The Pentagon has said it is now looking at controls like those credit card companies have to detect anomalous behaviour.
Courtesy - Daily News (REUTERS)
