F-16.net

F-16.net Webmaster Joined: May 23, 2003 Posts: 2354

Thank you for posting this new directive.

As always, please <a href="index.php?module=feedback&func=view">alert the forum moderators</a> if you think a particular post or news article should be removed.

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Newbie Joined: Sep 25, 2005 Posts: 10 Status: Offline

Lieven, thank you! I'm glad someone is listening! With this hopefully things can settle down!

Newbie Joined: Jun 23, 2007 Posts: 4 Status: Offline

Under the tested legal interpretation of "knowingly and willfully" as applied to US secrecy statues... this term has been inferred by several Federal Courts and upheld on appeal in Appellent Courts along with US Supreme Court rulings to constitute merely the act of such transmission and not whether the perpetrator knew what he transmitted was prohibited.

Be aware.... This is iron clad law and may as well be considered an inviolate Constitutional Amendment. Many offenders presently sit in federal prisons, and have for years, convicted of mildly or otherwise innocently (as claimed) violating these statutes.

Fines are pretty severe too and cannot be made to go away via the filing of a Bankruptcy petition.

As a matter of modern statutory and common law, pleading ignorance is almost never a defense except for a specific set of circumstances that most definitely doesn't include things the U.S. government intends to keep a secret.

I'm only a first year law school student, but I advise everyone to err on the side of safety. The law can be surprisingly expansive where areas of national security are concerned.

My feeling is if you send anything to this or any other site make sure you have a public reference or just leave it alone.
I know it's hard sometimes not to get into a conversation that deals with your own area of expertize, but the repercussions are to great not to step back and try to locate a public source first.
I am amazed by how much legal information you can find on the web about the military.
This is a great place to find all sorts of good stuff about F-16's and other jets, and you don't need to cross the line doing it.
Kudos's to the Editors for their hard work at keeping it legal and fun.

Elite 3K Joined: May 10, 2004 Posts: 3021 Status: Offline

I'd like to say thanks to all the experts who post here while making sure that it's all legal and OPSEC Thumb

!

Elliboom wrote:

Meathook, I am glad to see that someone on this board seemes concerned with the level of sensitive information that comes out here on a daily basis. I have seen topics that go way over the edge when it comes to the release of sensitive information. When we start talking about deployment dates, aircraft numbers and tail numbers, troop numbers and specific deployment locations, I do not think that most people realize how much that puts not only the military members, but also their families in jeopardy. Keep up the good fight, but I for one would not be surprised if the moderators here will have to start censoring the posts before they make it to the site, in order for this site to remain alive.

I was actually thinking about this site during a recent trip overseas. An AFN they are constantly showing those annoying commercials and many of them deal with Opsec. They show the one where the two guys are in the bar talking about an upcoming deployment, and then the commercial makes reference to some terrorist messing with your family while you are deployed. The scary thing is that the information that they gave in the commercial is nothing compared to what is given out on this site on a daily basis. I have only been on this site for a few months, but it took about 2 days to start getting an uneasy feeling about alot of the posts I was reading. I think some of the problem may come from some of the younger airmen that we have on here that do not have a clue what an enemy really can do by piecing together seemingly unrelated pieces of information.

I think you'll find 90% of the information in these posts can be found on wikipedia. You guys are blowing things up here....trying to sound way too important. Remember a -1 can be purchased on ebay for 40usd...among other T.O's

Nato Tiger ck IN

TIGERS rULE

Enthusiast Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Posts: 35 Status: Offline

Please let an outsider make a remark here. In a strange way it is technology which makes secrets much more difficult to guard than ever before, and to be honest nobody prepared for this. Just googling out you can easily run into information which is regarded as secret by any governement. And the moment it is out on the net, it's just gone...

Lajes

Elite 1K Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1090

Lajes wrote:

Please let an outsider make a remark here. In a strange way it is technology which makes secrets much more difficult to guard than ever before, and to be honest nobody prepared for this. Just googling out you can easily run into information which is regarded as secret by any governement. And the moment it is out on the net, it's just gone...

Lajes

True, but I've made posts based on information I've obtained directly FROM a US Department of Defense/NASA/etc. public technical report servers (for example) and had people into the thread and say that the discussions are verging on vault material. Then the same people are directed to my sources (I don't know the sources other people use unless they cite them) only to come back and say that the information in those sources is over 10 years old and bla bla bla. Of course they forget that they're the ones that claimed the discussion was verging on "vault" material to begin with. Then when they're shown that their understanding of so called "vault" material is outdated, they try to cover their tracks. These "OPSEC Nazis" as I like to refer to them are a very big annoyance.

If someone who browses or participates in this forum feels that classified information is being released and has a duty to report such incidents (dictated by his employer/government/whatever), he should go through the proper channels. What those channels are, I really don't know. What I do know is that it can't be proper procedure to come into a thread here and accuse people of releasing (or coming close at least) classified information. This sort of action in and of itself could be interpreted as an indirect and unauthorized release of classified information. If you know something to be classified and then see or hear someone releasing classified information about that something, you are supposed to go through the proper channels to report the incident.

What if someone were just fishing for information and didn't know whether what they were saying was true or not. They come onto a forum like this and make educated guesses as to how some classified system works. Someone then comes along who has actual knowledge of said system (and a security clearance to boot) and warns people to hold their tongues because they've already said to much. Guess who's going to prison if anyone? The guy with the security clearance and knowledge of the classified system. Not the guy who knew enough about the non-classified aspects of the classified system to fish for the missing classified details.

Maybe I should start reporting the OPSEC Nazis on this forum to the appropriate government agency? I might just do that from now on.

Elite 1K Joined: Jul 22, 2005 Posts: 1004 Status: Offline

Thing is if something classified DID happen to get posted here the LAST thing that would happen in the real world is that it would be pointed out that it was classified and left here. Nothing would be said, it would get taken down ASAP, the appropriate agencies notified, and then probably a general "don't post classified $hit" reminder would appear.

Elite 1K Joined: Aug 19, 2004 Posts: 1090

sferrin wrote:

Thing is if something classified DID happen to get posted here the LAST thing that would happen in the real world is that it would be pointed out that it was classified and left here. Nothing would be said, it would get taken down ASAP, the appropriate agencies notified, and then probably a general "don't post classified $hit" reminder would appear.

Exactly... nothing would be said and the post would disappear. Obviously someone in the DoD with sufficient powers would make a call to the forum/website administrator(s) and tell them to remove one post or another. Then again, nothing might ever be done depending on the sensitivity and nature of the leaked information. By having certain things silently removed from a website or other information resource (e.g. a library), you are tacitly acknowledging to the people who consumed the information--only to see it mysteriously disappear--that classified information WAS released. If that option is better than letting the classified information remain untouched, then of course the information comes down.

I'm sure there've been more than a few cases where classified information leaks were purposefully allowed to stay in the wild. A potential adversary might get a hold of the information, but if there's no way for said adversary to confirm the information then it might as well be false information planted by the host nation's intelligence services. That all sounds James Bondish, but that sort of cat and mouse game actually went on during the cold war. China has been actively trying to (perhaps successfully) steal US military secrets/technology for a number of years now. This is post cold war stuff too. Would it be foolhardy to believe the US has tried to pass along false information to the Chinese since? Heck... maybe that whole Los Alamos scandle was a setup. Wink

*queue James Bond theme* Da daa da daaaaaaa.....

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