Comments on: If You Will Ever Want a Government Job, Don’t Peek at WikiLeaks

By: Bill Gasarch

Bill Gasarch — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:16:08 +0000

Anyone who has read BLOWN TO BITS (the book) and BLOW TO BITS (this blog) should not be surprised
that the government is this … stupid is not quite the word. Oblivious? Out of touch? Unaware of the new technological world we live in? I suspect that if you asked individuals in the government they would agree this is an idiotic policy. However the IQ of a committee is the IQ of its dumbest member
divided by the number of people on the committee. (There has to be a more substantial reason why
dumb things that everyone knows is dumb getting made into law other than the IQ-OF-A-COMMITTEE
quip.)

This is part of a more general problem of people or in this case governments adjusting to a new
technology. Or failing to adjust.

As a side note: Mark Zuckerberg (FACEBOOK) has been named Time Magazines MAN OF THE YEAR.
I think he should have won it JOINTLY with Julian Assange. They are both demonstrating that we live in a new era.

By: Harry Lewis

Harry Lewis — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:34:17 +0000

No need for the apology. And to be fair, I don’t think this advice is coming directly from the government; it is coming from people experienced with government hiring who are being paid to advise young people about how to get jobs. But they are connecting the dots based on experience, and they are probably right.

By: Annonymous

Annonymous — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 19:23:45 +0000

I am sorry. This is getting Orwellian. These documents have been posted to Wikileaks– they have been broadcast to the world. They have been poured over by every nation state trying to get insight into the US. They might as well have been scrawled on the wall in the public square. If the US government insists they are still classified, and threatens to punish those who read it out of curiousity, they are denying the reality of the status of the documents in a pretty scary way. In an ideal world, with normal non-scary reactions, if someone was interviewed for a security clearance, and asked if they read the Wikileaks cables, they should say, “Yes. Of course I read them. I thought it would help me understand what we think, and what others know about what we think, and that’s going to someday help me understand how to do my job better. I am enterprising and I educate myself on matters of importance” (Note: if someone read the Wikileaks cables and LIES about reading them, they should not get a security clearance. For dishonesty and stupidity.)

If someone posts someone’s embarrassing diary, I may decide not to read it. That’s chivalry. For a similar reason I (who have no need to know anything about diplomacy for my job) am not going to go read the cables on wikileaks. But I find *my government*: home of the free, the brave, and hopefully the sane thundering around telling me that it’s still classified and I’m not to read it deeply disturbing. As far as I can tell, it’s already in the hands of all our enemies– there is nothing that my reading it or not reading it could do to harm national security above and beyond the harm that’s already been inflicted. Therefore, stop acting like a playground bully, and start treating your citizens like grownups.

Note; I am posting this as anonymous, because I find the recent rhetoric about wikileaks sufficiently Orwellian, that I don’t want to attach my name to even this mild rant. So Harry, you can decide if you want to post this without a name attached or not.