There is more latitude available than you think. Intelligence Community members weren't required to cancel their NYT and WashPo subscriptions just because classified info was published verbatim during the Snowden leaks.

However, browsing wikileaks from a government-owned computer is sure to get you in trouble. Or, most likely, be blocked by whatever nanny proxy is in place.

I would never have expected someone in the defense/IC community to be whining about people posting on a privately owned website. When I was in the military I believed in personal responsibility.

Expecting people to write up a summary of documents before posting to HN is absurd. Attaching insults to the main audience of HN is not going to win you over any friends.

I recall the Wikileaks summary said most of the data was unclassified because it was needed to be used (deployed) to remote (victim) machines.

I recall that the code/tools were declassified by necessity because otherwise it could not be used on an insecure network (i.e. the internet)

However, the internal documents relating to the tools/code? I doubt that would have been unnecessarily declassified.

Question -- would that security clearance allow you to read that third party writeup? I would think it would prohibit all contact, both direct and multiple-times-removed indirect contact with the data.

It does. Just because the info is now in the public domain doesn't change it's classification level. Bizarre, I know. But it's because the classifying authority is the one responsible for changing it, and until they do it's still at the original level and all the classification and need-to-know rules still apply.

If you signed an NDA that criminalizes reading public data (that is still classified) on the open web, perhaps it's not the fault of websites posting links to that data when you click on it.

Seriously, your clearance comes with tradeoffs. Some of us aligned against government secrecy and flunkies who sympathize with the surveillance state want the list of potential downsides for that career choice to be as long as possible.

If your shitty job will put you in jail for reading headline news, maybe you should reconsider your job.

You have another option: Boot Tails. Use Tor. Read away. Don't get caught. Don't let the thought police use the threat of jail to extinguish your intellectual curiosity.

If merely hosting a headline & link like this is problematic, you must also have an issue walking by news stands, visiting bookstores, or watching CNN. It sounds exhausting.

Interesting. From what role or position do you derive the authority to set policy for Hacker News?

It looks like a 3rd party observation and not a personal statement.

I.e government surveillance professionals and people with old-school conservative personalities: "I know this is hard for some of you in your SoCal startup VC money burning bubbles" are not welcome to a party hosted by SoCal startup VC money burning bubblers, free-neters, no-surveilancers, opensourcers, and progressive types.

lol

Who are you?