State Dept. Employee Investigated For Linking To WikiLeaks 172
New submitter Jimme Blue writes "An employee of the State Department is under investigation and may be fired for 'disclosing classified information.' Or, as others might call it, posting a link to WikiLeaks. 'His crime, he said, was a link he posted on August 25 in a blog post discussing the hypocrisy of recent U.S. actions against Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi. The link went to a 2009 cable about the sale of U.S. military spare parts to Qadaffi through a Portuguese middleman. ... The State Department investigators, he said, demanded to know who had helped him with his blog and told him that every blog post, Facebook post, and tweet by State Department employees had to be pre-cleared by the Department prior to publication."
Drone Attack! (Score:4, Funny)
He wants to be careful he may be the next drone attack victim.
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This is a funny post, but don't for a second think that this isn't the direction we're heading.
Re:Drone Attack! (Score:4, Interesting)
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-chuckle-
Don't Drone Me Bro !!
What classified information? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, hasn't the Govt. ever heard of the streisand effect?
Re:What classified information? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because something classified is leaked doesn't mean it automatically loses its classification.
The requirements for declassification are pretty strict, and few people (relatively) can authorize it. If leaking was all that was necessary, everyone would do it just to avoid the hassle of the classified computer systems.
The government knows you can't get the genie back into the bottle, the cat into the bag, or the National Geographic back into its paper sleeve. They aren't stupid.
At the very least, you are looking at losing your security clearance for looking at stuff beyond your scope of work or security clearance level. This could cost him his job.
As far as criminal prosecution goes, that would be stupid.
I know you guys like to think all info should be open and free but the REAL world doesn't work like that. Countries have secrets.
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I know you guys like to think all info should be open and free but the REAL world doesn't work like that. Countries have secrets.
That's pretty binary. The U.S. government seems to have an awful lot of unnecessary secrets, giving those trumpeting transparency plenty to spout about.
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Losing his job for looking at it would be stupid, since it's been leaked. Losing his job for linking to it, on the other hand, is a completely different situation, because it means someone cleared for the information was pointing someone else to it when it was still classified--and because IIRC, pretty much everyone in government was warned not to do it.
Frankly, a very strong reprimand and instruction to take it down is the minimum punishment is order. A reduction in security clearance might be appropriat
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Losing his job for looking at it would be stupid, since it's been leaked.
If he viewed a SECRET document on an unclassified network, he probably violated the terms of his security clearance. He isn't prevented from reading a summary of the document on the New York Times.
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He shouldn't be looking at information classified as above his level of clearance, regardless of the fact that is in the public domain. It is a question of professional integrity now.
Ideally, yes, but this guy was working at State, correct? Mightn't it be important for his job to know what information is now publicly available?
Realistically, the only thing looking at the information does is risk his commenting on the information, which could give credence or context, so he shouldn't be linking for it. Bu
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The requirements for declassification are pretty strict, and few people (relatively) can authorize it. If leaking was all that was necessary, everyone would do it just to avoid the hassle of the classified computer systems.
What? I don't think anyone here is suggesting that leaks should be legal, but once it's already leaked there's no use in pretending that it isn't out there. Information the public has should be declassified automatically. That has no bearing on whether giving information to the public
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The government knows you can't get the genie back into the bottle, the cat into the bag, or the National Geographic back into its paper sleeve. They aren't stupid.
You're right: they aren't stupid; but when they nonetheless abuse people as though they did believe that the genie can be put back in the bottle, they are evil.
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It should lose its classification when it is public knowledge. There is no point in classifying material published in the new york times, or otherwise available to anyone on the planet.
Nearly every non disclosure agreement I've ever seen releases responsibility to keep things secret if the covered information becomes public knowledge through disclosure by others.
Keeping public information "classified" is a 1984-ish way to make everyone a criminal for discussing or "disclosing" state secrets. Now we can al
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Secret and classified are two different things.
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"Secret" is simply one level of classification information in the United States which are "Confidential" "Secret" "Top Secret".
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Yes (Score:2)
When a supposed leak appears there is still some amount of uncertainty about whether the leak is authentic or not. Furthermore, there is the issue that several pieces of sensitive information may be unclassified on their own, but when combined become classified. So it may be prudent to classify some previously sensitive but unclassified data upon the release of other data.
Each individual person who works with classified data doesn't always have the whole picture, and are thus not in a position to judge whe
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Can anyone honestly pretend that information which has been leaked and posted on the internet still qualifies as classified? Also, hasn't the Govt. ever heard of the streisand effect?
Unfortunately, the release of classified information, even if it has already been released, by someone not authorized to release it is still a violation of the laws governing classified material; something made clear in every security brief I have attended.
While it seems ridiculous, it is the law - until it is formally declassified or you are authorized to release it, you can't release it. Even if all the material is unclassified, if the document containing it is classified, it still falls under those rules
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The better question is, if it's publicly available, is he really disclosing it?
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Your logic is akin to saying that just because your health, financial, academic or other private records are magically now everyone's business just because they have been posted online.
Your financial records are still your /private/ financial records and should stay that way regardless of the fact that your financial records may have been sold on the black market. Just because someone has leaked a piece of data does not magically change the nature of that data.
Somehow I think you would be singing a differen
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I just love this Streisand Effect. It means that no one can ever act anything wrong bad done to them, because people will notice. I think it's bullshit. Yes, the effect is real, but just because it is, it doesn't mean the Government (for example) shouldn't act against an employee violating his work terms.
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This is rediculous. The information is in the open so it's not classified. In fact it's even a security breach. Yes; there is the identical information in a State Department computer. The difference is that the stuff in Wikileaks is unverified. Nobody can prove it's the same stuff as in the State Department computer unless someone from the state department states that it is. In this case, the investigators are the people who should be investigated and charged with leaking the information by the act o
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The information is in the open so it's not classified.
That statement is a non-sequitur. Classification is label placed on information by the government which triggers certain rules regarding handling that information which by law must be observed by government employees. It is not necessarily correlated with the availability of the information.
Re:What classified information? (Score:4, Insightful)
The label applies to the document in the state department. It does not apply to the identical but different document in Wikileaks. Imagine, for example, the state department gets a copy of a Chinese military document (e.g. specifications of a newly coming fighter plane). The document will be classified by the state department. Now imagine the Chinese publish the document (e.g. because they want to market the plane). If you take the Chinese document and publish it; tell everyone about it and say whatever you want, the state department can do nothing. Although the information is identical to the classified information this copy is not classified. If, on the other hand, a person from the state department says "oh; we already had that document" then they may well have put a secret source at considerable risk because that person was the only person who could have leaked the document earlier. This is true, whatever the current status of the information in the document.
In other words; the crime is not linking to Wikileaks. There are two potential crimes; the first is transferring information from the government system to Wikileaks. The second and more easily verifiable crime is saying that linking to Wikileaks is a crime because you are thereby admitting that the documents are real State Department documents. The investigators and other people who are claiming to know that this information is classified are the most likely criminals here.
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Re:What classified information? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's not fucking silly. That's an attitude towards the issue taken by people who are ignorant or haven't thought about the issue in sufficient detail.
There are plenty of fucking good reasons for it. Some of these reasons is that in a lot of cases leaked classified information is not known to be true or not. If the information is public there is still a lot of doubt to it's authenticity, some details about it are usually missing, and it may not be correlated with other public but still classified information
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Worse? Or...better?
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Arrgh! No mod points! +1 Funny for Invader Zim reference.
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That statement is a non-sequitur. Classification is label placed on information by the government which triggers certain rules regarding handling that information which by law must be observed by government employees. It is not necessarily correlated with the availability of the information.
By your definition, that makes it non-classified. It is not the "same" information that was classified, and is no longer being handled under "certain rules". "Information" itself is unclassifiable. If the top speed of the SR-71 were Mach 9.2 and someone else happened to post something about some other fictional plane traveling Mach 9.2, the "information" is not classified. In fact, if someone calculates an observed speed of the airplane and publishes the March 9.2 figure, then that "information" is publ
Re:What classified information? (Score:4, Informative)
As for the argument where the State Dept. has to admit the stuff is the same thing, that is wrong too. The US gov't has said very clearly to its employees that the wikileaks stuff may contain material that has been classified as secret or above, and to avoid it if you want to keep your job.
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As for the argument where the State Dept. has to admit the stuff is the same thing, that is wrong too. The US gov't has said very clearly to its employees that the wikileaks stuff may contain material that has been classified as secret or above, and to avoid it if you want to keep your job.
A generic warning that you may lose your job because there may be classified information in a group of documents is completely separate from a legal action because of a specific document. Anybody can warn in a reasonable way about almost anything and it has no real legal implication except for meaning that people have no possibility for using ignorance as a mitigating factor if they are found to breach a rule. In order to launch a legal investigation against a person you need a specific accusation of a br
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This was the warning I received:
http://www.dss.mil/documents/NISP-Contractors-Protecting-Class-Info-%20coordinated-final-7-Feb.pdf [dss.mil]
It seemed pretty clear to me: intentionally access wikileaks, lose your clearance lose your job. Inadvertently access wikilieaks, immediately file an security report to avoid losing your clearance and job.
Re:What classified information? (Score:4, Interesting)
Crucial point from that document:
This is not a ban on accessing the data. This is a ban on accessing the data using systems you use for government work. The reason is that it could mess up an investigation into where data came from. Imagine, for example, someone accessed the data internally to confirm that it really was classified and then, when caught claimed they downloaded the copy from Wikileaks. This clause means that, even they got away with it, they would be guilty of a security breach.
More important point from that document:
In other words, the investigators are explicitly in breach of this document for giving a clear signal that the particular chosen link is in fact a classified document.
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"This requirement applies to accessing or downloading classified information that occurs
using [...] employees' personally owned
computers"
Work on that reading comprehension thing.
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Dude, no reasonable person could read the linked document and conclude that accessing wikileaks on a personal computer and/or down time was anything other than contraindicated. You have to -want- to misunderstand in order to reach another conclusion.
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A total ban on communication about or from the Wikileaks site; even a ban on accessing it from a person's home computer would be an unreasonable restraint on free speech since they are discussed everywhere. The documents are loaded, in their original form, on newspaper web sites (and not just "unclassified strories based on the documents"). The US government cannot legally place a ban on that. This is the "secret" that they really don't want you to know.
What this document tells you, beyond the explic
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-IF- you're right then they can't throw him in jail for accessing wikilieaks on his home computer. That's all well and good.
They can, however, revoke his clearance. And they will revoke it if they believe his behavior indicates a willingness to intentionally mishandle classified information. Have no doubt of it. Classification isn't like a trade secret. As the linked document reminds, classified information remains classified until declassified, even if the content becomes public knowledge.
More, a lost clea
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Re:What classified information? (Score:4, Interesting)
Moreover, if you are an employee of the state department and you link to it you add credibility to it. AFAIU no official ever commented whether the wikileaks materials are correct and complete. Nobody guarantees that there was no deliberate misinformation introduced.
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Actually, does the information that is being published by the Wikileaks have any classification whatsoever? That information is owned and disseminated by Wikileaks and some newspapers. Wikileaks did restrict the distribution somewhat to gain profit and exposure, but what possible "classification" can they attach to it that would need to be followed by US government employees? Whatever classified information is there that needs to be kept classified is still owned and kept safe as per its classification labe
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Because it has always been that way. I suggest you go read some archived stories from September 2001, for example.
Slashdot is what it is. You can always skip stories that you don't like.
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Not Declassified (Score:3, Interesting)
Just because a classified document is made public doesn't mean it automatically becomes declassified. If this person has a security clearance then he should know that. That is the rule. He had security awareness training on it updated yearly. He signed off on the training each time. It was impressed upon him when applying for his clearance. And if State is like the agency where I work we were given specific instructions about this exact scenario. The summary was "if you have a clearance, don't go there, don't link to it, don't read it, don't talk about it, just plain don't".
Considering he has 23 years in and this is really more of a case of being a sloppy idiot instead of espionage, they should just give him the option of retiring from Federal Service so he can keep his benefits and move on. A deal he can't refuse, so to speak.
Whats the problem (Score:4, Informative)
He while working for the state department gave credibility and verified leaked classified information in violation of state department policies. The fact that it was already out there in the public domain is irrelevant it has not been declassified.
He may get fired...a bit harsh but perfectly legal.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Failing to live up to your word is not a crime.
It is on a number of occasions, such as this one. It's also a crime to back out of military service or to lie on tax forms.
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Prepublication Review (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Prepublication Review (Score:5, Insightful)
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In a democratic republic based on the rule of law, you should not have to worry about a king hitting you with a club.
Yes the law can, and is, being abused to produce this outcome. But that'ss an argument against the law as construed. It's not an argument in favor of the abuse.
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If he gets charged with a crime you might have a point. As of now, the only punishment is that he might loose his job. Since his job requires holding a security clearance, and he obviously can't follow the rules about handling classified information, I don't see what the problem is.
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"Hey, how about I call you an idiot in public and you can convict me
for revealing state secrets."
-- Matthew Stoner (to Garibaldi), "Soul Mates" (Babylon 5)
Why did Obama Administration continue cooperating? (Score:2)
So the Bush Administration began talking and cooperating with Qaddafi in exchange for his abandonment of nuclear ambitions. Perhaps the Obama Administration sought to continue this because they too saw the facts as it stood, that Qaddafi had a hard grip on his country and didn't look like he was going out of power any time soon, and thus cooperation and diplomacy was in order for the interests of the US. Contrary to what idealists on the internet may believe, diplomacy isn't just talk, it's backed up with s
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He violated his clearance agreement. (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes this is taken to ridiculous extremes - I once went to a public conference where we were informed that all US citizens had to treat a certain presentation as classified information - meanwhile, as a public conference with people attending from all over the world, those other people could do whatever they wanted with the information. It was clearly public knowledge, but US citizens present with clearances had to treat it as classified because the government said it was.
He may not go to jail, but he definitely violated the agreement he made with the government in exchange for his security clearance and will likely lose it. Unfortunately, that's something that will follow him around, and in many industries simply makes you unemployable.
Isn't corporate America the Same Way? (Score:2)
This individual gives his real name and states that he is an employee of the State Department on his blog.
Suppose instead he was a private employee of Firm X and stated so in his postings, and posted something strongly critical of Firm X? Doesn't everyone here expect he would be reprimanded or fired because of his behavior?
I thought the general rule was that if you identify yourself as an employee of Firm X, then anything you say publicly should be consistent with what the management of Firm X would say. Th
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It depends. At AOL, I spent a great deal of time on alt.aol-sucks; engaging in discussions with people who hated our product was a great way to learn what to fix. (A lesson @ComcastCares has repopularized today.) To engage there, I had to be honest; nobody's going to talk to a happy-shiny marketing shill. I'd talk about why we did something we did, and about the trade-offs we made, and I'd even hint about whether I agreed or not. I wouldn't have posted my own rant, but I'd certainly quote others, and I
Damn you George Bush!!! (Score:2)
I hope that when Barack Obama is inaugurated we will have a change from your fascist policies! I can't wait for January 20, 2009 to come!
Anything to get him (Score:2)
just published a book that is critical of U.S. reconstruction projects in Iraq
a blog post discussing the hypocrisy of recent U.S. actions against Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi
Looks more like the State Dept was looking for anything to get him for.
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More reasonable alternate explanation: the same motivations which lead him to criticize US activities also led him to link to Wikileaks.
In other words, one is not an attempt to get him for the other--rather, he's a would-be activist and would-be activists like to do both of those things.
Suppose someone's arrested for robbing a bank. For the past month, he ranted to everyone who would listen about how evil banks are. It's possible that
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What I'm getting at is that correlation is not causation. Just because someone said bad things about the government and then got investigated for leaking doesn't mean he was investigated because of his speech. It more likely means that his initial speech and his leaking had the same cause.
The US Govt has been shown up (Score:2)
and they'll do anything they can to try to stuff the genie back in the bottle, including abrogating our most cherished Constitutional rights. Everyone knows now, with no hearsay or he said, she said, how incompetent and compromised the American government is. You can't go back from there without at least a massive wave of reform. But Obama, the current Congress, and the SCOTUS have no interest in that whatsoever.
We are past the event horizon of a second American Revolution. The question is exactly how l
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Now, a leak in the CIA or NSA... that could
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Qaddafi (Score:2, Interesting)
After seeing Qaddafi spelled 20 different ways in the news, I checked the wikipedia page for him and found this section [wikipedia.org]
I then wrote this dinky perl script. It generates a few illegal combinations, but it's still fun.
my @p1 = qw(Q G Gh K Kh);
my @p2 = qw(a e u);
my @p3 = qw(d dh dd ddh dhdh dth th zz);
my @p4 = qw(a);
my @p5 = qw(f ff);
my @p6 = qw(i y);
my @p = (\@p1,\@p2,\@p3,\@p4,\@p5,\@p6);
my $name = "";
foreach my $arr (@p) {
my @a = @{$arr}
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Yeah, duh. (Score:2)
They're going after him on ridiculous grounds, but an employee should know better than to publically comment under his real name. They will always get you on something.
Freedom isn't free. (Score:2)
Bad Classified (Score:2)
We are not a nation that operates in the shadows by definition if not by fact. We need to get rid of the idea of classified information completely. Share all truth with all people. As far as national defense concerns go the real answer is to be able to devastate any nation that acts against us. We simply need to make certain that no nation dare to offend us with military actions or other means of attack. Ideas like keeping the M-1 rifle classified for sixty years after every government in the world has
Now that was dumb (Score:2)
The goal of this policy (Score:2)
What they would not have had is the equivalent of the journalists, media and social networking able to make sense of a lot of boring documents to find the important parts and put them in context.
Do they want to have a situation where every politically aware, literate citizen of the USA (and the rest of the world) knows more about what the US governme
He was warned. (Score:2)
All U.S. government employees and contractors were warned when the first Wikileaks dumps happened that classifications had not changed and that it was still a violation to repeat any of that stuff.
We got memos. We got emails. It was a mandatory discussion topic at group meetings.
Everyone knew/knows that you can't repeat any of that information, you can't link to it, you can't read it from your work computer. If you're a fed or a contractor, that stuff might as well be radioactive anthrax.
He knew, period.
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But we're working on it. [occupytogether.com]
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Well, honestly the US took a more backstage role in the whole Libya affair, before (during the embargo) and after (during the war). If one wishes to be righteously indignant, one should direct one's anger at France and UK this time around.
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"child-tradings"
Please elaborate.
Re:Do you americans tolerate that? (Score:4, Interesting)
He probably means this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/08/wikileaks-reveals-that-mi_n_793816.html [huffingtonpost.com]
This information about what your taxes are spent on was brought to you by Bradley Manning and wikileaks.
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I think we may have another drunk Russian commie on our hands.....
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As of 2010, there were 300 million guns in private ownership in U.S. - almost one per citizen.
Granted, this is somewhat deceptive, since in practice a person tends to either own no guns, or to own more than one. Still, I think that "shitload of guns" is a valid assessment. Not that there is any problem with it.
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You're exactly right. The average American today has absolutely no moral superiority to the average German in 1940.
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And the fact that you are making that statement is a proof that you are a complete idiot.
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What's your thought process there? The fact that I can voice my dissent in relative safety means that our government is good and just? No, the fact that we can voice our dissent in safety is only more condemning. No one is using this vital freedom. If we had to fear for our lives if we spoke up, we'd have some sort of excuse for not doing so.
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When you get a security clearance and get told explicitly not to do this.
Diplomats give up some freedoms (Score:2)
Since when does being a government employee interfere with your freedom of speech?
Since he volunteered to work for the State Department and work in a diplomatic function. When working as a diplomat any public statements can reflect upon the United States government, not you merely yourself as an individual.
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Nobody is forcing you to accept a security clearance.
Part of the process is voluntarily signing a really strong non-disclosure agreement which is again a contract to not talk about certain things.
It's all purely voluntary. If you think that you are going to want to talk about these things, don't sign the agreement. Nobody is forcing you to do any such thing.
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