Technical Incompetence
There was a truly outrageous story on NPR this morning about the US military releasing a report to the public with classified information contained within it. The report in question described the investigation into an incident in which US forces killed an Italian intelligence agent, and injured Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian reporter who had just been released by kidnappers. Some bright mind released the document in a digital format (PDF), and used software formatting to black out classified information. Since the implementation of this formatting keeps all of the information within the file, and just places black over it when it is displayed, it was trivial for technically savvy people to extract the classified information. When questioned about this lapse, a Pentagon spokesman blamed it on 'technical problems.' Bah! I say. This is not a technical failure, it is a gross mismanagement of secure data. Blaming it on technology is pathetic. Almost as pathetic as the NPR reporters accepting the military's description of the problem.
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