AF Pulls Command's WikiLeaks Guidance

AF Pulls Command's WikiLeaks Guidance

www.military.com

An Air Force command's attempt to keep Airmen from reading classified documents on the WikiLeaks website went too far and was ordered pulled down by the Air Force.

Lawyers for the Air Force Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, warned Airmen on Feb. 3 not to view documents on the site from either work or home computers or risk prosecution under the Espionage Act. The lawyers further said that Air Force family members who viewed the documents on a home computer could also be arrested and charged under the law, and that Airmen are obliged to "safeguard the information

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is good news and a step in the right direction for members of the armed services and their families.

The Air Force clearly overstepped the scope and pervue of existing laws in its short lived policy created just a few days ago.

The opposition argument that since these documents have all been released into the public domain and there is no way to retrieve them from the public domain they should all be declassified by the government now, since they have more or less been de facto declassified through the act of being put on the Internet by third parties.

I do believe it is saying volumes on the part of the Military by wanting to criminalize looking at these documents as these documents being something that could lead to dissent, desertion, or mutiny within the ranks of the Military.

In other words a government that is afraid it’s rank and file soldiers won’t fight, kill, travel, sacrifice for it, based on it’s real policies and actions it tries to keep from the public and it’s soldiers.

It certainly can’t be because they think service members obtaining these materials are going to turn around and sell them to the Russians or Al-Qaeda since they can obtain them easily for free too.

Yet it certainly underscores just how undemocratic our representative republic has become, when there are so many elements of foreign policy that are so questionable that the Government does not only not want the general public to know them, but most especially it’s soldiers not to know them.

I do very much wonder if Wikileaks is part of a honey pot trap, to in essence identify and tap people within the government and the armed services who just might be to critically minded and too prone to independent thinking to be an asset to an increasingly secretive and authoritarian government.

Hard to imagine we are now living in an era where people inside the government would like to send people to jail just for learning about what really goes on in the world.

Yet it truly seems like we are fast arriving at that point.


www.military.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

The original thread about them trying to impose these unconstitutional rules was a thread of good debate. But I kinda knew it would get pulled. And its good to see that it has. The very thought that the military thinking they can suppress its members and spouses from free thinking, and actually obtaining an opinion, ( per the 1st amendment mind you ) is a travesty.
We as the public do get a few " wins " here and there, and from the look of things, those wins are only pin prick in the corporate elite. And my, how that pin hurts!

reply to post by Whereweheaded


It's certainly a precarious time, watching just how far the Corporate Government and the Military Industrial Complex are going to attempt to go down the Bunny Trail.

The National Security Blanket has become way too big when it comes what the government will disclose and what the government attempts to do.

I suspect had they (the Air Force) not made the additional step of including Service Members Families too in this short lived edict, it might have stood longer or permanently.

I imagine a whole lot of spouses and older children were not to happy about this, and led to pressure on the individual service members to speak out and against this.

If true, it sure would be great if that same kind of pressure was brought to bear to finally do away with things like the Patriot and FISA Acts and eliminate or severely curtail the TSA and Homeland Security.

I still can't believe Americans went for something as Nazi sounding as Homeland Security, I still want to say 'ya vow' out loud every time I hear the name of that Department mentioned.

Thanks for posting.

Man oh man i wish I took the blue pill!

Originally posted by Whereweheaded
Man oh man i wish I took the blue pill!

While a lot of it is centered on myths and dogmas (our founding as a nation) it remains clear though that the founders cautioned that moving forward we would have to be vigil for certain things and individually prepared to battle against them.

1. A large federal government
2. A large standing army
3. Taking sides in international conflicts
4. Building an empire abroad

So in reality yea, a lot of Americans have for too long taken the Blue Pill and more or less pretended that as these things occurred it would not have a negative impact on our liberties and economic prosperity, but clearly it has, and is.

So a lot of people need to start taking the Red Pill and to stop pretending that a Government that resembles exactly and precisely the Beast we were cautioned would bite us on the collective arse if we allowed it to come to pass, is ever going to correct itself.

It's not, and while as in this case we can still check some of it's excesses, it still continues to expand, and broaden it's power and scope to chip away at the tree of liberty.

When everyone starts taking the Red Pill or at least a vast and determined majority then maybe we can finally put an end to it, before it puts an end to us.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


i agree fully. My comment about the blue pill suggests that many, including myself took the " red" and not only see things for what they are, but see the possible outcomes of things to be~

Sad really, never before would I have ever thought that this country would " fall " to the levels its reaching.

How far could this have gone?
Espionage?

You know that alot of ATS users are servicemen/women and family...
So they, in a way, could try to prosecute ALL of the members here.


What a crying shame.
Looking at public documents will put you in jail.
Maybe that's what they want after all.

Nice find, proto.

reply to post by Whereweheaded


Sadly a small albeit overly intelligent and honest group of Americans have been warning of this my entire life and I am getting close to 50.

The trend has been a pretty identifiable one all thoughout that course of time.

Once you understand Governments seldom ever contract and shrink, but always expand and grow, it's a logical conclusion that they have to keep passing more and more laws as they do, in an attempt to justify the growth and the cost, and become more authoritarian as a result.

Of course once you get a large enough segment of the population hooked on the social services, like medicare, disability, welfare, grants and social securities then you get a large percentage of people who are willing to believe the upside of huge government outweighs the downside.

That is of course until the downside turns into a totaltarian police state where you can be held without charge or trial indefinately in off shore locations, tortured, denied council, frisked and searched in public places for no reason other than you are in a public place, and the Police State employs itself and expands itself by doing that.

America is in real big trouble, and with the Corporate Media colluding with the Corporate Government to put a rosie face on it all, it is going to be up to the average American to speak up and out to have any hope that this thing can be checked and rolled back.

At the rate it is attempting to expand it's powers, there really does not seem to be a whole lot of time left for people to start doing that.

Hopefully they will, and hopefully more and more of the men and women in uniform who serve the government in a military or law enforcement capacity will wake up too, and realize that while it might provide a paycheck, that paycheck stops once the road to ruin we are on is complete.

Actually this IS good news
Reason why is because if they were allowed to view the documents they might be like "meh, whatever"
But if they aren't allowed to view them then that might raise some eyebrows and think "Legitimate news sources report on this but I can't view these docs?"

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
Actually this IS good news
Reason why is because if they were allowed to view the documents they might be like "meh, whatever"
But if they aren't allowed to view them then that might raise some eyebrows and think "Legitimate news sources report on this but I can't view these docs?"

It's bad enough our foreign policies are made and enforced with dual standards.

When we get to the point our domestic policies are made and enforced with dual standards, someone might as well turn out the lights and declare the party officially over!

Thanks for posting.