by Jim Harper
AOL News
August 5, 2010
No matter where right or wrong lie in the posting of classified military reports on WikiLeaks.org, one lesson should be clear: This is how it's going to be. Technology will continue to undercut secrecy -- not just in the military, but in all large organizations.
Government and corporate leaders who aren't ahead of this problem may already have trouble on their hands they don't know about.
When 90,000 pages of documents chronicling the Afghan war went online last week, their potential effects on military planning and security caused the White House to strongly condemn their posting as "irresponsible." Differing more than slightly, Salon commentator Glenn Greenwald praised WikiLeaks.org as "one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world."
While there is universal agreement that over-classification in the U.S. government is a problem, leaking government documents isn't a good way to fix it. Nevertheless, a pair of related technology trends will continue to push this "fix" in a disorderly way if it's not solved methodically.
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