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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Yep.

I am displeased about this, to say the least, but it does give me some hope. That hope being that the Department of Defence's attempts at information supression are so woefully bad that they'll never be able to keep a leaked secret down.

[Aqizzar]

In a statement to CNN, Cunningham said defense officials observed the September 20 destruction of about 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's new memoir "Operation Dark Heart."

Shaffer says he was notified Friday about the Pentagon's purchase.

"The whole premise smacks of retaliation," Shaffer told CNN on Saturday. "Someone buying 10,000 books to suppress a story in this digital age is ludicrous."

Yeah, pretty much.  No doubt a PDF will start making the rounds before too long.  That Wikileaks guy is struggling to accommodate his infoboner as we speak.

[Heron TSG]

That guy selling his copy for $2,000 is a master of supply-and-demand economics.

[Euld]

And is probably about to be ninja swat teamed by the FBI.

Hopefully he doesn't have any pets.  Or wives who plead for mercy.  Or breakable furniture.

[eerr]

He can only buy one of those things for 2000$

[Sensei]

Prediction: More people, and particularly more people who are interested, double especially people who might actually do harm with it, will know the relevant information as a result of this attempt at censorship, whereas they would otherwise not.

Way to go pentagon.

[nenjin]

This whole story is kind of "wuuuhhhh?" Solider publishes book containing information the Pentagon deems classified. Pentagon tells publisher it has issues. Publisher publishes book anyways. Pentagon buys books instead of prosecuting either the publisher or the soldier. Publisher prints a redacted version.

If it wasn't worth prosecuting over, why isn't this guy on every media channel talking about the redacted material? If it is highly sensitive information, why is the Pentagon using civilian channels to suppress it instead of the weight of military and national security authority?

It's like publicity stunt meets confused military authority. They have the military authority to prosecute AFAIK...and the guy hasn't yet gone on record with the media about the book's original contents.

[Aklyon]

Prediction: More people, and particularly more people who are interested, double especially people who might actually do harm with it, will know the relevant information as a result of this attempt at censorship, whereas they would otherwise not.

Way to go pentagon.

Streisand Effect?

[Eugenitor]

The term "utterly bereft of clues" applies to the Pentagon here.

Seriously, after all this time, do they not know how the Internet works?

C'mon Wikileaks, OCR it already.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

This whole story is kind of "wuuuhhhh?" Solider publishes book containing information the Pentagon deems classified. Pentagon tells publisher it has issues. Publisher publishes book anyways. Pentagon buys books instead of prosecuting either the publisher or the soldier. Publisher prints a redacted version.

If it wasn't worth prosecuting over, why isn't this guy on every media channel talking about the redacted material? If it is highly sensitive information, why is the Pentagon using civilian channels to suppress it instead of the weight of military and national security authority?

It's like publicity stunt meets confused military authority. They have the military authority to prosecute AFAIK...and the guy hasn't yet gone on record with the media about the book's original contents.

From the article, he cleared it with his superiors, the publisher printed the books, then the intelligence agencies caught wind of it, and had the printed books destroyed before they could be shipped (apparently with compensation for their losses), then allowed a redacted version to be printed.



So unless some of the copies were stolen before they were given to the DoD, there's not much chance the complete version will be leaked. In any case, the person trying to sell a copy is a criminal, either because they have a legitimate copy, which means they stole it, or because they don't, in which case they're committing fraud.

[RedKing]

Ok, I'm curious now. The publisher, St. Martin's Press, isn't exactly some leftie fringe publisher--they're a major mainstrream publishing conglomerate. Which may be part of why the Pentagon had to softshoe the approach here. It's one thing to kick around some little operation run out of the back of a Berkeley head shop. It's another entirely to take on a corporation with deep pockets and access to lawyers.


A couple of the examples that were given in the CNN text, I can see why they would be redacted. Most of it is probably stuff that is public secret anyways, but still....they probably got a bit miffed that they weren't in the loop on the clearance and decided to play it fully by the book, redacting every last fact that is classified even Sensitive or Confidential. Thing probably reads like an SCP case file now.

[Impending Doom]

It's probably just my bias towards the military/defense, having lived from base to base for the first half of my life, but I have total faith in the DoD's motives for suppression. If the folks at the Pentagon are willing to go as far as to destroy hard copies of the book, it stands to reason that the information they were trying to suppress would endanger the lives of American citizens/government officials if released. I very much hope that some anti-government asshole doesn't get ahold of this info and spray it all over the web for everyone to see.

[Phmcw]

Or it could sully America's reputation...
The problem is that it could be both, but let's see what wikileak does of it. I'd trust them in the matter.

Nothing on the matter right now, but their latest leak is very interesting.

[forsaken1111]

I'm amused that everyone says "The Pentagon" as though it were some singular organization. So many different organizations and military branches operate out of that building that even after working there for three years I barely know what goes on in most of it.

[RedKing]

Y'know...most things that are classified are done so because of operational security not because "OH NOES WE KILLED EVRYONE...NO ONE MUST EVER KNOW".

And while I'm all for freedom of information, Assange has shown to be either a bit of a jerkass or an ideological purist, in that he doesn't seem to mind publishing the name of Afghans "collaborators" who are mentioned in US intel reports, thus giving the Taliban a field map of who to kill, capture and torture.

Most redacted info is little stuff that individually isn't a big deal. But taken in large amounts and pieced together by someone with skill, it can reveal a lot of juicy details about procedures, operational planning, logistics, etc.

I'm amused that everyone says "The Pentagon" as though it were some singular organization. So many different organizations and military branches operate out of that building that even after working there for three years I barely know what goes on in most of it.

Phhhhbtt...come on now, we all know the Pentagon is actually eight or nine old white guys around a shadowy table secretly planning world domination.    All that other stuff is just their cover.