The Cure for WikiLeaks - Typewriters!

I was perusing the Interwebs this morning, mostly about the WikiLeaks leaks of State Department cables once thought to be secure when I ran across this interview with John Bolton's Mustache on Fox News. He says what most of us are thinking: anyone responsible for these leaks needs to be punished severely, up to and including the very serious charge of treason.

Video is here, courtesy of The Right Scoop.

And then I found this little nugget over at Ace of Spades wherein Ace proceeds to solve the problem using a novel method of disseminating information and the rough flow chart to accomplish it. Jump right to the middle...

The only way this can work is if each person who sends a report creates three or four different versions of the same report. The first, the unexpurgated version, only for higher ups; the alternate versions, one scrubbed and one seriously scrubbed. Each person would be responsible then for classifying and redacting his own report, which makes sense, 1, because it's pretty easy to scrub your own report (and takes about five or ten minutes of additional work) and 2, because the person writing the report is in the best position to judge what's truly sensitive and what can be freely disseminated.

Now, you could accomplish this digitally, but then you'd wind up right back where you started as far as vulnerability is concerned. And vulnerability is what this whole thing is all about. Specifically, emotional vulnerability as displayed by Bradley Manning, the gay soldier who is primarily responsible for this blow to American security. Here's his excuse for exposing the country's secrets: "Information should be free. It belongs in the public domain."


What a crock of bullshit. He should spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement as an example of what happens to people who think they know so much better than their superior officers and orders. He should have no contact with the outside world other than for him to realize what he's missing and what didn't need to happen. If one single serviceman comes to harm as a result of his stupid action, he should be executed. No if's, and's or but's about it.

This must be stopped. And the people responsible for this blow to the country should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. As usual, after months of this, our Justice Department finally springs into action. One wonders how vigorously they'll prosecute this apparently cut-and-dried case, since their history of prosecution in cut-and-dried cases is, shall we say, less than stellar (hint, New Black Panther voter intimidation).

Oh for a few typewriters and some white-out...