U.S. Naval Secrets Revealed On Internet In ‘Potentially Catastrophic’ Redaction Effort

by Mark Joyella | 9:19 am, April 18th, 2011

» 11 comments

British military officials accidentally allowed the release of secret naval information in a screwup described as “potentially catastrophic” by a Conservative Member of Parliament. The release happened when Ministry of Defense documents were released with sensitive information redacted–but in such a way that blacked-out portions were restored by simply copying and pasting the document into another document.

The error was caught by a journalist, as reported by the Guardian:

The offending paragraphs have now been properly covered up [PDF] but were reported to have included expert opinion about the fleet’s ability to withstand a catastrophic accident.

Details of measures used by the US navy to protect its own nuclear submarines were also accidentally made available, according to the Daily Star Sunday newspaper, which alerted the MoD to the problem.

As the Guardian explains, “some parts of the declassified document were redacted when it was published to protect sensitive information but the technique used meant the words were still electronically available underneath.”

Guardian, Ministry of Defense, Navy, nuclear, Parliament, Submarines, UK

skyfet

Whats the point of releasing data, when the important bits are covered up?
More Liberty5

skyfet said:
Whats the point of releasing data, when the important bits are covered up?

Well I believe the article states they were not originally covered/ blocked out.

England is not my country so I could really careless. However, anytime state secrets are released it is a good day for government accountability.
Judge Mental

More Liberty5 said:
England is not my country so I could really careless.

Did you miss this little tidbit:

Details of measures used by the US navy to protect its own nuclear submarines were also accidentally made available, according to the Daily Star Sunday newspaper ….

However, anytime state secrets are released it is a good day for government accountability.

Seriously? Having defense secrets revealed is good?
More Liberty5

Judge Mental said:
Did you miss this little tidbit:

No, this is a UK document about US. The US doesn’t have control of the doc.

These government goons always use “national security” to hide things from the people. I believe that the more people are aware of the pure incompetence of the government the more reluctant they will be to give them more and more power.
http://twitter.com/SailRabbits Magister

One of Frances’ first widely distributed stories for this website was when she found a similar flaw in a subpoena release for the Blagojevich trial. It prompted her to write the following and the court to call an emergency hearing.

One wonders if all classified portions of government documents are this easy to breach, or whether whoever put the document together was hoping a reporter somewhere would crack the code.

While the British Navy release is a much bigger error, I guess we now know that it’s a fairly easy thing to have happen and something software and training should address.
Judge Mental

More Liberty5 said:
These government goons always use “national security” to hide things from the people. I believe that the more people are aware of the pure incompetence of the government the more reluctant they will be to give them more and more power.

But this revelation doesn’t fall into that category.
http://www.swissarmyjew.com Keeva

More Liberty5 said:
These government goons always use “national security” to hide things from the people. I believe that the more people are aware of the pure incompetence of the government the more reluctant they will be to give them more and more power.

But this is national security. The weak points in a naval vessel are indeed security.

The problem is that everything gets lumped into that category. This is an example of legit security concerns versus White House visitor logs.
Pablo

Feckin’ n00bs.
WHarropson

I have a customer who is an attorney. She sent a document to a client for a signature, they changed the text, signed it and sent it back. She was shocked when her document was used by a judge to affect a judgement contrary to her work product.
I think this is what Secure PDF’s are for.
tatboy

skyfet said:
Whats the point of releasing data, when the important bits are covered up?

To save lives.
sootsme

Um, was the redactor a union employee? Just askin’… Anyone remember The Keystone Cops? Pretty much our public sector’s playbook as near as I can tell…