Kafkaesque

Reuters has a good piece up about some of the stranger elements of the governments efforts to curb access to Wikileaks. Amongst others, is the assertion that a piece of information is Secret! Secret! Secret! even if millions of people have written and blogged about it.

Hi there!

Under their perception of what is classified, someone working in Homeland Security for example could be punished for breaking security violations for looking at something his grandmother can view with impunity. The Air Force has even gone a step further:

Not to be outdone by Homeland Security, the U.S. Air Force went a step further this week and blocked employees from using work computers to view the websites of the New York Times and other news organizations that have posted WikiLeaks cables. Those who tried saw “Access Denied: Internet usage is logged and monitored” splashed across their screens, a notice that brings to mind the Chinese government’s efforts to block its citizens from material deemed inappropriate.

Granted, Obama has made formal orders to attempt to expand transparency (well, before this anyways). Regrettably, these will probably be damaged as overkill towards the leaks mounts. 

The opening paragraph of the order, dated December 29, 2009, says: “Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their Government. Also, our Nation’s progress depends on the free flow of information both within the Government and to the American people.”

How does that square with the present attempts to prevent large numbers of Americans from looking at information available to much of the rest of the world?