DEEP BACKGROUND

Diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks revealed that Condeleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton had ordered American diplomats to collect personal information about United Nations diplomats. The orders are in fact part of a much broader CIA program that gives new meaning to the expression "total information awareness." The Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act have given the federal government the took to monitor iust about any U.S. citizen or permanent resident at any time for any reason. Now the U.S. intelligence community is getting into more of the same overseas. The program to collect biographical and personal information on foreigners, particularly government officials and political figures, is in place at more than 30 embassies. Many of these are in so-called "front line" states in the Middle East and Central Asia, and the targets of the operation predictably include individuals from nations like Iran, North Korea, China, Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia. The rationale for collecting e-mail addresses, frequent-flyer accounts, credit-card information, and phone numbers is simple: it is far easier to access private accounts surreptitiously and collect information through them than it is to break into heavily protected government systems at embassies and ministries. The biometrie information is of interest to CIA for monitoring the movements of suspected intelligence officers who sometimes travel on documents with false names. Airport security systems now often incorporate biometrics. Many of these systems were installed with the assistance of the U.S. government in the wake of 9/1 1 and include a "backdoor" that allows the CIA or National Security Agency to collect information on all travelers passing through.

The Pentagon's newly launched cyber-command hacked WikiLeaks' servers to render the site inoperable. The effort was aided by the Israelis, who are highly skilled in government-sponsored intrusion into Internet servers. Meanwhile, senior managers at the Pentagon, CIA, and State Department are discussing requiring all employees with security clearances to sign waivers permitting random checks of personal computers to make sure that they are not bringing work home from the office or viewing sites like WikiLeaks. Several federal agencies have already advised employees that accessing WikiLeaks in any way to review the content either on or off the site will be grounds for disciplinary action - meaning that opening the New York Times on Saturday morning can prove to be a dangerous act of subversion. And the word is also out in the academic community. Several major university placement offices have advised graduating seniors that questions relating to WikiLeaks will be part of the security screening process for government jobs at State, the Pentagon, and the intelligence agencies. Viewing WikiLeaks could be regarded as grounds for denial of employment. The Pentagon has gone one step further, warning all employees that receiving any WikiLeaks information from an outside source, even if it is something that has been made public in a newspaper, must be treated as a security violation and reported. If the violation is not reported, and the material is not deleted immediately from one's computer, disciplinary action will result.

[Author Affiliation]

Philip Gi raid i , a former CIA Officer, is a fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance.