A former US Navy Seal who wrote a bestseller about his role in the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden is to pay nearly $7m (£5m) to the government for violating non-disclosure agreements.
Matt Bissonette failed to get clearance from the Pentagon before the book No Easy Day was published in 2012.
He has agreed to forfeit all profits and royalties, as well as film rights and speaking fees.
In exchange, the government will dismiss other liability claims.
Source: BBC News
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @05:14PM
GP here. Ah ok. My next question is then, are there procedures in place for receiving classified information? Were they followed?
As a crypto-nerd, it does generally frustrate me that people continue to send sensitive information over email without encryption.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @05:43PM
> My next question is then, are there procedures in place for receiving classified information? Were they followed?
When classified information is discovered on an unclassified system there is a full-blown process for tracing its distribution and scrubbing (if not out-right destroying) any contaminated systems.
However, and this is key, that requires recognition of the information's classified status. If its unmarked, as was the case with all of the email that clinton received, it is unrealistic to expect her to recognize it as classified. That's especially true of the stuff sourced from signals intelligence because it is often classified to avoid revealing sources, not the content irself. For example, information collected on a wiretap may not be sensitive at all, but the wiretap itself is top secret. If you just see the information without mention of the wiretap you won't know its classified - only the people whose conversation was tapped would recognize the existence of the wiretap from disclosure of the information discussed in the tapped conversation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 22 2016, @06:35PM
Dead wrong. The very existence of the information produced from a wiretap could be used to discover the wiretap, which is why information from/about HUMINT sources is classified so highly.