[Infowarrior] - (AF-1): The USAF still doesn't "get" the nature of the WWW

[Richard Forno]

(c/o D.)

San Francisco Chronicle:

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/19/MNG4OIBDBE1.DTL>

A week after Pentagon officials ordered an Air Force base in Georgia
to remove from its Web site security information about the two Air
Force One aircraft, the data remained publicly available Tuesday.

Officials at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center did not ignore
the Pentagon command to remove the information. In fact, within hours
of the Air Force chief of staff's office learning of the online
posting, Warner Robins authorities removed the technical order that
had caused consternation at the Pentagon and White House.

The Air Force has discovered that once it -- or for that matter
anyone -- places a Web page on a publicly accessible Internet site,
that information moves into the public domain.

"Once a page is out on the Net, Google and the Way Back Machine make
copies ... for long-term archive," said Internet security expert
Steve Gibson, president and founder of Gibson Research Corp.

Although the Air Force has attempted to put the proverbial genie back
into the bottle, Gibson said the effort is all but a lost cause. Once
something is on a public Web site, "there is nothing, from a
technological standpoint, that can prevent anyone from copying the
information. There should be no expectation that once published, that
information can be withdrawn."

Martin Libicki, an expert in information warfare and security at
Rand, was even more blunt. Once government data is released onto the
Internet, he said, "it is gone."

The security information about Air Force One was originally placed
online in order to save a small expense involved with creating and
distributing CDs or manuals for personnel who needed access to the
technical order.

The order described, among other things, anti-missile defenses
carried by Air Force One that could be exploited by interests hostile
to the United States.

The disclosures went well beyond Air Force One. The order, which was
successfully cached online, contained information about the
countermeasures present -- and absent -- on all U.S. and NATO
military aircraft. Much of this information was still available
online Tuesday.

Air Force and Pentagon officials scrambled last week to remove the
data after The Chronicle reported April 8 that the information had
been posted on a public Web site.

David Ferguson, an Air Force data security official at the Pentagon,
acknowledged Tuesday the problems with using the Internet to
disseminate information not intended for the general public.

"The Air Force has policy that says how (we) should share information
(but) we can't ensure people read the policy. We do what we can to
clean up the mess afterward," Ferguson said.

In regard to people, such as bloggers, who copy and disseminate
publicly accessible data, "legally there is not a lot we can do. ...
We can appeal to their patriotism."