The Knitting Fiend

NPR’s Ombudman for blogs, Jeffrey A. Dvorkin, blogs about blogs in: When Those Pesky Blogs Undermine NPR News

No, the title isn’t referring to me. Nevertheless, I have to defend my “cyber-savvy” fellow bloggers here.

Here is the story, in bare-bones form:

The Pentagon released a classified report in an electronic format. When viewed ordinarily, the report was redacted, preventing a casual reader from reading the classified portions. NPR published the report at its web site. Some “cyber-savvy” bloggers recognized the electronic document could be translated to reveal the bits that had been struck out; they posted the full document at a number of web sites. At this point, NPR removed the document from the its web site.

The incident is important because the information contained in the report describes military procedures and names people, and thereby imperil American’s lives.

Jeffery A. Dvorkin, of NPR whines that publication by “cyber-savvy” bloggers demonstrates the lack of values of bloggers who translated the classified document already published by NPR and distributed by the Pentagon. He seems to white wash the role of both NPR and the Pentagon.

Sorry, Mr. Dvorkin, but the “cyber-savvy” know the primary blame surely lies with The Pentagon.

The non-cyber-savvy may wonder: “Why blame The Pentagon?”

After all, a non-cyber-savvy person would reason, I couldn’t read the document until a cyber-savvy individual translated it, now can I. So, until the cyber-savy cracked it, it was “secret”. It must be the bloggers fault!

Well, that’s wrong. The fact that the document was easily translated shows the Pentagon released classified information in the electronic equivalent of ‘ig-pay atin-lay’. If some cyber-savvy bloggers quickly understood and translated the document, don’t you think other people visiting the NPR wesite recognized the information could be translated?

Maybe some of those other people are cyber-savvy militants in other countries?

Until both the Pentagon and NPR hire a few more cyber-savvy individuals, I suggest the Pentagon go back to providing NPR photocopies of manually redacted documents. If NPR wants to post them to the web, I’m sure someone at NPR knows how to use a scanner.