14 DAY TRIAL // Wikileaks has been propelled to a new level of ‘stardom’ after the leak of some 92,000 documents from the US military concerning the Afghanistan war. The Pentagon hasn’t taken it lightly and has condemned the site for doing so. However, the response has been moderate, perhaps because the Pentagon knows that it can’t really do much about the situation at the moment except ‘damage control.’
That seemed to be the case until now, but maybe the Pentagon is really not as tech savvy as some might give it credit for, the US Department of Defense is now asking Wikileaks to return the documents revealed on the site. That’s right, the Pentagon wants digital documents, freely available on the web, returned.
Either the people there have no clue whatsoever about how the internet works or they’re just asking for things that they know very well can’t happen just so that they can later point and say, ‘look, we did our job.’
“These documents are the property of the U.S. Government and contain classified and sensitive information. The Defense Department demands that Wikileaks return immediately all versions of documents obtained,” Pentagon Spokesman Geoff Morrell said.
“The only acceptable course is for Wikileaks to return all versions of these documents to the U.S. government and permanently delete them from its website, computers and records,” he added.
In his defense, he starts off referring to the 15,000 documents Wikileaks is yet to release. These contain more sensitive material than what has been made available so far. But it’s still an empty request and the Pentagon knows it. At the same time though the Pentagon is issuing new policies for all military personnel regarding Wikileaks basically says ‘don’t visit it.’ Anyone employed by the US Department of Defense is barred from visiting Wikileaks to view the Afghanistan files on any personal or government computers.