Pentagon test: Check out if you are a high threat!

Workers are taught to consider colleagues who speak critically of foreign policy as potential threats

After Julian Assange, Edward Snowden debacle, the United States’ mind games are underway. Beware the perils of frequently visiting home in India, if you are a non-resident Indian (NRI). Worse, you are a potential 'insider threats' if you vocally critical of US foreign policy. The way the Pentagon is predicting your potential to become a national threat is frightening.

 

As Matt Sledge wrote for The Huffington Post:

 

Watch out for “Hema”

 

“A security training test created by a Defense Department agency warns federal workers that they should consider the hypothetical Indian-American woman ["Hema"] a “high threat” because she frequently visits family abroad,  has money troubles and “speaks openly of unhappiness with US foreign policy.”

 

The website further added: “That slide, from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), is a startling demonstration of the Obama administration’s obsession with leakers and other “insider threats.” One goal of its broader “Insider Threat” program is to stop the next Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden from spilling classified or sensitive information.”

 

In October 2012, the test was produced, a month before the US administration finalised its Insider Threat policy. The slide about Hema is included in a section of the training about "insider threats". Both Hema's travel abroad and her political dissatisfaction are treated as threat "indicators". 

 

In a statement to The Huffington Post,  Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart said, "DISA was sensitive to any civil liberty concerns that might arise from any portion of the curriculum, which is why it coordinated with 26 federal agencies to ensure the maximum amount of input was received before going live."

 

Pickart said that the next version of the security awareness training, to be released in October, is being updated so that its insider-threat test focuses more on behaviour, "not personal characteristics or beliefs."

 

The move is seen in the context of the Obama administration’s relentless crackdown on leakers and whistle-blowers who shed light on the darker sides of US government policy.

 

Click here to read full story in The Huffington Post