Do you people need to spy on each other?

There's an interesting article in the LA Times recently. Inquiry Opens into Passing of Secret Files. According to the article, a Marine Gunnery Sargeant is on trial for allegedly taking the classified military files from Camp Pendleton and the U.S. Northern Command, which tracks domestic terrorism activity.

And he passed them to...member(s) of the LA County Sheriffs Department who were responsible for analyzing sensitive intelligence data. Same team, different department. Same goals, different departments. There's no evidence of financial gain, no evidence of foreign powers involvement.

Imagine the same situation existed in your organization. Information was being hoarded by one department to the detriment and risk of the performance of another department. Jobs were at risk as a result from the breakdown of cooperation and trust, the lack of responsiveness and the inability to communicate/coordinate/collaborate for shared goals. A lone ranger comes in and begins to share sacred data between departments, with those with proven backgrounds of integrity, service, innovation, dedication. They do it for the organization's performance with no personal gain realized.

What would you do? Would you fire 'em all? Would you suspend them? Would you congratulate them for their leadership in breaking down unproductive walls within your company and expediting its success?

What would you do?

Link from FAS

Comments

[jeremy]

I believe there are laws that regulate the interaction between police and the military, and its very possible this Gunny was breaking them. The federal military and local police are separate organizations with completely different duties and priorities. The separation between them is there to protect our civil liberties - we do not want a military or police state.

I understand how you are interpreting this to make your case for businesses, but your comparison doesn't fit at all.

[Zane]

You're right on all your points about laws, separation of military surveillance on civilian population and the separation of military and civilian personnel.

Those are important to maintain if we want the same sort of country we've had in the past.

And again, not to diminish them, but it's much the same argument within any organization: we've never shared this information before, if we do it will change the organization, that person's a traitor, disloyal to the org for sharing information...

Thanks for the comment and for reminding everyone of the importance of the separation of military and civilian organizations for law enforcement.