MoD 'how to stop leaks' document is leaked

By Tom Chivers (Telegraph)[1]

The Defence Manual of Security is intended to help MoD, armed forces and intelligence personnel maintain information security in the face of hackers, journalists, foreign spies and others.
But the 2,400-page restricted document has found its way on to Wikileaks, a website that publishes anonymous leaks of sensitive information from organisations including governments, corporations and religions.
Known in the services as Joint Services Protocol 440 (JSP 440), it was published in 2001. As Wikileaks notes, it is the document that is used as justification for the monitoring of certain websites, including Wikileaks itself.
Under the section “Leaks of Official Information", it says: "Leaks usually take the form of reports in the public media which appear to involve the unauthorised disclosure of official information (whether protectively marked or not) that causes political harm or embarrassment to either the UK Government or the Department concerned…
"The threat [of leakage] is less likely to arise from positive acts of counter-espionage, than from leakage of information through disaffected members of staff, or as a result of the attentions of an investigative journalist, or simply by accident or carelessness."
The document is particularly keen to avoid the attentions of journalists, noting them as "threats" alongside foreign intelligence services, criminals, terrorist groups and disaffected staff.
As far as traditional espionage and intelligence threats go, the document singles out the Chinese as having "a voracious appetite for all kinds of information; political, military, commercial, scientific and technical."
However, it is "very different to the portrayal of 'Moscow Rules' in the novels of John Le Carre". The Chinese agencies do not "run agents", but instead "make friends", as befits intelligence officers in the Facebook era.
Wikileaks was also behind the memorable leaks of the British National Party membership list, the operating procedures at Guantanamo Bay and the secret workings of the Church of Scientology.

As published in Telegraph. Thanks to Tom Chivers and Telegraph for covering this material. Copyright remains with the aforementioned.