Kerry is questioning the NYT publishing cyberwar story [View all]

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/06/kerry-questions-nyt-decision-to-run-stories-125498.html

Sen. John Kerry on Wednesday questioned whether the New York Times should have published explosive stories last week about President Obama ordering cyberattacks against Iran’s nuclear program.

“I personally think there is a serious question whether or not that served our interest and whether the public had to know,” Kerry, the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, told reporters. “To me it was such a nitty-gritty fundamental national security issue. And I don’t see how the public interest is well served by it. I do see how other interests outside the United States are well served by it.”

...


After answering the question and walking away, Kerry chased down Barrett down the hallway to clarify his remarks: “With the Pentagon Papers, the country was being lied to, you can understand the need to know. On this, I don’t think a need-to-know standard gets met.”

But, it ends up there is a lot more to this story:

http://mediagazer.com/120607/p18#a120607p18

http://mediagazer.com/120606/p25#a120606p25

From what I gather from all these different stories, John Kerry is kind of at odds with the White House, who apparently never asked the NYT not to publish the story and may have been the source for a lot of it. My first thought reading the story was that Iran is going to attempt to retaliate and that's not good. OTOH, maybe they would do it anyway if only they could. In general, I'm more afraid of Russian hackers who are creating turmoil at LinkedIn at the moment.

What are people's thoughts?

Adding another article:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2012/06/the-rewards-and-risks-of-cyberwar.html?currentPage=all

I think the problem is not that it was published -- the Iranians probably already knew who did it. It's that this is not necessarily a good thing to do -- almost like starting a new nuclear race.