Ve Find Ze Secrets On Ze Internets, Boris

[dimensionm]

Boris and Natasha would be surprised to learn that "classified" just doesn't mean the same as it used to in the Internet age. For instance, the United States maintains a clandestine base in Djibouti (on the Horn of Africa) for drones, special forces personnel, and other military assets. The base is used for surveillance, as well as strikes

Comments

[sun_tzu]

There's nothing clandestine about it, US military public affairs folks have been writing about it and publishing pictures of it for years.

[dimensionm]

That's very true. However, the headline in the article I linked in Wired magazine reads:

"U.S. Expands Secretive Drone Base for African Shadow War"

Writers seem to forget that words actually mean things. A base is not all that "secretive" if it's on Google maps, so Wired's headline is either misleading or a result of poor research by the writer. And as you pointed out, it's not only not secretive, it's not exactly new either. My post was meant more as a commentary on Wired's needless melodrama than on the base itself. People who are less informed could easily read that headline and article and draw an entirely different conclusion than they would if the article actually provided the proper context. And the media does this kind of subtle manipulation all the time.