As soon as I read that the person alleged to have leaked classified information on the internet was a young, white, gun-loving religious person who had exchanged racist memes with his friends on a chat group, I felt that the Republican nutters would see him as one of their own and immediately come to his defense. These are, after all, the same people who treated Kyle Rittenhouse as some kind of hero after he traveled to another state with an AR-15 weapon and killed two demonstrators protesting police violence. And sure enough, that is what has happened.
People have expressed surprise that a mere 21-year old member of the National Guard could have access to this kind of information.
The FBI has arrested a 21-year-old air national guardsman in Massachusetts suspected of being responsible for the leak of US classified defence documents that laid bare military secrets and upset Washington’s relations with key allies.
…Airman first class Teixeira was in the 102nd intelligence wing of the Massachusetts air national guard under the duty title of “cyber transport systems journeyman”, responsible for keeping the internet working at airbases. He joined the guard in 2019.
Teixeira is believed to have been the leader of an online chat group where hundreds of photographs of secret and top-secret documents were first uploaded, from late last year to March. The online group called itself Thug Shaker Central, made up of 20 to 30 young men and teenagers brought together by an enthusiasm for guns, military gear and video games. Racist language was a common feature of the group.
My beliefs about cases like this are:
- The US government classifies vasts amount of information, probably far more than is necessary.
- That large volume requires a huge a number of people to have access to it just in order to manage the information, hence increasing the likelihood of leaks.
- Any country that has the capacity to do so, routinely spies on its friends and allies as well as its enemies, so the ’embarrassment’ that is alleged to have been caused by this particular disclosure is just for the benefit of the public.
Other leakers like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden did so because they felt that the government was doing something wrong and concealing it from the public and felt that it was their duty to reveal that information. One might disagree with their acts and motivations but it was clear that those leaks were not self-interested acts.
By contrast, this person seemed to do it to brag and impress the others in his chat and gamer group. That boggles the mind given the serious punishments that he risked and provides further evidence to support my belief, largely based on my own life and that of my friends at that age, that young men lack good judgment and are prone to do stupid things. While the government conducts investigations into people before giving them security clearances, it appears that they may not have good measures to gauge stupidity or maturity or judgment.
There’s also the question of whether the US is able to keep secrets. It seems like that would also be of interest to allies.
I must confess, that actually surprised me.
I assumed they would blame it on Joe Biden--his “disastrous” policies, which they never spell out in any way, or explain how they resulted in the problem--causing dangerous security lapses. Sort of like how record numbers of people and drugs intercepted at the border are a result of “open border policies.” I never dreamed they would suddenly be in favor of leaking military secrets.
Then again, I never thought they would come out in favor of Russian intervention in American elections, either. This is definitely not the Republican party I grew up (mostly) despising--it’s orders of magnitude worse.
billseymour@#1:
It seems like that would also be of interest to allies.
A lot of them have a pretty good idea how bad our secrecy is, because they spy on us, too. (e.g.: Israel)
feralboy12:
I assumed they would blame it on Joe Biden--his “disastrous” policies, which they never spell out in any way, or explain how they resulted in the problem--causing dangerous security lapses
The great thing about that game is that you can pick pretty much any time/administration and point to a security failure. Klaus Fuchs was the fault of those damn democrats! Aldrich Ames was the fault of those damn republicans! Etc.
Some reality is that there are 1.3 million americans with top secret (TS) security clearances. They are all trusted and expected to behave with classified materials. Even an idiot wouldn’t expect that, but that’s what the US intelligence community does.
The idea was that there would be a more detailed “need to know” clearance model atop the TS (SCI -- secure compartmented information) paradigm but the intelligence community was faced with a disaster on 9/11, which conclusively demonstrated that “need to know” results in information hoarding. Think about it and it makes sense: one way to deal with the complexities of “need to know” is to never tell anyone anything. But then you get all those nasty “well, you had people who knew 9/11 was coming and said nothing!” So there was a big sea change post 9/11 under emperor Bush, in which “need to know” was to be overturned in favor of “need to share.” I was consulting to the NSA at the time, along with some other very senior industry figures and we were all waving the little party-sized red flags they gave us, as energetically as we could. The situation, however, seemed manageable, especially since the CTO of the NSA, who was at the meeting, and the CTO of the CIA, both said “no way are we sharing our stuff with those guys!” pointing at eachother. So, it all looked like the big change was going to be that there was going to be no big change. But, then, some other members of the intelligence community, that did not have cultures of secrecy (state department, justice, etc) went “well OK then we won’t give a shit anymore” and built big data farms, put all their stuff in it, and made it available to anyone with a TS clearance. It was one of those data farms that Chelsea Manning browsed around in, and Edward Snowden went through some of NSA’s internal data farms. That’s how you had fairly low-level analysts with access to basically everything regardless of “need to know.” Fast forward a few years to a dinner conversation between me and IN-Q-TEL’s top strategist, and I asked him if anyone had plans for how to un-screw the screw-up. His analogy was great (from memory) “Imagine that you have a giant kettle and everyone who has any soup pours their soup into the kettle. Then, you stir the kettle and it comes out kind of like ‘chili noodle soup’ of some sort. But you realize that’s not what you want and some wiseass like Marcus Ranum comes along and suggests un-stirring the soup and correctly re-dividing the contents back into the original smaller kettles. It’s not possible.” Ummmm, good point. 9/11 was a huge victory for Bin Laden because it caused the US to punch itself in the face, repeatedly, militarily. But it also caused the US intelligence community to punch itself in the face in terms of information management. It also caused the intelligence community to massively increase the population of people with clearances.
The odds are good that US information security is sitting on the bottom of the ocean, with shot-holes below the waterline (which is above the masthead) -- it won’t get better, again, ever. What is most likely to happen is that secrecy is going to be replaced with informal conspiracies that decide who to share what with, and otherwise deny that they are collecting information at all. Let’s call it “ad hoc need to know” or better, “if you know, you know.” That will work until there’s another massive disaster of some sort that happens because someone didn’t share what they were supposed to, and the cycle will repeat. But “need to know” is formally dead.
Can anyone explain to me how an militia private on secondment (I don’t understand US military designations but he sounds like a militia private to me) seems to have managed to get access to what is reportedly, Top Secret, Military, CIA, and FBI reports, print off the reports, and smuggle them out of the building “After Manning, Snowdon, and Winter’?
This is up there with the “Six guys in a Boat” scenario.
Wanna buy a bridge, hardly used?
I’m not terribly interested in the leaker behind this, as usual; the most I’ll say about him is I don’t think he should have been arrested or otherwise punished for what the Biden admin claims isn’t a big deal. I’m not at all interested in the corporate media angle which seems to overwhelmingly be about what our military-intelligence blob can do to stop more info from ever reaching the public.
I’m interested in what’s in those leaks. Any criminal activity America gets up to abroad is something the American public should know about. The actual criminals will go unpunished as usual, because they are shielded by an imperial presidency and the president can do whatever he wants.
jrkrideau@#5:
Can anyone explain to me how an militia private on secondment (I don’t understand US military designations but he sounds like a militia private to me) seems to have managed to get access to what is reportedly, Top Secret, Military, CIA, and FBI reports, print off the reports, and smuggle them out of the building “After Manning, Snowdon, and Winter’?
System administrator.
Hm. I’m surprised how a 21-yo would be given that much responsibility and that much discretion in the first place.