Imagine, older than television!
Imagine, even being about the same age as television!
Imagine, remembering how to dial a telephone!
WTF is wrong with you?
Oh yeah one more:
Imagine, being able to keep a secret!
That last line was a killer!
But really, this was a major security lapse. How in the hell would a Nasty Guard low level geek have access to the stuff he posted?
How in the hell would a Nasty Guard low level geek have access to the stuff he posted?
Reminds me of Snowden. Nobody apparently paid him any attention until his knowledge was on Wikileaks and/or in Russian hands.
The latest conspiracy theory is that his treasure trove came from Wagner Group operatives as a way to spread Russian disinformation through his gamer friends.
Guy is entertaining but he needs to dial it down a notch.
technically wrong, TV is 93 years, Feinstein is 89
Depends on how you define “TV.” Most people had none until the fifties.
Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Forget it, he’s on a roll.
There is something that just seems wrong about this entire story, and those I know who are currently in the IC world think the same. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
On the one hand, it’s very convenient that the alleged leaker is an obscure nobody rather than a more senior figure who might be expected to have access to this kind of information.
On the other hand, if this obscure nobody really did have access to sensitive information that was totally unrelated to his duties then that’s an indictment of the whole classification system and the people who run it. That would be a bizarre thing to choose as a cover story, unless the real truth was somehow even worse than that.
Very cogent analysis, AndrewZ. Having worked in such a highly classified environment myself, and knowing people who work at even higher levels of classification, I am confident that the leakage described is next to impossible (the documents photographed in a SCIF). But as to the controls on classified, they really have degenerated.
Early in my career, documents classified at SECRET or above existed only in hard copy, and they were numbered and the control number assigned to the document holder. That system never pretended to be foolproof against theft of secrets – it was designed to know if a secret had been stolen, and who the last trustee of that secret was.
That system has gone by the wayside, long ago. But there is an attitudinal shift that has taken place as well. I take my clearance seriously, even though I know information that is supposed to be classified is available on the internet. I don’t care if I think something is overclassifed: I protect it according to the rules.
But when I was at DARPA, I was horrified when I heard a senior colleague who was ex-military remark “Well…there’s classified, and then there’s classified…” the implication being that not all classified information needs to be treated equally. I was indignant over that, but not too long afterward, I heard the President of the United States, Barak Obama, utter the exact same sentence during an interview in which he was being quizzed about Hillary Clinton’s unsecured server.
If classification is as fluid as gender is now supposed to be, then it is worthless – except as a weapon to be used against a political opponent who reveals “classified” information.
I know that stuff is overclassified. I was read into something at DARPA so highly classified that only certain congressional staffers could know of its existence. It was a “non-attribution” program. I was allowed to read the final report on previous DARPA work in the SCIF, under the watchful eye of the FSO.
I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why it was classified. Later, I did a Tor browser search on the subject matter, making the search terms as vague as possible. Pretty much the first result I got was a Wikipedia article. It was word for word, verbatim, the exact same report I had read in the SCIF.
So though I realize that things seem to be overclassified, I don’t question classification levels. I’ve been surprised enough times at finding out why something was classified to know never to question it. People’s lives are often at stake – including our own.
I can share one story when I worked as a contractor at a now defunct but once well known computer company as a QA tester for the federal systems group that provided workstations designated at operable to B1/CMW. Qualifying hardware was always an ongoing challenge. The non inkjet color printers presented their own lo-tech clandestine channel issues. As a vendor to the government we had to reject their use out of hand.
It’s simple. This leak was unsanctioned by TPTB, because it embarrasses the wrong people.
I think what happened is that someone whose name might be recognized got sloppy with it on purpose, perhaps having spotted Airman Scapegoat as a weak link who could be expected to transgress.
Or, this chump just happened to stumble across a drop where classified documents were being left for others to pick up. If anything, Airman Chump may have accidentally shut down a large operation by (over)exposing a giant security loophole.
When I worked at Apple in the Jobs-less 1980s/early 90s, it wasn’t unusual to find all sorts of unsecured servers on the internal networks with all sorts of interesting tidbits. (Including someone who realized the potential of the first prototype digital cameras for recording those private moments…) We did a fair amount of server-diving around the network at 02:00 while killing time waiting for a long build to finish.
Agreed. This is the story they are telling us today. The actual truth is not known to me. Nor do I see any evidence that leads me to believe that this isn’t an operation being run on us.
The official story appears to be that the New York Times is openly acting as a counterintelligence service of the Establishment. The more I think about it, the easier it is to believe.
I’m reminded of the last line from the movie Day of the Condor, Cliff Robertson to Robert Redford: “How do you know they’ll (nodding head towards front of the New York Times building) print it?”
“We’ve identified the leader of the Discord group where top secret U.S. documents were leaked — it’s a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, specifically its intelligence wing. Gift link, no paywall”
Imagine, older than television!
Imagine, even being about the same age as television!
Imagine, remembering how to dial a telephone!
WTF is wrong with you?
Oh yeah one more:
Imagine, being able to keep a secret!
That last line was a killer!
But really, this was a major security lapse. How in the hell would a Nasty Guard low level geek have access to the stuff he posted?
How in the hell would a Nasty Guard low level geek have access to the stuff he posted?
Reminds me of Snowden. Nobody apparently paid him any attention until his knowledge was on Wikileaks and/or in Russian hands.
The latest conspiracy theory is that his treasure trove came from Wagner Group operatives as a way to spread Russian disinformation through his gamer friends.
Guy is entertaining but he needs to dial it down a notch.
technically wrong, TV is 93 years, Feinstein is 89
Depends on how you define “TV.” Most people had none until the fifties.
Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?
Forget it, he’s on a roll.
There is something that just seems wrong about this entire story, and those I know who are currently in the IC world think the same. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.
On the one hand, it’s very convenient that the alleged leaker is an obscure nobody rather than a more senior figure who might be expected to have access to this kind of information.
On the other hand, if this obscure nobody really did have access to sensitive information that was totally unrelated to his duties then that’s an indictment of the whole classification system and the people who run it. That would be a bizarre thing to choose as a cover story, unless the real truth was somehow even worse than that.
Very cogent analysis, AndrewZ. Having worked in such a highly classified environment myself, and knowing people who work at even higher levels of classification, I am confident that the leakage described is next to impossible (the documents photographed in a SCIF). But as to the controls on classified, they really have degenerated.
Early in my career, documents classified at SECRET or above existed only in hard copy, and they were numbered and the control number assigned to the document holder. That system never pretended to be foolproof against theft of secrets – it was designed to know if a secret had been stolen, and who the last trustee of that secret was.
That system has gone by the wayside, long ago. But there is an attitudinal shift that has taken place as well. I take my clearance seriously, even though I know information that is supposed to be classified is available on the internet. I don’t care if I think something is overclassifed: I protect it according to the rules.
But when I was at DARPA, I was horrified when I heard a senior colleague who was ex-military remark “Well…there’s classified, and then there’s classified…” the implication being that not all classified information needs to be treated equally. I was indignant over that, but not too long afterward, I heard the President of the United States, Barak Obama, utter the exact same sentence during an interview in which he was being quizzed about Hillary Clinton’s unsecured server.
If classification is as fluid as gender is now supposed to be, then it is worthless – except as a weapon to be used against a political opponent who reveals “classified” information.
I know that stuff is overclassified. I was read into something at DARPA so highly classified that only certain congressional staffers could know of its existence. It was a “non-attribution” program. I was allowed to read the final report on previous DARPA work in the SCIF, under the watchful eye of the FSO.
I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why it was classified. Later, I did a Tor browser search on the subject matter, making the search terms as vague as possible. Pretty much the first result I got was a Wikipedia article. It was word for word, verbatim, the exact same report I had read in the SCIF.
So though I realize that things seem to be overclassified, I don’t question classification levels. I’ve been surprised enough times at finding out why something was classified to know never to question it. People’s lives are often at stake – including our own.
I can share one story when I worked as a contractor at a now defunct but once well known computer company as a QA tester for the federal systems group that provided workstations designated at operable to B1/CMW. Qualifying hardware was always an ongoing challenge. The non inkjet color printers presented their own lo-tech clandestine channel issues. As a vendor to the government we had to reject their use out of hand.
It’s simple. This leak was unsanctioned by TPTB, because it embarrasses the wrong people.
I think what happened is that someone whose name might be recognized got sloppy with it on purpose, perhaps having spotted Airman Scapegoat as a weak link who could be expected to transgress.
Or, this chump just happened to stumble across a drop where classified documents were being left for others to pick up. If anything, Airman Chump may have accidentally shut down a large operation by (over)exposing a giant security loophole.
When I worked at Apple in the Jobs-less 1980s/early 90s, it wasn’t unusual to find all sorts of unsecured servers on the internal networks with all sorts of interesting tidbits. (Including someone who realized the potential of the first prototype digital cameras for recording those private moments…) We did a fair amount of server-diving around the network at 02:00 while killing time waiting for a long build to finish.
Agreed. This is the story they are telling us today. The actual truth is not known to me. Nor do I see any evidence that leads me to believe that this isn’t an operation being run on us.
The official story appears to be that the New York Times is openly acting as a counterintelligence service of the Establishment. The more I think about it, the easier it is to believe.
I’m reminded of the last line from the movie Day of the Condor, Cliff Robertson to Robert Redford: “How do you know they’ll (nodding head towards front of the New York Times building) print it?”
“We’ve identified the leader of the Discord group where top secret U.S. documents were leaked — it’s a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, specifically its intelligence wing. Gift link, no paywall”
https://mobile.twitter.com/trbrtc/status/1646544312170053633
Like how we got the live video of his arrest. Much like the arrest of Roger Stone.