Everyone's angry at what this 21 year old in the Air National Guard did. And that's certainly reasonable.
But as ever, the real problem is that he was able to do it.
@pieist There's only so much they can do to prevent people with access from misusing sensitive information. I suppose they could tighten up access, and impose further controls. But if someone is determined to misuse the information they have access to, I don't know what can be done.
@slcw @pieist “only so much”? I’m afraid that it’s clear that no one did enough. This alleged leaker was a reservist apparently with access to a load of TS documents. What possible need did he have to view them, let alone be able to copy and transmit them? I’ve spent my working life having to follow certain procedures when handling classified, but only that stuff I needed to see. If any old Joe can access TS perhaps the system is not fit for purpose.
Do you really imagine that all sensitive information goes into a single basket with a single classification, and a Massachusetts Air National Guard member IT person should reasonably have access to all of it? What did any of what was released have to do with the Massachusetts Air National Guard?
@slcw @barks Even hospitals do better than this. I've worked in medical informatics for large swathes of the last two decades. Patient data is very tightly controlled, and personnel can only see what they need to see. That our military and intelligence community can't do better than our cheap, profit-obsessed, cost-cutting private-sector hospitals is behond disgraceful.
@slcw @pieist I agree with the need to avoid speculation, at least with others (always in my head, perhaps). But the question remains: why so easy to access and copy TS information? When I worked for the USAF (a Brit abroad) it was difficult to get hold of information which my country had provided and important for my job (instructing on F16s).
@pieist @slcw just so. “Need to know” was always an important prerequisite for access.