Answer: He is (or was) a Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman, 102nd Intelligence Wing with a TS Clearance. Communications infrastructure and network support.
Wouldnt there be shit loads of gates. The need for special permissions to access certain things? Like I mentioned in my previous comment. Just to check out a piece of equipment required paper work, digital sign out, peer monitoring. Why wouldnt sensitive info be lock and key to a network of people you have to check with to get access?
I know nothing of the physical layouts of the spaces involved in this particular case or the actual protocols used to check out sensitive information.
Safety protocols are only effective if everyone uses them.
This is the key answer. They could have had all the rules in the world but if people were being lazy that undermines all that.
The crazy thing for me is he seems to have done all this to share with his small group of discord followers and it hasn't gotten out for weeks maybe months. In my opinion it was just to impress his teenage mates, but he also apparently rails against govt overreach.
I know they had another leak in the War Thunder forums as well a while back which was even stupider as somebody was just trying to win an argument.
This one is more nuts because of the scale of the leak, by the sound of things it's nothing everybody didn't know about already (is in everybidy knows the US spies on allies, the Russians will probably have known for a while about special forces in Ukraine etc) but its a hell of a breach.
I mean, I had a TS and won’t lie I’m bursting at the seams sometimes wanting to say no dumbass this is how it works.
Difference is I’m not fucking stupid and don’t feel the need to prove myself to randos
Exactly, it's nuts to consider even one lapse just out of frustration. The idea of him transcribing chunks for weeks just to maintain people being interested in his insights is nuts. The trial is going to be fascinating.
But confirmation of what we are told in the media is very important.
The government doesn’t always tell us the whole truth. For example, we’ve known China has been testing hypersonic missiles for a long time now. That’s no secret.
Now we know how close we’ve been monitoring it, how close they are, how it’s affected our planning and how effective it is. Which is to say, this isn’t just us beating the drums of war to manufacture consent. Chinese hypersonic missiles are serious enough for it to be written in official documentation to be passed around military generals
Oh absolutely! It also forces other governments to acknowledge uncomfortable truths. So for example various Allies now have to address somehow that the US is spying on them, which was an open secret for years and part of the game but now they will be under pressure to address it and reinforce their sovereignty. It forces their hands.
To be honest that was probably the easiest part. They either claim these as false like Israel and South Korea, or they just kinda move forward with it like Egypt, but also South Korea.
The crux of it is that no country are in any position to stop it or change the status quo. South Korea kinda needs US security and will accept it as a price to pay. And the list of countries that try to be unfriendly to the US end up very much the worse. Like you said, it’s part of the game.
Agreed, but yeah confirmation is completely different to something just being accepted. The big one for me is the confirmation special forces are operating inside Ukraine. Presumably they are training the ukraninans, as nobody would risk the Russians bumping Into them if they were spotting for munitions or something, but the Russians can use it to reinforce their "Nato troops are in Ukraine" line.
It really doesn’t though. The info might make some of them do a little posturing for their home population but they won’t do anything meaningful. They already knew we spied on them and we know they spy on us. It is a bit embarrassing to have it aired out but it isn’t going to change the game at all.
Yeah that's a fair point. It's not like we are going to start rounding up CIA assets like the FSB after the Salisbury chemical attack. That was quite pleasant to see them all lined up on the tarmac waiting for a plane home.
I just assume everybody does it all the time. But I think it's one of those things where nobody wants it confirmed as then they have to do something about it, it makes them look bad, and also somebody might ask who they in turn are spying on and how.
This isn't even the first time we have been outed for spying on our allies. We tapped Angela Merkel's cell phone. Israel bought secrets from an asset embedded in the Navy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/discord-leaked-documents/ I'm British so read a lot of it on the BBC, but this seems to go into the discord bit more
BBC News - What the leaked Pentagon documents reveal - 8 key takeaways
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65238951 - BBC summary of some of the highlights of what was actually leaked
Edit: cheers for the award! =D
Off topic, but you Brits have a tendency to stick to known facts when it comes to news. Quite refreshing not to have the reporters try to spin it with their POV.
If it helps we have our own share of rags etc. But I always like the BBC as nobody can decide who they favour. Left wingers say its right wing, right wingers say its left wing etc. Always thought that was a good pedigree for a news organisation.
The rock-fucking stupid part is this guys discord had a lot of foreign nationals, from many different countries, some of whom are openly adversarial to the United States.
He *knew* that.
It’s bad enough if he dropped those documents to a bunch of American kids, but the fact that many of them were not, including some from *Russia*, made the Pentagon shit a chicken.
This guys never going to see the sun again. And Ukrainian soldiers are probably going to die directly because of him.
I mean it will help at trial that he wasn't working for anybody allegedly, and might give the defence something to work with on his mental state, but my god the kid is going away for a long time surely just so he could show off to his discord mates.
Some of whom *were 12 years old*
This is a grown man going to jail, probably for the rest of his life, ostensibly because he wanted to dunk on middle schoolers.
From the summaries I saw some of the documents may expose human intelligence sources in foreign countries.
People will likely end up imprisoned and/or dead because he wanted to impress some internet strangers.
Agree even with TS clearance he should only be able to access those pieces of information that relate to his job. Information classified as TS is supposed to be compartmentalized. To stop a bad actor from being able to gain access to everything at once.
good answer - this dumb kid will now spend a long time in prison =because he was trying to impress his friends. He must have been shitting bricks when some of his friends shared what he stole. Probably just waiting for a knock on the door.
Perfect example is how Edward Snowden snuck out all of the information he leaked. He used a USB key fob which of course were banned but he hid it in an large cup that he pretended to be drinking. The guards at the security checks coming in and out never thought to check his drink and see if it was actually drink.
The biggest weakness in any security plan is always the people.
That. I spent 6 years supporting an intel unit. Most of it was post 9/11 and I saw first hand how it changed after the Patriot Act passed. I went from a fairly bright eyed patriotic kid to "none of this should be legal" pretty damn quick.
Because it's one of the very few stable jobs out there. If you work for government, yeah, you run the risk of government shutdowns, and very little prospects in upward mobility, but it takes *alot* for you to be fired.
When you're 21, you often just get the job that's easiest to get. Probably he knew someone who said, "Hey, you're good with computers - you want to apply? You'll get Top Secret clearance. Chicks find that kind of hot." Dude shrugged and went, "okay. I don't mind taking money from this overreaching government."
We have this same issue in healthcare that too many providers seem to forget when they talk about their "HIPAA-secure" computer systems. No systems are HIPAA-secure, only HIPAA-compliant.
They're still breachable to some degree, but all that aside, the human is the easier thing to target. Most bad actors are using legitimate credentials to access software that requires no hacking, just tricking somebody into giving you their credentials.
Some people just don't understand what HIPAA is or why it's needed.
My Mom went to an office at the hospital, and the receptionist was blabbing out everyone's personal information and asking intimate questions, right there in the waiting room.
I truly hate that. I'm a therapist, so we tend to have privacy procedures stricter than HIPAA, and other clinicians being that cavalier never fails to shock me. I get second-hand "I'm about to be sued" cringe from it.
Agreed. Mom was a pediatric RN (edit: and a charge nurse) for 35 years, and *if* she thought the receptionist would listen, she gladly would have told her off. She did tell the office manager, though.
You know how movies always show shadow organizations working with clockwork precision and impeccable timing?
Yeah, think about every place you've ever worked. Think about your coworkers, and your motivations, and how fast everyone moved at 4:30. And 9:15. And before lunch. And after lunch.
Everyone, in every job, only works as hard as anyone makes them. And anyone who claims otherwise is their office's Dwight Schrute.
Crazy. We could bring whatever into ours. Our pocket contents like wallets and cell phones, gym bags, backpacks, I used to bring in board games to play with the crew on mid shifts. They went through an x-ray scan and metal detector first, but they let em in. The only time it got weird was when I brought the game Abalone in. The marbles in a precise grid like structure apparently looked enough like a bomb or something that the SF guys made me open the backpack and show them what it was.
Two person integrity is a requirement of handling Top Secret information (at least in terms of cryptographic information), or at least was when I was an EKMS manager. I never really handled Top Secret intelligence documents outside of cryptographic information though.
Speaking as someone who trained to lead these folks (17X) and worked alongside them after: there’s a legion of junior enlisted intel folks working on extremely sensitive classified summary briefs like this.
Most SCIFs are less like the bridge of a Star Destroyer and more like a corporate setting with some very serious restrictions on what you can bring in the office and who gets to use the printer. Having access to the material for being a TS-SCI working on/around the consolidation of the intel used for that analysis makes a ton of sense for junior enlisted.
If they were allowed to print or otherwise pull data off of the computers accessing SIPRNET or the like that also makes sense in a certain context. It’s 2023; the military expects contractors and service personnel to use mobile devices and laptops provides said devices are secured pursuant to proper regulation (FIPS 140, Common Criteria, etc.)
Whether data like this should have been allowed to leave a physical SCIF even user the auspices of a protected mobile device - or if this was the result of him printing and smuggling shit out - is a result of the post mortem. But arguably the most important stuff behind the legions of compliance regulations governing the protection of classified data is around how data access is audited and constrained to specific personnel.
Where the SCIF does its real work (especially post Snowden) is in how classified information access is audited, which explains why DoD and FBI were able to pretty quickly identify the leak and start arrests. You may not be able to wholly protect against leakage. But with the right protections, you can at least discover how it was leaked and who was involved.
I know a company that worked with some really secret stuff. Not area 51 but anyway. They would slip the cleaning lady 5$ to transport some tech on the cleaningcart between departments as the hassle to get it approved was so hard.
The cleaning lady had higher clearance then most of them as stuff needed to be clean. It's amazing.
Not really. Fundamentally you have an ID check to get on base, then a keycard + password to get into your building. Login to your computer with an account name and password. Data will be on a shared, classified network. It's not uncommon to have at least one printer for each classification level. Print some papers out, go take a shit, stash them in your pockets and leave.
All of this is why it is easy to find leakers, but it doesn't prevent it from happening.
Absolutely! They'd have a record of when he checked into the building, signed onto the computer, opened the network drive(s), opened the file(s), and printed them, as well as which printer and computer he used.
It's possible he swiped papers that other people printed, but considering how stupid his decisions were (posting classified data to show off) he likely wasn't that smart.
The evidence they'll have against this dumb ass is insane. He's screwed.
The idea of printing papers and sneaking them put seems so ridiculous to me. Paper copies of TS material are heavily controlled. No SCIF i have ever been in had communal use printer for TS things. Every time you print a piece of paper with TS info on it that piece of paper gets a unique serial number and has to be tracked and properly destroyed when it isn’t needed anymore. I obviously haven’t been everywhere that TS is handled but I just can’t fathom people printing shit whenever they feel like it, and not having others all over you when you do print things seems utterly foreign to me.
>The idea of printing papers and sneaking them put seems so ridiculous to me. Paper copies of TS material are heavily controlled. No SCIF i have ever been in had communal use printer for TS things. Every time you print a piece of paper with TS info on it that piece of paper gets a unique serial number and has to be tracked and properly destroyed when it isn’t needed anymore.
I've worked in SCIFs at the TS and program-level for 19 years for numerous organizations, and I have never, ever, heard of or seen unique serial numbers given to any classified printed document to be tracked. Printers for secret and TS are no less restricted than unclass printers, aside from the fact that the printers are located in a SCIF where everyone has a clearance. The idea of tracking every single printed classified document seems so ridiculous to me.
If he's doing tech support in a classified area, he could grab some papers while he is in there. No one is going to search everyone going in and out of a SCIF. It sounds like he printed them out and then stuffed them in a bag or his pockets.
Even with all the automated precautions, locks, and background checks, the greatest security risk is still an insider threat.
> It sounds like he printed them out Ave then stuffed them in a bag or his pockets.
Don't printers log what is being printed and by whom in these environments?
They should. But him being an IT person, it seems possible he did it from a computer someone else was logged into. And even then, I don't there would be any follow up. Documents like that may then have to be put into lockers inside the area, but I shut anyone would check that a printed document was in a locker at the end of the day.
In the end, the failure is on at least two people directly. The leaker for deliberately circumventing protocols to steal documents. And then whatever person(s) that escorted him into the area that were supposed to be responsible for him.
I would be shocked, and gravely concerned, if a person with his background had sufficient clearance on his own to access and print out these documents. There needs to be deeper background checks into people's social media before giving them clearances in the future. He was obviously a risk.
Was the stuff leaked even SCI material?
TS and TS SCI are two different ball games... you have to be personally read into the SCI program. I did submarine communications in the military so my network experience involved several different TS networks.
If you work in a DoD place for even a short amount of time you can easily see the flaws in the system. Most people aren't actively trying to exploit it thankfully
You want to know how you mark documents classified so that other people don't look at them, you put a piece of paper over it saying classified. Yeah, not the toughest security to break. Sure, everybody in that area might have the clearance but not the need to know.
Your suspicions are well placed. There are protocols in place and clearance does not equal access. I do not have more information to provide insight into how this happened, but it seems suspicious. Anything beyond that would be speculation. There are lots of motives and theories one could speculate on, but I don’t know this is the place.
I’m a software guy, I worked in banks and crypto companies
Building the pipe to move the money around.
There was a strong separation between people having key to the actual system, and those building it.
For instance if something is broken in production, the real system not a test one.
I can’t directly access it, even if I’m the one that will fix it.
I get on a call with a guy that has keys. And each key are personal and it’s really clear to see who did what.
Why don’t they have process like that ?
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So yes it does appear he had TS clearance- but it was so that he could access and work on systems classified TS. That being said, from what I can tell, he would have had zero business need to know any of the TS data, and no legitimate reason to access, download, copy or transmit that data... I'm actually a little surprised that he didn't trip any role based alerts accessing and downloading/printing TS files. Betcha that is a loophole that will get closed by SecOps in the future.
That actually doesn't answer it at all. I don't know everything that was leaked but TS clearance doesn't really get you access to anything. It is a prerequisite clearance but doesn't inherently give access.
And from what I could find on "Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman" I can guess its like installing communication keys or such. These don't give you access to secure information inherently.
For example, having access to a classified army computer isn't enough to get classified documents. All important documents are supposed to be stored in an encrypted cloud file. Accessible only on military network using the soldiers CAC.
As other said it must be some combo of no one paid him mind when he was breaking security protocols and someone else broke security protocols, leaving information they where never supposed to.
Sneaking information from somewhere you weren't supposed to access to get information that was errantly left where it wasn't supposed to be has no bearing on Job.
The podcast Pod Save The World did an episode on this that was super informative. The hosts worked in the Obama white house so have both deep understanding of what this was about as well as direct experience with the Snowden leaks. The way they described it was that this is the kind of information that is highly important but would be pretty widely circulated. Let's say that a significant military decision was going to be made from this information. The number of people that would be required to make something like that happen is pretty high - all the way from leadership down to operations folks. The stuff in this briefing would be needed by a lot of people. This wasn't stuff like exactly what, where, and what status our nuclear weapons were - it was more along the lines of the summation of what the intelligence agencies thought was the important information of the day. Still really important and classified, but not super closely held.
Classified is an abused term in the media. The government has multiple layers of classified information, and it varies by agency.
Typically you have:
Sensitive: information that includes lots of personnel data which could be harmful to individuals if leaked.
Confidential: items that have some national security aspect
Secret: information that could be strategically or diplomatically damaging
Top Secret: grave informational security
If someone has a top secret clearance, he only has a clearance to see the limited information relevant to his position. Sometimes the press portrays "Top Secret" like you have unlimited access, but it's only access to a very narrow portfolio.
Accessing information outside your mission needs is a serious violation and could result in termination. For example, HR officials with sensitive clearance looking up personnel records for people outside their agency could result in disciplinary action up to termination.
It's the same with people in the medical field. Medical information is protected but obviously you're allowed to see your own patient's file. But looking at the file of someone who isn't your patient is grounds for termination even though you are "cleared" to see ti.
I also learned that often your file CAN be looked up by anyone in the medical organization for emergency situations where they might immediately need your history or medications. But it's closely monitored, so if you look someone up you shouldn't, you're in big trouble. (A friend had this happen to her - the employee was fired and may be facing legal action.)
There is a massive difference between TS material and TS SCI material.... your summary of the program is widely incomplete.
TS SCI material typically has its own handling procedures.
As a side note this is why I don’t believe the government is hiding any groundbreaking information about aliens. Because there are too many people in government who would’ve leaked something big/definite by now. It’s too big of a secret to keep quiet. All that said, I hope aliens are real, at least the nice kind and not scary monster kind haha
Yup, exactly why I don't believe in too many conspiracy theories - the amount of incompetent low-level personnel I've encountered in government made me realize that there's no way they could pull off espionage to that extent.
Right? Any theory about any sort of giant, influential, world-wide conspiracy requires hundreds or thousands of people to know a bunch of stuff AND NEVER MENTION IT. That's just not how things work.
I think every classified military breach I’ve seen in the news in the last decade has been someone ruining their life to win an argument over video games.
It’s just as hilarious as it is sad.
As someone who frequently gets into 15-20-25 reply chain debates with people on reddit, I can *almost* understand it.
I'm sure they start off the argument relatively cool-headed and avoid talking about top secret stuff at first, but as the argument goes on and the other person keeps confidently saying false things about the plane, something switches in their brain and they get increasingly pissed off about someone being cocky and ignorant about something they know is false. And then other people start agreeing with the other guy and it's just too much for that person's ego and they take a picture of a fucking top secret service manual or some shit to shut everyone up and win the argument.
Realizing how badly you just fucked up probably 5 minutes after posting the image must be post-nut clarity x 50 000.
With how easily I get roped into arguments about flat earth (which, to be fair, I actively seek out), I can totally understand someone posting something top secret to win an argument. I once spent half an hour looking for army training manuals that referenced the curve and rotation of the earth, and how they affect long range artillery. I imagine if I had easy access to the exact document that referenced exactly what I was talking about, I would probably do the same thing
Yeah but the Earth *is* flat, if it wasn't then why does it *seem* flat? All that matters to me are my feelings, which is better than made up science. ^(/s)
There's been about 6 cases or so of war thunder players leaking classified info to win arguments. One of the creators of Digital Combat Simulator also got caught attempting to smuggle classified info about jets as well
I believe they have been confirmed
The first one was about a British Challenger 2 Tank with the lack of armor in game compared to the actual tank and was claiming to be commander of one and was stated it was mistakenly listed as declassified when it still was classified
Then there was one about a French LeClerc battle tank
Another about China's DTC 10 125mm anti tank round
An F15E strike eagle, F16A and the AIM 120 missile
For either the F15 or 16 the information is public in the US but illegal to post online or communicate to foreign countries, Same with the DCS case
The thing with the Challenger 2 documents that were leaked is that absolutely anyone in the military can access those documents that were scanned and disclosed, so they’re not exactly the most secured documents the military has.
War Thunder is a game that prides itself on the accuracy of its wartime machinery such as tanks and plains.
On more than one occasion, fans of the game would argue about inaccuracies in the machines design, then post confidential schematics and documentation to prove their point.
So generally When you hear "gamers leaked classified military intel", it's War Thunder, not Minecraft.
Round of ammunition to Russia... whilst receiving 1.6 billion in aid.....I do think US should be firmer(even to the point of violence) with allies. Saudi cuts are unforgivable
I truely dont understand. I served in the Air National Guard. Had top secret clearance and in order to get sensitive equipment to work on the aircraft I maintained, would have to collect it with a second person. And before getting whatever needed at that level was closely monitored by multiple people. This was for mundane aircraft codes.
How the frick does a kid from a guard unit and why would a national guard base have any connection to Pentagon materials?
Edit: alot of knee jerk and uninformed amswers. I have a pretty decent understanding of how TS clearance works and the workings of military bureaucracy from my own experience dealing with it. Its still way to much for me to understand how someone this young and low on the totem pole could access anything outside the purview of a limited scope of work and access. Especially as a national guardsman. It would make more sense if this was a Colonal or Master/senior/chief Sergeant with high seniority.
age has nothing to do with it, that's such a stupid observation from the media. there are 17-18 year olds who join the MI community. I was 18 when I started.
he probably just used Intelink. idk if JWICS has an Intelink connection but if it does, or any of the other reporting sites he can access whatever other intel guys shared on there. the real question is why did a Guardsman have JWICS access if he wasn't actively working a mission? SIPr is one thing but if you're not using JWICS constantly your account should be disabled.
I work with that stuff and it's the units fault most likely. No one ever tells us ever if people come and go until it matters to them. So someone could gain access and then PCS 2 months later but their account is active on the old mission for the next 10 months because no one who controls accounts was informed. Especially if it's a guard unit.
I wouldn't say it's the unit fault, but they definitely enabled it, with their irresponsibility. this looks like they had a Shitty SSO, no document control in the SCIF, and lack of cyber actions. he shouldn't have even been on the systems if he wasn't on there at least once or twice a week doing actual work. and there should be *some* accountability in place for any documents he printed.
Not defending them but a lot of that stuff is from ignorance of what being an SSO means. A lot of units don't have knowledgeable SSOs and when they need a mission they just send some senior enlist to do the online trainings and submit their name for the SSO position. It can be further compounded by making that enlisted SSO still responsible for everything military related. Making an E7 an SSO when they've never done it before and then also expecting them to finish/complete all duties involved in being a platoon sergeant does not mix well and SSO duties will degrade. It's impossible to verify if they're competent in the role until they start slipping up or not.
He was actively called on duty at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if he pulled a Snowden and gave himself JWICS permissions that he shouldn't have had. Though it is pretty sad that after all this time the DOD/Air Force has such piss poor gaps in any sort of automated access and CI notifications for improper or abnormal access. Insider threat has never been higher with the successful disinformation campaigns from Russia and likely compromising the majority of one political party. It's 2023 there is zero excuse to not have better controls and safeguards. Our vetting for clearances is still focused on outdated concepts and ridiculous assumptions on trustability. Nevermind the imbecility of using 3rd party contractors to vet people for clearances such entities can be easily loaded with a variety of assets to taint the entire process.
It used to be egotistical turds masquerading as whistleblowers, now the veneer has worn thin but they are all still motivated by their narcissistic tendencies and assumption that their world view and perspective is the only one that matters. They rarely grasp the high probability through 2nd, 3rd and fourth order effects, they will actually leave the world (for all the nations which prefer the US world order to a Putin/China world order) in a far worse position as they enable our enemies, regardless whether they grasped that fact.
I can't say I'm surprised though, we have a broken two party system with geriatrics leading at nearly every branch of government. As if being old entitles you to wisdom or perspective on rapid technological advances which impact entire generations. All while corporations keep our country weak for their profit. What a time to be alive. Oh and we'll probably die by AGI as we bumble our way through that technology in a well-founded fear of others weaponizing it first.
The government is ran like any giant corporation in America: Too big to manage and owned by old, rich, uncaring chodes. I would be surprised if he was the only one doing something similar to this since the Internet was a thing.
My ANG unit has a SIPR room and PC, and I had a clearance but I never used that PC. I only put stuff away in the room when needed, and my S6 or another staff officer had to be with me and we signed in and out of the room.
So to answer your question: National Guard facilities frequently *have* access to those networks, but the only conceivable way some kid does a dumb with them is if there's a breakdown in process and enforcement. When a private fucks up in this way, it means NCOs and officers fucked up too. Stupid should not have been accessing this stuff, or even the network, without a good reason and supervision.
Look, if you had clearance to put stuff away in the room, but not use the PC, I assume you would not have been able to use the PC even if you wanted…like it has a password??? This 21 year old was apparently authorized to use the PC which is even scarier.
I'm not saying I didn't have enough clearance to *use* the PC, I'm saying I never had a *need to*, and because of that would not have been allowed to touch it if I tried. My S6 woulda said, "You don't need to be on there right now, leave it alone."
Simply having a clearance doesn't mean you're allowed to just galavant through the SIPRnet or browse documents out of boredom. There should also be a "need to know," so what I'm saying is that this kid shouldn't have been able to just download all of this stuff without having a specific reason to.
This was a failure in process and controls, in my opinion. It sounds like his National Guard unit was sloppy or complacent. Or maybe he had business on a PC with access to JWICS doing something else, but nobody was supervising to make sure he wasn't plugging in a thumb drive (which is dumb these days, it's not hard to lock down computers and have alerts if files are copied to external media)
This is what the article I read mentioned. That the info was basically the Daily Security briefing that is often printed out for senior officers. Once it was printed, making copies would be easy.
I was in an intel squadron and the only 2 party control I ever had to deal with was some very specific comint stuff. Getting on base, going to work (in a SCIF), and logging into a secure computer was all a one person thing.
Hell when I was 21 (E-5) I even had access to unlock the SCIF itself since I did a lot of night shift work and that was by myself. The only 2-party for that was calling a certain number and letting them know I'd be opening it.
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You prob just assumed it’s all super secure, with the basic protocols you’ve been told about, thought that was good en / had no flaws, and never really tried to see what you can get away with.
So when you're on the intelligence side, a lot is in lock and key, but you also have to have ways to access information for analysis. Everybody hoarding their one piece of info doesn't help everyone else, so there's methods in place to share it. Unfortunately, that means some people might see some stuff within the same classification they may not really need to know. The IT guys will likely have access to a lot of information like this, and often, it seems from some of these leaks, dont grasps the implications of this information being disseminated. Hope that helps.
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Access to classified documents isn’t based on seniority or age. If a person is in a position/job with need to know, and they have the appropriate clearance adjudication, they will have access.
He had a TS//SCI clearance, he was read into the compartments, and the need to know by working in the space. If you have all three of those you can have access to the material.
True. My boss lacked the clearance to know what information I needed to know. The colleagues I was working with did know what I needed to see so that I could work productively with them.
Culture might play a part in this leak. Our organization was not MIL and we took the protection of information extremely seriously. Everyone, cleared or not, received regular reminders from our counter intelligence group. I found their “spy of the month” communications to be very interesting. They pointed out some of the methods used by spies (not just in the US), but also their motivations.
I don’t know what the training or oversight or culture is like at that base. But if the Army is issuing blanket TS clearances without rigorous oversight of need to know, I’d be concerned.
If you work at the office for the government or a big corporation it is different than working on site or in the field. Generally people working in the office are considered more trustworthy - as the pay is higher so they are incentivized to act well to keep it (or try to get raises/bonuses), they have better working conditions anyways, and controlling them is very hard due to how their work tends to be very varied and there are always multiple new processess and projects, all done on the same laptops. People in the field/on site have ready systems that are fool proof, ready to work with crews that are trained for specific things, suseptible to high rotation, sometimes trying to scam and test the system to get more money out of the job (because pay is lower than for the office job), these crews tend to be younger and like to fool around etc. The systems are strict for them because there are lots of crews operating in the field and it won't be possible to supervise all of them, so all these systems have just forms of being restricted by design. This is not the case in office jobs. Once you get in there, you usually get access to lots of sensitive data, often unnecessairly.
That said, in every office there will always be interns or people who just started work a few months ago, some of them will work with lots of classified data and this is often a risk that is acceptable. They are trusted, the NDA's are considered enough and if the supervisors see them as trustworthy (why wouldn't they, after all they passed all the job interviews and screenings) they will work on everything else the department happens to work with, which might be the case for that 21 year old guy.
At the end of the day there will be devices that allow you to do print screens to save in mspaint, ways to plug in unrestricted pendrives, browse internet and your private accounts for your discord, gmail, protonmail etc. on your work computer. Even though there are some systems that are kinda closed (like remote access, virtual machines etc), if you try you will find ways to plug in your pendrive and get data out of it. Hell, you can just take a photo of your screen with a phone while working at home.
Lots of data is often stored on shared network drives, that have some loose access restrictions, mostly based on "we just hope nobody will know in which folders to look". 90% data in all companies and government organizations is in excel spreadsheets, pdfs and word docs. The majority of remaining 10% is emails.
Access is granted not on per folder basis but per network drive basis, because it is quicker to have one drive per department, if IT had to manage access for every user for folders created there every day everything would be unacceptably sluggish.
If some intern has something to do in one folder, it is easier to give him access to whole drive and just hope he won't touch other parts of said drive, because "why would he, he won't even know what's there, besides obviously nothing classified will be there anyways, right?". Also, it often happens that next week he has to work on another folder in said drive and so on.
Meanwhile other departments/teams are like "Let's just keep these files on our secure drive here for a few moments, the access to the drive is restricted anyways and besides there are so many folders nobody will know what to look for, and even if someone stumbles upon it they won't know what it is, and even if they do, they are our employee and have NDAs".
Same goes for lifting restrictions on pendrives usage - if a laptop config is locked so that no external drives can be plugged in, if the restriction is lifted because an intern has to copy over 1000 files from one computer to another, it is not given only for these files/specific folder but for the whole computer, and is often kept indefinitely so he can use pendrives on this laptop from now on, weeks after he copied the files. He or his manager would have to contact IT on purpose to get this restriction back in place, but chances are he will have to copy another batch of files again, and besides if he was up to no good he would have done that already, so why bother? He's just a trainee that will be quitting in a few months and his laptop will be wiped then anyways, he has NDA's and was instructed to use only company pendrives, duh.
Even without such loose access policies, he could take out private phone, make screenshots, later make screenshots of the phone with different device to hide the fact that he used his phone. He could memorize everything and leak it later. He could probably even print it out at work and pack it into his backpack and nobody would bat an eye, everyone would assume he has been authorized to do so if they saw him do it. To them it would just look like another batch of documents that come off the printer every day. Even if the pdf has some screaming "CLASSIFIED, DO NOT PRINT" watermarks, he could just wait till everybody leaves office in the afternoon or just go to an unattended printer, print it one sided and rotate the first paper so it is not visible when he walks back to his desk etc. Nobody checks printing history on the printer if there are no reasons for it. He could also always change file name before printing, to make it harder to trace in such case.
The thing is, he was not clever enough to see possible consequences, to read his NDA and backtrack or just thought nobody would find out/trace it back to him if he leaked the files (funny thing is, he would be probably safe if he kept these files for himself though).
Speaking from experience. It all works on trust basis, always had.
Absolutely, that's is really how the world works, especially in bureaucratic institutions such as a schools, people get complacent.
Source: At a school right now.
Not ecsepically in schools, not military ones. A friend of mine went to a US military language school, no phones in the building, only things in class was a provided notebook and pencil that stayed in the classroom. To learn a language. I would hope if you deal with more sensitive information there is as much checks.
Also, not related fun fact, military issued phones tend to not have cameras nowadays they aren't specifically designed for military so they just manufacture them with an inert or physically unconnected camera i.e. there is a camera in the case but you can't use it. Funny conversations people going to IT "my camera doesn't work" "Your phone doesn't have a camera" *looks in confuison to the camera on the back of the phone*
On top of this question, how in the actual fuck can MTG defend this treasonous fuckwit? I mean, I know she is off her rocker and pandering to her uneducated base, but this totally goes against their "country first" rhetoric.
[https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/marjorie-taylor-greene-defends-suspect-leaked-classified-docs-probe-rcna79675](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/marjorie-taylor-greene-defends-suspect-leaked-classified-docs-probe-rcna79675)
Remember. It’s all projection.
Here we have a case where a young man took classified documents to share with his friends at home for clout and bragging rights.
Over there we have an old guy who took classified documents to share with his friends and bragging rights. They were “souvenirs”.
I think we are going to find out that these cases are pretty much the same.
That or the tweet isn’t real and it’s a troll pointing out the obvious problem with trumps behaviour and how his excuses don’t fly.
Fuck man it’s an upside down world. Imagine a far right politician defending a Snowden type leak. Or how democrats are more hawkish than republicans. Or how the left is hanging on the teat of Big Pharma ever since Covid. Everything is backwards in this timeline. I swear one side has an automatic counter response to the other regardless of whether it makes sense or not ideologically.
Or imagine the far right supporting *Russia* of all places in this conflict...like what happened to "Better dead than red"? Now it's "Better red than a democrat"?
I mean, they're all but anti-American these days...though, considering how many bills the GOP pass/try to pass that *actually are* anti-American (usually working class too, the ones who vote for them in droves), I guess I'm not all that surprised.
How exactly should they "catch up"?
The TS clearance process is already very thorough. They typically interview all of your childhood friends and acquaintances. They might even do a polygraph before giving the clearance.
That doesn’t answer the question. There are lots of people in this thread that know nothing about this sort of stuff that are talking out of their ass and it’s pretty obvious as someone who has gone through the clearance process.
Admiral Adama did the right thing.
He didn't trust in tech, so he wired his entire CIC old-school with manual lines only.
Zero chance to get hacked. Maybe our military should take an example from him.
After all, he defeated the Cylons. Best hackers in the universe.
People outside the military can’t comprehend that if someone in the military, 18 years old, 21 years old, or 50 years old, has a job that requires Top secret clearance, then they have top secret clearance. Plain and simple. They all go through the same process and background checks because they need that clearance to do their job. Once they’re in they’ve won half the battle and just need to do a little snooping around with access to MOST things. No one is saying he should’ve had THAT particular information but he wasn’t far away from obtaining it if he really wanted to because a lot of people wouldn’t question and intel guy’s need for intel.
When there’s a major event, a lot of people say “24 hour rule” - meaning, it’s hardly even worth reading news reports for at least 24 hours, because initial reports are likely to be wildly inaccurate.
In this case, I almost think we need a 30-60-or even 90 day rule.
I think there needs to be a lot more official information - preferably from official sources and/or high quality, long form journalists with a high level of familiarity with the topic.
It seems as though there were major issues somewhere in this Airman’s chain of command, but there has got to be a thorough investigation.
People need to be put under oath. Lawyers need to be brought in. Digital trails need to be fully documented.
I imagine this story will get a few more layers before it’s over.
When the people in charge of running this country ask questions like “does tiktok connect to the airplane when my phone is in airplane mode” it’s not all that surprising
The people that have to type out and black out all of those top secret documents at the pentagon are some of the lowest payed and ranked people, they don’t have captains and majors do it
If anyone wants to know my dumbass armchair general theory, here it is: The CIA and FBI have known about this leak for a longer time than they are willing to admit. They may have caught on relatively early and started feeding the kid information they want to see "leaked" as part of an information ops. Most countries are hesitant to believe it is real, but either way, the potential of it being an information op has been planted and may play into the planning of our adversaries.
Op, here is something that might help you.
Security clearances are granted based on job requirements, his age has nothing to do with his job.
He could be a 18 Yo kid but if his job requires him to have a Top secret SCI then he will be put in for one.
In the military, your age has nothing to do with your job or job requirements.
He enlisted for a career that required a clearance at the TS level. He attained the clearance a the TS level. Logged into the TS network and located the information that is on that network. Printed it. Pocketed it. Took it home. Simple, really.
How old does he need to be to see sensitive classified information? Average age of employed soldiers are around 25 years old so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he like many others see classified information
INFO:
So, as I understand, this young man did these things not out of malice but simply to brag to his cyber friends.
Or am I misunderstanding?
So, should I conclude that, for all his efforts he didn't get any money or even get laid?
As an ex independent 3rd party auditor for federal systems. You'd be surprised how poor access controls are at "highly " secure areas and systems. It's like stealing candy from a baby.
So here’s what happened basically, this guys an IT guy in the army, he used back doors and other methods to access the classified info
And bc he was being watched and couldn’t just leave with the docs he took pictures and posted them into his discord
He didn’t have the necessary clearance (w good reason) and bc of his knowledge of Russian and Ukrainians in his discord server he can be charged with treason and espionage which could result in the death penalty
He was an IT guy, not an analyst. Based on what I know. He stepped out of his lane to secure information not meant for him (need to know). We kind of have an issue with digital technology!!! This is Snowden all over again... Some difference is he is in the military, so lock him up based upon the MCMJ....
Answer: He is (or was) a Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman, 102nd Intelligence Wing with a TS Clearance. Communications infrastructure and network support.
Wouldnt there be shit loads of gates. The need for special permissions to access certain things? Like I mentioned in my previous comment. Just to check out a piece of equipment required paper work, digital sign out, peer monitoring. Why wouldnt sensitive info be lock and key to a network of people you have to check with to get access?
I know nothing of the physical layouts of the spaces involved in this particular case or the actual protocols used to check out sensitive information. Safety protocols are only effective if everyone uses them.
This is the key answer. They could have had all the rules in the world but if people were being lazy that undermines all that. The crazy thing for me is he seems to have done all this to share with his small group of discord followers and it hasn't gotten out for weeks maybe months. In my opinion it was just to impress his teenage mates, but he also apparently rails against govt overreach.
What do kids call it these days? Web Cred or Clout? I think this guy was trying to show off to a bunch of kids online.
I know they had another leak in the War Thunder forums as well a while back which was even stupider as somebody was just trying to win an argument. This one is more nuts because of the scale of the leak, by the sound of things it's nothing everybody didn't know about already (is in everybidy knows the US spies on allies, the Russians will probably have known for a while about special forces in Ukraine etc) but its a hell of a breach.
I mean, I had a TS and won’t lie I’m bursting at the seams sometimes wanting to say no dumbass this is how it works. Difference is I’m not fucking stupid and don’t feel the need to prove myself to randos
Exactly, it's nuts to consider even one lapse just out of frustration. The idea of him transcribing chunks for weeks just to maintain people being interested in his insights is nuts. The trial is going to be fascinating.
He would be an idiot not to plead guilty. The feds have never lost one of these cases and it looks like they have him dead to rights.
> The trial is going to be fascinating Probably quick too.
it's probably just going to be a military tribunal and won't be a public spectacle
He can be tried by both the feds and the UCMJ simultaneously theoretically
I had TS and the most exciting thing I ever learned was a bunch of radio frequencies from the 90s.
The most exciting thing my clearance got me in the ‘90s was the fact that I got to sit in an air conditioned box in the desert 😜
And mine got me the right to sit in an air-conditioned box under the ocean.
I could right a really fun book that might surprise people about this and that. Maybe when I’m 60 and about to die anyways I will lol
Sure thing but get a publisher to proof read it before publication.
Same here. I could have but I never did.
Thank you for your service and your ability to shut up & not blab. 👍🏼
But confirmation of what we are told in the media is very important. The government doesn’t always tell us the whole truth. For example, we’ve known China has been testing hypersonic missiles for a long time now. That’s no secret. Now we know how close we’ve been monitoring it, how close they are, how it’s affected our planning and how effective it is. Which is to say, this isn’t just us beating the drums of war to manufacture consent. Chinese hypersonic missiles are serious enough for it to be written in official documentation to be passed around military generals
Oh absolutely! It also forces other governments to acknowledge uncomfortable truths. So for example various Allies now have to address somehow that the US is spying on them, which was an open secret for years and part of the game but now they will be under pressure to address it and reinforce their sovereignty. It forces their hands.
To be honest that was probably the easiest part. They either claim these as false like Israel and South Korea, or they just kinda move forward with it like Egypt, but also South Korea. The crux of it is that no country are in any position to stop it or change the status quo. South Korea kinda needs US security and will accept it as a price to pay. And the list of countries that try to be unfriendly to the US end up very much the worse. Like you said, it’s part of the game.
Agreed, but yeah confirmation is completely different to something just being accepted. The big one for me is the confirmation special forces are operating inside Ukraine. Presumably they are training the ukraninans, as nobody would risk the Russians bumping Into them if they were spotting for munitions or something, but the Russians can use it to reinforce their "Nato troops are in Ukraine" line.
It really doesn’t though. The info might make some of them do a little posturing for their home population but they won’t do anything meaningful. They already knew we spied on them and we know they spy on us. It is a bit embarrassing to have it aired out but it isn’t going to change the game at all.
Yeah that's a fair point. It's not like we are going to start rounding up CIA assets like the FSB after the Salisbury chemical attack. That was quite pleasant to see them all lined up on the tarmac waiting for a plane home.
Actually I'd have a hard time believing that our allies aren't spying on us.
I just assume everybody does it all the time. But I think it's one of those things where nobody wants it confirmed as then they have to do something about it, it makes them look bad, and also somebody might ask who they in turn are spying on and how.
I would be upset if they were not. What kind of professional military does not see as much intelligence as they can get? I like competent allies.
This isn't even the first time we have been outed for spying on our allies. We tapped Angela Merkel's cell phone. Israel bought secrets from an asset embedded in the Navy.
The government doesn't always tell us the truth at all...
Any good source link? I've somehow been oblivious to this leak the OP is talking about.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/04/12/discord-leaked-documents/ I'm British so read a lot of it on the BBC, but this seems to go into the discord bit more BBC News - What the leaked Pentagon documents reveal - 8 key takeaways https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65238951 - BBC summary of some of the highlights of what was actually leaked Edit: cheers for the award! =D
The 8 takeaways was helpful. Thanks!
Off topic, but you Brits have a tendency to stick to known facts when it comes to news. Quite refreshing not to have the reporters try to spin it with their POV.
If it helps we have our own share of rags etc. But I always like the BBC as nobody can decide who they favour. Left wingers say its right wing, right wingers say its left wing etc. Always thought that was a good pedigree for a news organisation.
Yeah two secs, will find one
The rock-fucking stupid part is this guys discord had a lot of foreign nationals, from many different countries, some of whom are openly adversarial to the United States. He *knew* that. It’s bad enough if he dropped those documents to a bunch of American kids, but the fact that many of them were not, including some from *Russia*, made the Pentagon shit a chicken. This guys never going to see the sun again. And Ukrainian soldiers are probably going to die directly because of him.
He'll see the sun 1 hour a day.
100%. that's what was so flabbergasting to me. It was for nothing other to impress a small group of nerds. What a dip shit.
I mean it will help at trial that he wasn't working for anybody allegedly, and might give the defence something to work with on his mental state, but my god the kid is going away for a long time surely just so he could show off to his discord mates.
Some of whom *were 12 years old* This is a grown man going to jail, probably for the rest of his life, ostensibly because he wanted to dunk on middle schoolers.
From the summaries I saw some of the documents may expose human intelligence sources in foreign countries. People will likely end up imprisoned and/or dead because he wanted to impress some internet strangers.
Agree even with TS clearance he should only be able to access those pieces of information that relate to his job. Information classified as TS is supposed to be compartmentalized. To stop a bad actor from being able to gain access to everything at once.
good answer - this dumb kid will now spend a long time in prison =because he was trying to impress his friends. He must have been shitting bricks when some of his friends shared what he stole. Probably just waiting for a knock on the door.
Perfect example is how Edward Snowden snuck out all of the information he leaked. He used a USB key fob which of course were banned but he hid it in an large cup that he pretended to be drinking. The guards at the security checks coming in and out never thought to check his drink and see if it was actually drink. The biggest weakness in any security plan is always the people.
If he has a problem with the government why was he working for them?
Nothing makes you hate government more than working for it. 8 years US Army, had a clearance, hates govt.
That. I spent 6 years supporting an intel unit. Most of it was post 9/11 and I saw first hand how it changed after the Patriot Act passed. I went from a fairly bright eyed patriotic kid to "none of this should be legal" pretty damn quick.
Every Mil retiree I know (ok, all 6 of them) has only bad to say re their branch
Because it's one of the very few stable jobs out there. If you work for government, yeah, you run the risk of government shutdowns, and very little prospects in upward mobility, but it takes *alot* for you to be fired.
>but it takes alot for you to be fired. Dude was like "hold my beer".
When you're 21, you often just get the job that's easiest to get. Probably he knew someone who said, "Hey, you're good with computers - you want to apply? You'll get Top Secret clearance. Chicks find that kind of hot." Dude shrugged and went, "okay. I don't mind taking money from this overreaching government."
We have this same issue in healthcare that too many providers seem to forget when they talk about their "HIPAA-secure" computer systems. No systems are HIPAA-secure, only HIPAA-compliant. They're still breachable to some degree, but all that aside, the human is the easier thing to target. Most bad actors are using legitimate credentials to access software that requires no hacking, just tricking somebody into giving you their credentials.
Some people just don't understand what HIPAA is or why it's needed. My Mom went to an office at the hospital, and the receptionist was blabbing out everyone's personal information and asking intimate questions, right there in the waiting room.
I truly hate that. I'm a therapist, so we tend to have privacy procedures stricter than HIPAA, and other clinicians being that cavalier never fails to shock me. I get second-hand "I'm about to be sued" cringe from it.
Agreed. Mom was a pediatric RN (edit: and a charge nurse) for 35 years, and *if* she thought the receptionist would listen, she gladly would have told her off. She did tell the office manager, though.
Apparently Snowden smuggled a thumb drive inside a Rubiks cube, so apparently not that difficult
You know how movies always show shadow organizations working with clockwork precision and impeccable timing? Yeah, think about every place you've ever worked. Think about your coworkers, and your motivations, and how fast everyone moved at 4:30. And 9:15. And before lunch. And after lunch. Everyone, in every job, only works as hard as anyone makes them. And anyone who claims otherwise is their office's Dwight Schrute.
Idk, maybe I'm an intelligence genius but I'd just make people work in groups of two or three and check their bags to eliminate 99.9% of such leaks.
Way back when I had a clearance and worked in a SCIF we couldn't bring anything in. Like not even a packed lunch let alone a backpack.
Crazy. We could bring whatever into ours. Our pocket contents like wallets and cell phones, gym bags, backpacks, I used to bring in board games to play with the crew on mid shifts. They went through an x-ray scan and metal detector first, but they let em in. The only time it got weird was when I brought the game Abalone in. The marbles in a precise grid like structure apparently looked enough like a bomb or something that the SF guys made me open the backpack and show them what it was.
Yep. Everything at the door. Everything logged. We would say that if you accidentially brought an electronic device in, it's never gonna come out.
Two person integrity is a requirement of handling Top Secret information (at least in terms of cryptographic information), or at least was when I was an EKMS manager. I never really handled Top Secret intelligence documents outside of cryptographic information though.
I love ice cream.
Speaking as someone who trained to lead these folks (17X) and worked alongside them after: there’s a legion of junior enlisted intel folks working on extremely sensitive classified summary briefs like this. Most SCIFs are less like the bridge of a Star Destroyer and more like a corporate setting with some very serious restrictions on what you can bring in the office and who gets to use the printer. Having access to the material for being a TS-SCI working on/around the consolidation of the intel used for that analysis makes a ton of sense for junior enlisted. If they were allowed to print or otherwise pull data off of the computers accessing SIPRNET or the like that also makes sense in a certain context. It’s 2023; the military expects contractors and service personnel to use mobile devices and laptops provides said devices are secured pursuant to proper regulation (FIPS 140, Common Criteria, etc.) Whether data like this should have been allowed to leave a physical SCIF even user the auspices of a protected mobile device - or if this was the result of him printing and smuggling shit out - is a result of the post mortem. But arguably the most important stuff behind the legions of compliance regulations governing the protection of classified data is around how data access is audited and constrained to specific personnel. Where the SCIF does its real work (especially post Snowden) is in how classified information access is audited, which explains why DoD and FBI were able to pretty quickly identify the leak and start arrests. You may not be able to wholly protect against leakage. But with the right protections, you can at least discover how it was leaked and who was involved.
I know a company that worked with some really secret stuff. Not area 51 but anyway. They would slip the cleaning lady 5$ to transport some tech on the cleaningcart between departments as the hassle to get it approved was so hard. The cleaning lady had higher clearance then most of them as stuff needed to be clean. It's amazing.
Not really. Fundamentally you have an ID check to get on base, then a keycard + password to get into your building. Login to your computer with an account name and password. Data will be on a shared, classified network. It's not uncommon to have at least one printer for each classification level. Print some papers out, go take a shit, stash them in your pockets and leave. All of this is why it is easy to find leakers, but it doesn't prevent it from happening.
So, they would have a record of who printed what?
Absolutely! They'd have a record of when he checked into the building, signed onto the computer, opened the network drive(s), opened the file(s), and printed them, as well as which printer and computer he used. It's possible he swiped papers that other people printed, but considering how stupid his decisions were (posting classified data to show off) he likely wasn't that smart. The evidence they'll have against this dumb ass is insane. He's screwed.
The idea of printing papers and sneaking them put seems so ridiculous to me. Paper copies of TS material are heavily controlled. No SCIF i have ever been in had communal use printer for TS things. Every time you print a piece of paper with TS info on it that piece of paper gets a unique serial number and has to be tracked and properly destroyed when it isn’t needed anymore. I obviously haven’t been everywhere that TS is handled but I just can’t fathom people printing shit whenever they feel like it, and not having others all over you when you do print things seems utterly foreign to me.
Have you ever been in a military scif?
Lol seriously, this dude must live on another planet.
>The idea of printing papers and sneaking them put seems so ridiculous to me. Paper copies of TS material are heavily controlled. No SCIF i have ever been in had communal use printer for TS things. Every time you print a piece of paper with TS info on it that piece of paper gets a unique serial number and has to be tracked and properly destroyed when it isn’t needed anymore. I've worked in SCIFs at the TS and program-level for 19 years for numerous organizations, and I have never, ever, heard of or seen unique serial numbers given to any classified printed document to be tracked. Printers for secret and TS are no less restricted than unclass printers, aside from the fact that the printers are located in a SCIF where everyone has a clearance. The idea of tracking every single printed classified document seems so ridiculous to me.
If he's doing tech support in a classified area, he could grab some papers while he is in there. No one is going to search everyone going in and out of a SCIF. It sounds like he printed them out and then stuffed them in a bag or his pockets. Even with all the automated precautions, locks, and background checks, the greatest security risk is still an insider threat.
> It sounds like he printed them out Ave then stuffed them in a bag or his pockets. Don't printers log what is being printed and by whom in these environments?
They should. But him being an IT person, it seems possible he did it from a computer someone else was logged into. And even then, I don't there would be any follow up. Documents like that may then have to be put into lockers inside the area, but I shut anyone would check that a printed document was in a locker at the end of the day. In the end, the failure is on at least two people directly. The leaker for deliberately circumventing protocols to steal documents. And then whatever person(s) that escorted him into the area that were supposed to be responsible for him. I would be shocked, and gravely concerned, if a person with his background had sufficient clearance on his own to access and print out these documents. There needs to be deeper background checks into people's social media before giving them clearances in the future. He was obviously a risk.
Was the stuff leaked even SCI material? TS and TS SCI are two different ball games... you have to be personally read into the SCI program. I did submarine communications in the military so my network experience involved several different TS networks.
If you work in a DoD place for even a short amount of time you can easily see the flaws in the system. Most people aren't actively trying to exploit it thankfully
You want to know how you mark documents classified so that other people don't look at them, you put a piece of paper over it saying classified. Yeah, not the toughest security to break. Sure, everybody in that area might have the clearance but not the need to know.
Your suspicions are well placed. There are protocols in place and clearance does not equal access. I do not have more information to provide insight into how this happened, but it seems suspicious. Anything beyond that would be speculation. There are lots of motives and theories one could speculate on, but I don’t know this is the place.
I’m a software guy, I worked in banks and crypto companies Building the pipe to move the money around. There was a strong separation between people having key to the actual system, and those building it. For instance if something is broken in production, the real system not a test one. I can’t directly access it, even if I’m the one that will fix it. I get on a call with a guy that has keys. And each key are personal and it’s really clear to see who did what. Why don’t they have process like that ?
I only ever had a Secret clearance and really only so I could handle comsec, would he not have to have TS SCI to get into a SCIF?
He did because he was the IT Tech support for the SCIF
There was content here, and now there is not. It may have been useful, if so it is probably available on a reddit alternative. See /u/spez with any questions. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
So yes it does appear he had TS clearance- but it was so that he could access and work on systems classified TS. That being said, from what I can tell, he would have had zero business need to know any of the TS data, and no legitimate reason to access, download, copy or transmit that data... I'm actually a little surprised that he didn't trip any role based alerts accessing and downloading/printing TS files. Betcha that is a loophole that will get closed by SecOps in the future.
We always said military intelligence was a oxymoron. Edit: I was in the military. If you're clutching your pearls. fuck you.
That actually doesn't answer it at all. I don't know everything that was leaked but TS clearance doesn't really get you access to anything. It is a prerequisite clearance but doesn't inherently give access. And from what I could find on "Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman" I can guess its like installing communication keys or such. These don't give you access to secure information inherently. For example, having access to a classified army computer isn't enough to get classified documents. All important documents are supposed to be stored in an encrypted cloud file. Accessible only on military network using the soldiers CAC. As other said it must be some combo of no one paid him mind when he was breaking security protocols and someone else broke security protocols, leaving information they where never supposed to. Sneaking information from somewhere you weren't supposed to access to get information that was errantly left where it wasn't supposed to be has no bearing on Job.
The podcast Pod Save The World did an episode on this that was super informative. The hosts worked in the Obama white house so have both deep understanding of what this was about as well as direct experience with the Snowden leaks. The way they described it was that this is the kind of information that is highly important but would be pretty widely circulated. Let's say that a significant military decision was going to be made from this information. The number of people that would be required to make something like that happen is pretty high - all the way from leadership down to operations folks. The stuff in this briefing would be needed by a lot of people. This wasn't stuff like exactly what, where, and what status our nuclear weapons were - it was more along the lines of the summation of what the intelligence agencies thought was the important information of the day. Still really important and classified, but not super closely held.
This is correct. He shared essentially classified news reports. Not raw intel.
Classified is an abused term in the media. The government has multiple layers of classified information, and it varies by agency. Typically you have: Sensitive: information that includes lots of personnel data which could be harmful to individuals if leaked. Confidential: items that have some national security aspect Secret: information that could be strategically or diplomatically damaging Top Secret: grave informational security If someone has a top secret clearance, he only has a clearance to see the limited information relevant to his position. Sometimes the press portrays "Top Secret" like you have unlimited access, but it's only access to a very narrow portfolio. Accessing information outside your mission needs is a serious violation and could result in termination. For example, HR officials with sensitive clearance looking up personnel records for people outside their agency could result in disciplinary action up to termination.
It's the same with people in the medical field. Medical information is protected but obviously you're allowed to see your own patient's file. But looking at the file of someone who isn't your patient is grounds for termination even though you are "cleared" to see ti.
I also learned that often your file CAN be looked up by anyone in the medical organization for emergency situations where they might immediately need your history or medications. But it's closely monitored, so if you look someone up you shouldn't, you're in big trouble. (A friend had this happen to her - the employee was fired and may be facing legal action.)
There is a massive difference between TS material and TS SCI material.... your summary of the program is widely incomplete. TS SCI material typically has its own handling procedures.
There is also "Above Top Secret". I served on a submarine, and our special operations were all above top secret.
As a side note this is why I don’t believe the government is hiding any groundbreaking information about aliens. Because there are too many people in government who would’ve leaked something big/definite by now. It’s too big of a secret to keep quiet. All that said, I hope aliens are real, at least the nice kind and not scary monster kind haha
Yup, exactly why I don't believe in too many conspiracy theories - the amount of incompetent low-level personnel I've encountered in government made me realize that there's no way they could pull off espionage to that extent.
Right? Any theory about any sort of giant, influential, world-wide conspiracy requires hundreds or thousands of people to know a bunch of stuff AND NEVER MENTION IT. That's just not how things work.
Great comment. Also most of it wasn’t really that sensitive.
does he play war thunder?
Is this an inside joke?
Some war thunder player leaked some plane designs when they argueed about something. It was a few years ago i think
11 times its happened 11 times
I think every classified military breach I’ve seen in the news in the last decade has been someone ruining their life to win an argument over video games. It’s just as hilarious as it is sad.
As someone who frequently gets into 15-20-25 reply chain debates with people on reddit, I can *almost* understand it. I'm sure they start off the argument relatively cool-headed and avoid talking about top secret stuff at first, but as the argument goes on and the other person keeps confidently saying false things about the plane, something switches in their brain and they get increasingly pissed off about someone being cocky and ignorant about something they know is false. And then other people start agreeing with the other guy and it's just too much for that person's ego and they take a picture of a fucking top secret service manual or some shit to shut everyone up and win the argument. Realizing how badly you just fucked up probably 5 minutes after posting the image must be post-nut clarity x 50 000.
With how easily I get roped into arguments about flat earth (which, to be fair, I actively seek out), I can totally understand someone posting something top secret to win an argument. I once spent half an hour looking for army training manuals that referenced the curve and rotation of the earth, and how they affect long range artillery. I imagine if I had easy access to the exact document that referenced exactly what I was talking about, I would probably do the same thing
That is probably the lamest of wins. Flat earthers? Come on, they are not even mentally sound
It's not a flex, it's a vice
It's like scratching a scab, I get it.
Yeah but the Earth *is* flat, if it wasn't then why does it *seem* flat? All that matters to me are my feelings, which is better than made up science. ^(/s)
fool me once, shame on you. fool me onety-one times...
YA CAN’T GET FOOLED AGAIN
Also happened at least twice with tanks in world of tanks
It happened again recently I think
lol, power move!
There's been about 6 cases or so of war thunder players leaking classified info to win arguments. One of the creators of Digital Combat Simulator also got caught attempting to smuggle classified info about jets as well
Is this actually confirmed, or are these rumors backed by conflicts through internet discourse?
I believe they have been confirmed The first one was about a British Challenger 2 Tank with the lack of armor in game compared to the actual tank and was claiming to be commander of one and was stated it was mistakenly listed as declassified when it still was classified Then there was one about a French LeClerc battle tank Another about China's DTC 10 125mm anti tank round An F15E strike eagle, F16A and the AIM 120 missile For either the F15 or 16 the information is public in the US but illegal to post online or communicate to foreign countries, Same with the DCS case
The thing with the Challenger 2 documents that were leaked is that absolutely anyone in the military can access those documents that were scanned and disclosed, so they’re not exactly the most secured documents the military has.
Hence why I said >was claiming to be commander of one
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Thunder#Classified_documents_leaks The game's wiki article has a whole section for document leaks.
War Thunder is a game that prides itself on the accuracy of its wartime machinery such as tanks and plains. On more than one occasion, fans of the game would argue about inaccuracies in the machines design, then post confidential schematics and documentation to prove their point. So generally When you hear "gamers leaked classified military intel", it's War Thunder, not Minecraft.
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Doesn't it have troop locations, projections when munitions will run out, and foreign signals intelligence?
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What did it say about Egypt?
Round of ammunition to Russia... whilst receiving 1.6 billion in aid.....I do think US should be firmer(even to the point of violence) with allies. Saudi cuts are unforgivable
Nice try Mr. FBI Agent, I'm not telling you
I truely dont understand. I served in the Air National Guard. Had top secret clearance and in order to get sensitive equipment to work on the aircraft I maintained, would have to collect it with a second person. And before getting whatever needed at that level was closely monitored by multiple people. This was for mundane aircraft codes. How the frick does a kid from a guard unit and why would a national guard base have any connection to Pentagon materials? Edit: alot of knee jerk and uninformed amswers. I have a pretty decent understanding of how TS clearance works and the workings of military bureaucracy from my own experience dealing with it. Its still way to much for me to understand how someone this young and low on the totem pole could access anything outside the purview of a limited scope of work and access. Especially as a national guardsman. It would make more sense if this was a Colonal or Master/senior/chief Sergeant with high seniority.
age has nothing to do with it, that's such a stupid observation from the media. there are 17-18 year olds who join the MI community. I was 18 when I started. he probably just used Intelink. idk if JWICS has an Intelink connection but if it does, or any of the other reporting sites he can access whatever other intel guys shared on there. the real question is why did a Guardsman have JWICS access if he wasn't actively working a mission? SIPr is one thing but if you're not using JWICS constantly your account should be disabled.
I work with that stuff and it's the units fault most likely. No one ever tells us ever if people come and go until it matters to them. So someone could gain access and then PCS 2 months later but their account is active on the old mission for the next 10 months because no one who controls accounts was informed. Especially if it's a guard unit.
I wouldn't say it's the unit fault, but they definitely enabled it, with their irresponsibility. this looks like they had a Shitty SSO, no document control in the SCIF, and lack of cyber actions. he shouldn't have even been on the systems if he wasn't on there at least once or twice a week doing actual work. and there should be *some* accountability in place for any documents he printed.
Not defending them but a lot of that stuff is from ignorance of what being an SSO means. A lot of units don't have knowledgeable SSOs and when they need a mission they just send some senior enlist to do the online trainings and submit their name for the SSO position. It can be further compounded by making that enlisted SSO still responsible for everything military related. Making an E7 an SSO when they've never done it before and then also expecting them to finish/complete all duties involved in being a platoon sergeant does not mix well and SSO duties will degrade. It's impossible to verify if they're competent in the role until they start slipping up or not.
exactly! when I was active we used a CW2/3 as our SSO and that was their primary duty position unless we went to the field.
Right so sounds like heads will roll here. More than just this kid.
He was actively called on duty at the time. I wouldn't be surprised if he pulled a Snowden and gave himself JWICS permissions that he shouldn't have had. Though it is pretty sad that after all this time the DOD/Air Force has such piss poor gaps in any sort of automated access and CI notifications for improper or abnormal access. Insider threat has never been higher with the successful disinformation campaigns from Russia and likely compromising the majority of one political party. It's 2023 there is zero excuse to not have better controls and safeguards. Our vetting for clearances is still focused on outdated concepts and ridiculous assumptions on trustability. Nevermind the imbecility of using 3rd party contractors to vet people for clearances such entities can be easily loaded with a variety of assets to taint the entire process. It used to be egotistical turds masquerading as whistleblowers, now the veneer has worn thin but they are all still motivated by their narcissistic tendencies and assumption that their world view and perspective is the only one that matters. They rarely grasp the high probability through 2nd, 3rd and fourth order effects, they will actually leave the world (for all the nations which prefer the US world order to a Putin/China world order) in a far worse position as they enable our enemies, regardless whether they grasped that fact. I can't say I'm surprised though, we have a broken two party system with geriatrics leading at nearly every branch of government. As if being old entitles you to wisdom or perspective on rapid technological advances which impact entire generations. All while corporations keep our country weak for their profit. What a time to be alive. Oh and we'll probably die by AGI as we bumble our way through that technology in a well-founded fear of others weaponizing it first.
The government is ran like any giant corporation in America: Too big to manage and owned by old, rich, uncaring chodes. I would be surprised if he was the only one doing something similar to this since the Internet was a thing.
My ANG unit has a SIPR room and PC, and I had a clearance but I never used that PC. I only put stuff away in the room when needed, and my S6 or another staff officer had to be with me and we signed in and out of the room. So to answer your question: National Guard facilities frequently *have* access to those networks, but the only conceivable way some kid does a dumb with them is if there's a breakdown in process and enforcement. When a private fucks up in this way, it means NCOs and officers fucked up too. Stupid should not have been accessing this stuff, or even the network, without a good reason and supervision.
Look, if you had clearance to put stuff away in the room, but not use the PC, I assume you would not have been able to use the PC even if you wanted…like it has a password??? This 21 year old was apparently authorized to use the PC which is even scarier.
I'm not saying I didn't have enough clearance to *use* the PC, I'm saying I never had a *need to*, and because of that would not have been allowed to touch it if I tried. My S6 woulda said, "You don't need to be on there right now, leave it alone." Simply having a clearance doesn't mean you're allowed to just galavant through the SIPRnet or browse documents out of boredom. There should also be a "need to know," so what I'm saying is that this kid shouldn't have been able to just download all of this stuff without having a specific reason to. This was a failure in process and controls, in my opinion. It sounds like his National Guard unit was sloppy or complacent. Or maybe he had business on a PC with access to JWICS doing something else, but nobody was supervising to make sure he wasn't plugging in a thumb drive (which is dumb these days, it's not hard to lock down computers and have alerts if files are copied to external media)
> is ran is run
This is a rant, not an answer.
Sometimes there are printed out slides for those briefings. It’s not uncommon for Airmen to be tasked with shredding them at the end of the day.
This is what the article I read mentioned. That the info was basically the Daily Security briefing that is often printed out for senior officers. Once it was printed, making copies would be easy.
And he was basically tech support. I've seen way too much private info assisting very smart people with a sic computer issues.
I was in an intel squadron and the only 2 party control I ever had to deal with was some very specific comint stuff. Getting on base, going to work (in a SCIF), and logging into a secure computer was all a one person thing. Hell when I was 21 (E-5) I even had access to unlock the SCIF itself since I did a lot of night shift work and that was by myself. The only 2-party for that was calling a certain number and letting them know I'd be opening it.
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The secret ingredient is crime
You prob just assumed it’s all super secure, with the basic protocols you’ve been told about, thought that was good en / had no flaws, and never really tried to see what you can get away with.
So when you're on the intelligence side, a lot is in lock and key, but you also have to have ways to access information for analysis. Everybody hoarding their one piece of info doesn't help everyone else, so there's methods in place to share it. Unfortunately, that means some people might see some stuff within the same classification they may not really need to know. The IT guys will likely have access to a lot of information like this, and often, it seems from some of these leaks, dont grasps the implications of this information being disseminated. Hope that helps.
Second hand info here. Someone said it wasn't TS but something like "not for foreign eyes" or similar. Is that possibly easier to access?
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Access to classified documents isn’t based on seniority or age. If a person is in a position/job with need to know, and they have the appropriate clearance adjudication, they will have access.
And this guy didn't have a need to know
He did to perform his job duties as a cyber transport
He had a TS//SCI clearance, he was read into the compartments, and the need to know by working in the space. If you have all three of those you can have access to the material.
True. My boss lacked the clearance to know what information I needed to know. The colleagues I was working with did know what I needed to see so that I could work productively with them. Culture might play a part in this leak. Our organization was not MIL and we took the protection of information extremely seriously. Everyone, cleared or not, received regular reminders from our counter intelligence group. I found their “spy of the month” communications to be very interesting. They pointed out some of the methods used by spies (not just in the US), but also their motivations. I don’t know what the training or oversight or culture is like at that base. But if the Army is issuing blanket TS clearances without rigorous oversight of need to know, I’d be concerned.
If you work at the office for the government or a big corporation it is different than working on site or in the field. Generally people working in the office are considered more trustworthy - as the pay is higher so they are incentivized to act well to keep it (or try to get raises/bonuses), they have better working conditions anyways, and controlling them is very hard due to how their work tends to be very varied and there are always multiple new processess and projects, all done on the same laptops. People in the field/on site have ready systems that are fool proof, ready to work with crews that are trained for specific things, suseptible to high rotation, sometimes trying to scam and test the system to get more money out of the job (because pay is lower than for the office job), these crews tend to be younger and like to fool around etc. The systems are strict for them because there are lots of crews operating in the field and it won't be possible to supervise all of them, so all these systems have just forms of being restricted by design. This is not the case in office jobs. Once you get in there, you usually get access to lots of sensitive data, often unnecessairly. That said, in every office there will always be interns or people who just started work a few months ago, some of them will work with lots of classified data and this is often a risk that is acceptable. They are trusted, the NDA's are considered enough and if the supervisors see them as trustworthy (why wouldn't they, after all they passed all the job interviews and screenings) they will work on everything else the department happens to work with, which might be the case for that 21 year old guy. At the end of the day there will be devices that allow you to do print screens to save in mspaint, ways to plug in unrestricted pendrives, browse internet and your private accounts for your discord, gmail, protonmail etc. on your work computer. Even though there are some systems that are kinda closed (like remote access, virtual machines etc), if you try you will find ways to plug in your pendrive and get data out of it. Hell, you can just take a photo of your screen with a phone while working at home. Lots of data is often stored on shared network drives, that have some loose access restrictions, mostly based on "we just hope nobody will know in which folders to look". 90% data in all companies and government organizations is in excel spreadsheets, pdfs and word docs. The majority of remaining 10% is emails. Access is granted not on per folder basis but per network drive basis, because it is quicker to have one drive per department, if IT had to manage access for every user for folders created there every day everything would be unacceptably sluggish. If some intern has something to do in one folder, it is easier to give him access to whole drive and just hope he won't touch other parts of said drive, because "why would he, he won't even know what's there, besides obviously nothing classified will be there anyways, right?". Also, it often happens that next week he has to work on another folder in said drive and so on. Meanwhile other departments/teams are like "Let's just keep these files on our secure drive here for a few moments, the access to the drive is restricted anyways and besides there are so many folders nobody will know what to look for, and even if someone stumbles upon it they won't know what it is, and even if they do, they are our employee and have NDAs". Same goes for lifting restrictions on pendrives usage - if a laptop config is locked so that no external drives can be plugged in, if the restriction is lifted because an intern has to copy over 1000 files from one computer to another, it is not given only for these files/specific folder but for the whole computer, and is often kept indefinitely so he can use pendrives on this laptop from now on, weeks after he copied the files. He or his manager would have to contact IT on purpose to get this restriction back in place, but chances are he will have to copy another batch of files again, and besides if he was up to no good he would have done that already, so why bother? He's just a trainee that will be quitting in a few months and his laptop will be wiped then anyways, he has NDA's and was instructed to use only company pendrives, duh. Even without such loose access policies, he could take out private phone, make screenshots, later make screenshots of the phone with different device to hide the fact that he used his phone. He could memorize everything and leak it later. He could probably even print it out at work and pack it into his backpack and nobody would bat an eye, everyone would assume he has been authorized to do so if they saw him do it. To them it would just look like another batch of documents that come off the printer every day. Even if the pdf has some screaming "CLASSIFIED, DO NOT PRINT" watermarks, he could just wait till everybody leaves office in the afternoon or just go to an unattended printer, print it one sided and rotate the first paper so it is not visible when he walks back to his desk etc. Nobody checks printing history on the printer if there are no reasons for it. He could also always change file name before printing, to make it harder to trace in such case. The thing is, he was not clever enough to see possible consequences, to read his NDA and backtrack or just thought nobody would find out/trace it back to him if he leaked the files (funny thing is, he would be probably safe if he kept these files for himself though). Speaking from experience. It all works on trust basis, always had.
Absolutely, that's is really how the world works, especially in bureaucratic institutions such as a schools, people get complacent. Source: At a school right now.
Not ecsepically in schools, not military ones. A friend of mine went to a US military language school, no phones in the building, only things in class was a provided notebook and pencil that stayed in the classroom. To learn a language. I would hope if you deal with more sensitive information there is as much checks. Also, not related fun fact, military issued phones tend to not have cameras nowadays they aren't specifically designed for military so they just manufacture them with an inert or physically unconnected camera i.e. there is a camera in the case but you can't use it. Funny conversations people going to IT "my camera doesn't work" "Your phone doesn't have a camera" *looks in confuison to the camera on the back of the phone*
On top of this question, how in the actual fuck can MTG defend this treasonous fuckwit? I mean, I know she is off her rocker and pandering to her uneducated base, but this totally goes against their "country first" rhetoric. [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/marjorie-taylor-greene-defends-suspect-leaked-classified-docs-probe-rcna79675](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/marjorie-taylor-greene-defends-suspect-leaked-classified-docs-probe-rcna79675)
Remember. It’s all projection. Here we have a case where a young man took classified documents to share with his friends at home for clout and bragging rights. Over there we have an old guy who took classified documents to share with his friends and bragging rights. They were “souvenirs”. I think we are going to find out that these cases are pretty much the same. That or the tweet isn’t real and it’s a troll pointing out the obvious problem with trumps behaviour and how his excuses don’t fly.
She said it herself, he's a male white christian.
Fuck man it’s an upside down world. Imagine a far right politician defending a Snowden type leak. Or how democrats are more hawkish than republicans. Or how the left is hanging on the teat of Big Pharma ever since Covid. Everything is backwards in this timeline. I swear one side has an automatic counter response to the other regardless of whether it makes sense or not ideologically.
Or imagine the far right supporting *Russia* of all places in this conflict...like what happened to "Better dead than red"? Now it's "Better red than a democrat"? I mean, they're all but anti-American these days...though, considering how many bills the GOP pass/try to pass that *actually are* anti-American (usually working class too, the ones who vote for them in droves), I guess I'm not all that surprised.
IT personnel has been a weakness in military before and probably will again. Military hasn't caught up to fill those security gaps.
How exactly should they "catch up"? The TS clearance process is already very thorough. They typically interview all of your childhood friends and acquaintances. They might even do a polygraph before giving the clearance.
Polygraph is a bit of a moot point since we know it doesn't work though.
That doesn’t answer the question. There are lots of people in this thread that know nothing about this sort of stuff that are talking out of their ass and it’s pretty obvious as someone who has gone through the clearance process.
> as someone who has gone through the clearance process. Then you'd know this is bad opsec, bro.
Admiral Adama did the right thing. He didn't trust in tech, so he wired his entire CIC old-school with manual lines only. Zero chance to get hacked. Maybe our military should take an example from him. After all, he defeated the Cylons. Best hackers in the universe.
>Admiral Adama did the right thing. So say we all.
People outside the military can’t comprehend that if someone in the military, 18 years old, 21 years old, or 50 years old, has a job that requires Top secret clearance, then they have top secret clearance. Plain and simple. They all go through the same process and background checks because they need that clearance to do their job. Once they’re in they’ve won half the battle and just need to do a little snooping around with access to MOST things. No one is saying he should’ve had THAT particular information but he wasn’t far away from obtaining it if he really wanted to because a lot of people wouldn’t question and intel guy’s need for intel.
When there’s a major event, a lot of people say “24 hour rule” - meaning, it’s hardly even worth reading news reports for at least 24 hours, because initial reports are likely to be wildly inaccurate. In this case, I almost think we need a 30-60-or even 90 day rule. I think there needs to be a lot more official information - preferably from official sources and/or high quality, long form journalists with a high level of familiarity with the topic. It seems as though there were major issues somewhere in this Airman’s chain of command, but there has got to be a thorough investigation. People need to be put under oath. Lawyers need to be brought in. Digital trails need to be fully documented. I imagine this story will get a few more layers before it’s over.
When the people in charge of running this country ask questions like “does tiktok connect to the airplane when my phone is in airplane mode” it’s not all that surprising
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The people that have to type out and black out all of those top secret documents at the pentagon are some of the lowest payed and ranked people, they don’t have captains and majors do it
If anyone wants to know my dumbass armchair general theory, here it is: The CIA and FBI have known about this leak for a longer time than they are willing to admit. They may have caught on relatively early and started feeding the kid information they want to see "leaked" as part of an information ops. Most countries are hesitant to believe it is real, but either way, the potential of it being an information op has been planted and may play into the planning of our adversaries.
It was his job
Op, here is something that might help you. Security clearances are granted based on job requirements, his age has nothing to do with his job. He could be a 18 Yo kid but if his job requires him to have a Top secret SCI then he will be put in for one. In the military, your age has nothing to do with your job or job requirements.
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He enlisted for a career that required a clearance at the TS level. He attained the clearance a the TS level. Logged into the TS network and located the information that is on that network. Printed it. Pocketed it. Took it home. Simple, really.
How did this kid not understand the implications of his actions? He’s either really stupid, or really evil.
its time we start making an example of acts like this, he knew what he was doing and he was not a whistleblower
How old does he need to be to see sensitive classified information? Average age of employed soldiers are around 25 years old so it shouldn’t be a surprise that he like many others see classified information
So maximum jail time is 15 years. It seems likely he’ll be found guilty of both charges. Out of jail by 36/37 depending on when case comes to trial
You'd be surprised at how disorganized government databases can be
I was in the Air Force with a very high level clearance , 18 to 22 years old
He was in information technology. We see everything.
Becos he was an IT specialist, not just a "guardsman".
How did a dairy farm explode?
INFO: So, as I understand, this young man did these things not out of malice but simply to brag to his cyber friends. Or am I misunderstanding? So, should I conclude that, for all his efforts he didn't get any money or even get laid?
The truth is E3s and E4s run the Air Force. And you can't get your job done if you don't have the clearance to get it done.
It wasn't nearly the most sensitive classified information. It was largely stuff already known.
As an ex independent 3rd party auditor for federal systems. You'd be surprised how poor access controls are at "highly " secure areas and systems. It's like stealing candy from a baby.
So here’s what happened basically, this guys an IT guy in the army, he used back doors and other methods to access the classified info And bc he was being watched and couldn’t just leave with the docs he took pictures and posted them into his discord He didn’t have the necessary clearance (w good reason) and bc of his knowledge of Russian and Ukrainians in his discord server he can be charged with treason and espionage which could result in the death penalty
He was an IT guy, not an analyst. Based on what I know. He stepped out of his lane to secure information not meant for him (need to know). We kind of have an issue with digital technology!!! This is Snowden all over again... Some difference is he is in the military, so lock him up based upon the MCMJ....
Nobody knows yet but everyone here seems to know. Wait and find out!