Based on what I learned in this thread and the Reddit thread, I think the OPSEC of the US military is shit, pardon my French, and I would be surprised if there is any top level state secret that the Russians or other foreign adversaries haven’t already seen. /rant
No need to imagine when it takes less time to punch
burn bag
into Google. There’s even a Wikipedia article with photos of actual bags.
Ask Sandy Berger, (Although he’s dead) and everybody else in Washington City for the last 50 years, probably.
I thought any digital photograph has XIF data or somesuch acronym, that has a host of information, among them the location of where the photo was taken. I figured they would bust the “leaker” on that data alone. One thing about living in a digital panopticon, if they really want to find somebody, they can do some amazing things these days.
My wife was asking the same question. I don’t know much about the military, but I have a pretty good idea how organizations work. Particularly when it comes to how they manage data and information. It’s usually “carelessly”.
Teixeira sounded like a bit of a nerd or quiet oddball before he joined. He was probably good with computers so his superiors where like “you’re now 'Director of Technology Section” or whatever the role was called so he became the guy in charge of making sure the network stayed working and generals could access their email.
I can’t speak to his motivations. But he doesn’t sound like someone who is highly politicized or radicalized. It almost sounds like a certain level of immaturity where he was unaware or indifferent as to the seriousness of sharing the documents he shared.
I also couldn’t tell you if these documents are merely “sensitive” (as in stuff like Ukrainian soil samples or inane emails between various officers) or “highly classified” (like here’s a list of deep-cover operatives and their handlers).
That can’t be true. Maybe that’s the average age they enlist at. I know the military skews young, but there are plenty of people who make the military a significant part of their career for many years. I’d guess the average is somewhere around mid to late 20s.
I recall that most chat sites (I think it was specifically facebook mentioned, and Twitter) strip the EXIF data when a photo is uploaded, so downloaders can’t get all the juicy details. It also depends whether the camera or phone is set up to include GPS coordinates or not. This data usually includes camera type, exposure details, date and time, etc. (So for most photos out there, it probably says “Jan 1 2000” )
Yes, it sounds to me like he was in a chat with a bunch of guys, many probably boastful teenagers who all claim to work for the CIA, and had to prove “honest, guys, I really do work for Military Intelligence with a Top Secret clearance. Here, let me prove it to you…”
There are over 5,000 people serving on an aircraft carrier. Sure, the command is older, some of the pilots, and a few other people, but there are a lot of jobs from working in the mess to cleaning to Og knows what that can be done by 17-20 year old “kids” (really young adults) serving out their couple years of service before going back to civilian life.
David Farragut, of “Damn the Torpedoes, Full Speed Ahead” fame, was 15 when first in command of a battleship.
The average age of the flight controllers at Mission Control during Apollo was quite young, probably around 28 or something like that. Only in recent years have adolescents been encouraged to remain adolescents for as long as possible.
TSA frequently finds things they are looking for, like borderline quantities of liquids.
I’m reminded of another “trustworthy” 21-year-old.
I was under the impression that he was the system admin on the network, therefor having rights to all the volumes and folders. Why weren’t the documents locked or encoded?
He didn’t have access to the truly sensitive stuff. This was all top level briefings, not specs for weapons.
Oh yeah. I had forgotten all about the Falcon. It wasn’t unprecedented behavior by this racist gun nut Guardsman.
I can see where one would need access to drives and folders, but not need to know the contents of documents. It would seem to me that documents should be locked, as you can do with MS Office.
I can understand where this would be too much hassle for those qualified to read the documents.
seriously? Do you know how many people work on a major military base? If each person was searched, they wouldn’t get through the line until the next morning.
As for the number of people with TS, or Secret, clearances-it takes months to up to a year to get a clearance. If you need an IT person to fix the general’s computer, that is a long time to wait.
Besides, many buildings have a de-facto requirement to have a clearance just to enter regardless of the work. So to get someone in for a temp position requires a clearance. Waiting six months isn’t feasible. So millions of people have clearances.
And yes I am aware that with enough pull a clearance can be obtained in hours, but that requires a LOT of pull. Much easier just to maintain lots of clearances. There is a constant push to reduce the number of cleared personnel out there. And an equally constant pull to get more people cleared.
In my opinion, the emphasis should be far more on need to know than clearance level. That would provide far more protection.
Not all of them have access to such sensitive materials. Just going through a gate where you could randomly be pulled aside for a search and other precautionary procedures would stop opportunistic attempts of this kind. So would an overall greater emphasis on security integrated into the work done there.
Many people asking about his age and access shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the military. Every 18 year old MI graduate going through Fort Huachuca has a Top Secret clearance. There will always be a need for lower ranked personnel doing the work even in a classified environment.
Rank, pay grade or age has absolutely nothing to do with any of this at one level, because depending on the job field an E4 say, is going to handle all sorts of highly classified stuff as part of his job that would put an O4 or O6 in another specialty to shame.
It was later for me so I was older, but I did work with some younger Airmen when I was part of the Wing fusion cell. We assembled briefing slides of various classifications into briefings and then ensured the slides were projected for the daily briefings. I saw all the info about operations and activities I mostly didn’t care about and didn’t pay attention to since I was focused on my job of running the whole system, but there was little stopping me from folding up a print out from the shred box and sneaking it out.