I was amused to see full US military strength being deployed to arrest a 21 year old kid yesterday. A couple of community cops would have done. A British “expert” waffled on W@1 about this being the biggest US data leak since …… the last one When the presenter pointed out, in effect, that the US leaks like a sieve the Expert said that if one went back far enough British intelligence also had leaks. What, people like Antony Blunt recruited by the Communists in the 1930s?
Nearly forty years ago the very large firm I worked for was under investigation for anti trust. All information in the Company was classified, internal use, confidential and confidential - restricted. The fear of God was instilled in the whole workforce to adhere to the rules regarding each classification. Photocopiers and printers all had signatures, etc. etc. And auditors roamed the buildings ensuring compliance. To the best of my knowledge no information leaked during the twenty years of the investigation.
Yet here, it would appear, we have a 21 year old kid with access to incredibly sensitive information which he was able to remove and publish.
It’s not the kid that should be punished IMO its some Generals that should be pilloried pour encourager les autres. But it’s a lot easier to blame the kid I guess.
I also worked in that sort of environment. We had lots of highly sensitive documentation and equipment associated mainly with encryption which if it got out would ruin not just the company, but be very problematic for our customers. We had several layers of protection for sensitive items and had regular audits. Any potential breach of security was a dismissable offence. You get used to it.
I suspect life seems like a film or computer game for some, so detached are they from reality and a sense of responsibility. The leaker may well have been told about the need for secrecy, trained in all the various regs and requirements, and just treated it like a tick-box exercise required to get them through a driving test or exam without actually listening or taking any of it seriously.
In the olde days of yore, it would have been seen as treason and dealt with accordingly. I love a good conspiracy theory within reason of belief so perhaps it is a deliberate act set up by the intelligence services to undermine world despots, who knows.
Whatever happened to the “need to know” principle? What possible justification could there be for a very junior National Guardsman to have access to such intelligence? It just defies belief (and common sense)
With respect, you have no idea what his job is and what justification there may be. Junior staff handle classified information all the time and the purpose of vetting is to ensure that they can be trusted to do so. Age and seniority provide no guarantees in their own right.
Clearly something has failed here but we have no insight into where or how that failure has happened.
Edited to add: in fact there will have been multiple failures in control measures that will have allowed this to happen and not just vetting of the individual.
Exactly my point, the individual is the least of the problems, But I watched a bunch of camouflaged cretins crouching in body armour with AR 15s pointed surround him on his mummy’s drive. What a joke.
I just hope his life isn’t ruined because the poor kid wasn’t appropriately supervised by his superiors. It seems to me just another case of scapegoating. It’s just more of my personal bugbear that the real guilty ones never get blamed or held accountable. For example that bastard Hunt is still swanning around pretending the screwed up NHS is nothing to do with him
That’s where we differ. Anyone with that level of vetting is left in no doubt about the sensitivity of the information and the penalties for inappropriate disclosure. Agree the arrest was over the top but I also suspect that there will be a bunch of people under less public disciplinary action.
No, where we differ John is that I don’t think access to such sensitive data should ever have been entrusted to a 21 year old reservist National Guard member, no matter what their “vetting” outcome. I can’t envisage any unique skill or capability that such a young person with limited experience could have that required them to access such data in an unsupervised manner. This was sloppy. Bottom line for me this is a management failure. Where’s management fessimg up?
Update: Just read “ During the brief hearing, the US prosecutor Nadine Pellegrini said the government would seek 10 years on each of the charges Teixeira faces.”
What management heads are rolling? The mere fact that this has happened is proof they have failed.
Exactly the same with Snowden and the other case.
These people have access to classified information which is not necessary for them to do their j9b.
Jim says that this is because tge Americans think that this will enable them to be more interested and do their job better.
Absolute tosh.
He knows this because of the classified work he did on defence systems with an international consortium of British and US contractors.
Maybe this time the Americans will be third time lucky and actually realise the huge danger they run with this practice.
Or, looking at their warped attitude to gun control, not.
So you’ve never heard of filling clerks, IT support, etc? There are many junior roles that require unsupervised access, that’s why there are normally other controls in place.
He committed a crime and should expect to receive a heavy sentence, hopefully a 20 year prison sentence will act as a deterrent to anyone else thinking of doing the same thing.
The issues of whether he should of had access to all the sensitive stuff in the first place or that the US was spying on it’s allies is irrelevant to what he did.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post first reported that the person behind the leak worked on a military base and posted sensitive national security secrets in an online group of acquaintances. The leaker was described in the Post story as a lonely young man and gun enthusiast who was part of a chatroom of about two dozen people on Discord – a social media platform popular with video gamers – that shared a love of guns and military gear, according to a friend of the alleged leaker the Post interviewed who was also part of the group.
When the presenter pointed out, in effect, that the US leaks like a sieve the Expert said that if one went back far enough British intelligence also had leaks. What, people like Antony Blunt recruited by the Communists in the 1930s? 
of the investigation.