Pentagon super-leak suspect cuffed: 21-year-old Air National Guardsman

The FBI has detained a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman suspected of leaking a trove of classified Pentagon documents on Discord. In the past few minutes, US Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed the arrest, saying Jack Douglas Teixeira of the United States Air Force National Guard in Massachusetts was nabbed earlier …

[Chris Miller]

IF (big 'if') these really are highly classified documents, one has to ask why such a junior person even had access to them. 9/11 led to accusations that the various elements of US intelligence operations failed to 'join the dots', and as a result many of the partitions between secure data were removed. This was one of the factors that allowed Manning (an equally junior operative) to access and copy so much classified information.

[mattaw2001]

In my experience the folks in command want their 7am morning briefings, and they sure as hell are not writing or presenting them.

[Doctor Syntax]

But they do need to vet whoever gets to do the work a bit more carefully than this.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Security vetting military is always a bit tricky.

We're looking for staff who love wearing uniforms and blindly following orders and kill without question but aren't facist gun nuts.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Fascists aren't gun nuts, in fact they don't want anyone but the government to be armed.

[Michael Wojcik]

Pfft. A couple of decades ago I read a report that claimed there were then around a million US citizens with Top Secret clearance. I assume there are quite a bit more now. The Federal government is huge, and at that scale it's very difficult to be vigilant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whipped them out of the secure burn bag? Not the first time that’s been done.

[WonkoTheSane]

The BBC are saying he was a "Cyber Transport Systems journeyman" in the ANG's 102nd Intelligence Wing, a role that requires a Top-Secret clearance.

[Anonymous Coward]

The really big IF here, is IF this is true THEN Biden has lied to congress, which should lead to impeachment as he stated that the US had no troops on the ground in Ukraine. And he should GOTO gail.

Talk about burying the lede.

I'm not sure why I wrote the first sentence in pseudo BASIC.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're not terribly familiar with the concept of National Security, are you?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pray tell, explain what you mean?

I'm saying that it's one story that a 21 year old has breached security. It's a BIGGER story that from that leak it's clear that the president has lied to congress. Most media outlets seem to be ignoring this part, hence burying the lede. Why am I not familiar with National Security?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I being paranoid? When I just get thumbs down on posts like this I tend to think it's 77th Brigade or similar.

https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brigades/6th-united-kingdom-division/77-brigade/

who employ people to scour "social media" and tip the scales in the favour of national narrative (or narrative which might hurt our Special Relationship). Does Register forums count as "social media" and are we fair game as we could be "hostile state actors" as far as they can tell. It's not as if we have to identify ourselves on here, so I guess we *could* be foreign.

RSVP.

[Cav]

Conspiracy idiocy. People just think you are wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well to be fair (to myself) I did start with "Am I being paranoid?". I guess I just don't understand WHY people think I'm wrong. I mean, he DID say that and the leak does say they have special forces on the ground. The UK has even more. But yeah, it does seem a bit of a stretch and conspiracy idiocy. It's just that after reading The Twitter Files, it's documented that the Americans were very much up to doing stuff like that on Twitter, so it's not that much of a stretch to think that the UK is doing it too. Although infiltrating The Reg forums is probably a little futile.

[Graham Cobb]

Except that downvoting here has absolutely no effect so the spooks aren't going to waste time on that.

On some platforms (Twitter in the old days, I think), downvoting might affect the visibility of comments, which is a different matter altogether.

Frankly we all just think you are a right-wing-nut. WTF has Biden got to do with this??? Take your trivial US politics antics somewhere else.

Oh, and if you want anyone to engage with your political discussion seriously, put your name to it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't mind the anonymity (yes, I'm biased :) ), but it does get on my nerves that some people automatically assume there must be some vast conspiracy simply becaise others tell them that they're flat out wrong, and so wrong that anyone with even a smidgen of skill and logic (i.e. a 5 year old) can work it out on the basic of facts. Ah, yes, they can only handle alternative facts, I forgot about that.

If it's white, they wil claim a conspiracy exists after they have called it black and you correct them. They're irritating, stupid, and the only reason they even have a voice is via social media because in real life you could at least avoid them. But that's why social media does not hold one iota attraction for me: it isn't. Not social, and not reliable as media either.

[doublelayer]

Or alternatively, people who read the comments section disagree with you. You got 7 on your last post at time of writing. Which is more reasonable: seven whole people out of the thousands who read this disagreed with your post enough to push a button, or an army unit unrelated to the story or your comment decided to create fake votes that don't change anything, but they only managed to make seven of them? If someone came to me and told me to have a phantom army of voter bots, after asking a lot of why questions, I could make a lot more than seven.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah could be. On the other hand, it would be a bit suspicious if anything that was anti-government suddenly got hundreds of downvotes (which makes it seem less credible).

Probably just paranoid, like I said, but after reading The Twitter Files my mind was a bit blown by the petty lengths they will go to, just to discredit twitter accounts (sometimes ones with just a few hundred followers). I know it doesn't make sense, but that doesn't mean it's not possible?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some of the documents found doing the rounds on social media appear to have been altered when not seen in their original chat group. The MOD in London have disputed the UK special forces in Ukraine figures quoted in documents for example

[M.V. Lipvig]

I'm no Biden fan, but did he lie to Congress, or did he withhold secret information during a public address? If we're backing Ukraine with Special Forces on the sly, but don't have ground troops in place, then Biden would have been correct to tell Congress in general that we have no troops in Ukraine, then tell the Congressional security group behind closed doors, "except some Special Forces members."

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately you will find that a large % of the populace have ingested the kool-aid and the concepts of 'rule of law', 'due process' and 'holding those in power to account' are long gone so long as the narrative is maintained and their happy little existence remains one of blissful ignorance.

If this leak had contained something about the orange man or (if in the UK) the tory party then the leaker would be being protected by the press and the unwashed masses would be praising them for exposing evil deeds.

There is a vast amount of money being made by both sides in this proxy war that is supposedly the orange man's fault and this cannot be allowed to stop.

[Cav]

You can't really be that naive and ignorant? Surely? The president isn't going to let everyone know that there are observers on the ground in a warzone. Do you seriously expect public notification, that alerts our enemies and puts operatives at risk..?

Dear Gods, you and Black Holes have a lot in common.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sure that if orange man was still president you would be saying something very different.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you calling me fat? Or just heavy? Ot just un-illuminating?

So, it's OK for El Presidente to lie to Congress? Strange how it's really not OK for Boris or Trump to lie (about something far far less serious), but it's OK for Biden?

He could have just said something about not answering questions about operational issues, and neither confirm or deny it. Which should be the answer every time, regardless of whether they have troops in that country or not.

It's a bit like it seems to be OK with most of the world's media that America can just take people they suspect of being "bad guys", torture them and keep them there for 20+ years without trial, and then let them go. Strange fucking world we live in.

[Blazde]

Executive privilege is what you want to educate yourself on, I think. The complex interplay of separation of powers in US politics mean that congress can't expect the president to give the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth in response to any question, and they will all know that. In the UK where outright lying is more frowned on (although times are a-changin) in part because parliament is sovereign we get the slightly more seemly "I could neither confirm nor deny" stuff. If Biden suddenly started doing in response to a question on troops in Ukraine that it would probably draw attention, although I agree it would be better to pivot to that kind of culture.

In either case it's just a straightforward need to protect secrets affecting national security from public airing. Which is why Trump couldn't lie about less serious stuff not affecting national security. Not rocket science and not new.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen it quoted that there are about 1.25m people with his level of access, so the idea of "top" secret really doesn't fit the description.

Even within corporate circles, "need to know" classification is a necessary evil. And so it should be in the military too. Some roles clearly DO need to know. Unless your role actually IS to join the dots, did you really need to know?

But this is only one in a whole string of stories about classified information leaking out. Eagle Dynamics reportedly had leaked copies of classified F16 documentation; and there have been other arguments on the War Thunder forums where folks have resorted to posting classified material on equipment performance to justify their arguments over game imbalance...

It is all a bit daft.

[Zolko]

Yes, but the fact that this 21-year old (young) man had top-security clearance doesn't explain why he did actually have access to such top-secret documents. Are such TOP-SECRET / NOFORN documents lying around at the coffee-machine ? Was this young man participating in high-level strategic meetings ? And he even had access to such top-secret documents with a camera, for weeks. We're not talking about an opportunistic encounter, but systematically having hundreds of top-secret documents negligently lying around.

And another thing: why did an airbase in Massachusetts have printed copies of TOP-SECRET/NOFORN documents about the war in Ukraine ?

This all stinks of disinformation.

[Arthur the cat]

This all stinks of disinformation.

Apply Hanlon's Razor. It's my experience (including a stint in the MoD and having spook-adjacent F&F) that cock-ups are vastly more common than conspiracies. Giving 1.25 million people Top Secret clearance and then failing to compartmentalize information seems like a humungous cock up in its own right.

[doublelayer]

We'll start with the worst assumption you've made:

"And another thing: why did an airbase in Massachusetts have printed copies of TOP-SECRET/NOFORN documents about the war in Ukraine ?"

And where do you think they should be? They were on a military base, you know the kind of place where military people review military situations. Did you think that Massachusetts is somehow a bad place to discuss European affairs? Would a base in Colorado have been better or worse? If I had to defend it, I could say that Massachusetts is one of the parts of the U.S. closest geographically to Europe, but since that doesn't matter much, it's just one of the places where they reviewed information about the war. They're going to be doing that anyway, so I'm not sure why one base is suspicious to you.

"systematically having hundreds of top-secret documents negligently lying around."

Yes, this is probably true. Nobody said the American military did everything perfectly. They have a long history of doing stupid things and not having the best security record.

[Zolko]

And where do you think they should be ?

Rammstein or Langley or Pentagon. WTF would National Guard military review about the war in Ukraine ?

it's just one of the places where they reviewed information about the war.

Why, what are they going to do about it in Massachusetts ? Do you think they discuss the strategic situation about the Ukraine war in EVERY US military base ?

[DrSunshine0104]

The squads that may be on the ground in Ukraine may be posted out of a random military base in Massachusetts. Their chain of command would be out of the same base and would need to review on-going operations. The National Guard, despite the name and its traditional role, does a lot of operations oversees. George W Bush and his 'war on terror' revolved around sending a lot of the guard to Iraq. The US military is a large complex, overlapping organization so there is literally dozens or reasons why this junior National Guardsman would have access to this information.

NORAD is in a mountain, not at an airbase or in space. I once lived near US Midwestern Air Force base hundreds of miles/kilometres from the ocean and at least 75 miles from a large lake, but there was Navy personnel based there. Lots of places are chosen as bases for operations for many reasons, probably beyond our understanding or access to knowledge. I manage servers that live hours drive from me, but I still can do it from my home.

You know this is the 21st century and you are using a computer to communicate to people all over world from this site, right?

[doublelayer]

"what are they going to do about it in Massachusetts?"

What are they going to do about it in Virginia or Germany? You know that: they're going to look at it, think about it, talk about it, and create plans about it. Why can't they do these things in Massachusetts? The only time they need geographic proximity is when they're doing things on the ground, which these people are not doing. The American government has lots of military bases and they can do that kind of work in any one they want, just as a large corporation might have plenty of offices and, if they do WFH, even more places with a work-connected computer at which work can be done. Just as Apple might choose to do some work in Cork instead of Cupertino, the Americans can review military intelligence in any of the bases they want to. They can even do it in as many of their bases as they want to, for any reason as small as that's where the person they wanted to ask happened to be that day.

[M.V. Lipvig]

The US used National Guard units to bolster active duty, so there's a possibility that a National Guard unit would be deployed to, oh, I don't know, Ukraine. Therefore, the National Guard command teams are kept in the loop. Such information should not be available to anyone eho bumbles through the office though.

[Anonymous Coward]

re. why such a junior person even had access to them.

if this hasn't been explained yet, it was intentional, i.e. to advocate sharing info across numerous (numerous, numerouser, numerousest) agencies, to avoid another 9/11, etc. Obviously, you can't quantify potential worth if this leads to NOT having this or that 'incident' happening.

btw, approx. 1.2M people in the US have such access, apparently. That's according to Russian sources. No, they didn't say who exactly. I guess they're busy trying to figure out where exactly their own leaks originated from.

[NoneSuch]

"This was a deliberate criminal act, a violation of those guidelines," Ryder said. That is to say, in Uncle Sam's eyes, this wasn't a whistleblowing act."

Like that makes a smidge of difference to the US Government. If anything, whistleblowing gets you stiffer sentences.

Government commits crime. Government classifies the info related to the crime. Whistleblower release info to highlight criminal behavior and is jailed for 30 years under Espionage / Official Secrets Act.

[mattaw2001]

I really don't know any government that is pro this, unless it is deliberate. I have heard rumors (from several decades ago) that someone lost a lot of classified docs, which were subsequently found, forcing a government backpedal. The individual concerned was reprimanded, but promoted the year afterwards, no doubt having done their "duty" by their branch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Alan West?

Are you thinking of (then) Cdr. Alan West in the UK? He lost some important documents detailing proposed cuts to the Royal Navy. To make it worse, the person who found them was, by trementdous coincidence, a journalist. The cuts were cancelled by the Government after it all got into the papers. He was court-martialled and reprimanded, but ended up as Admiral Lord West of Spithead, a member of the Parliament Intelligence Committee.

[diodesign]

makes a smidge of difference

Yeah, OK, did wonder if someone would point that out. We included it in the piece to show that right off the bat, the prosecution is treating this as a straight up leak, and this isn't (from their POV) going to be an argument over whistleblowing.

C.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: makes a smidge of difference

So what's the problem?

Didn't he store them in an approved swimming pool closet

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: makes a smidge of difference

It sounds like straightforward internet bragging but without the Lamborghinis and Rolexes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: makes a smidge of difference

He didn't do it for money.

In the US, that means he can use the insanity defense.

[LogicGate]

Re: makes a smidge of difference

Is that something similar to the british "idiot defence"?

If yes, then I can see it working..

[T. F. M. Reader]

Re: makes a smidge of difference

He didn't do it for money.

So, it's not the first of the 4 main reasons for betrayal (MICE: Money, Ideology, Coercion/Compromise, Ego), but it well may be the last.

[Paul Crawford]

Re: makes a smidge of difference

Have an up-vote for MICE - not heard that before.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: makes a smidge of difference

i think I came across it in a Tom Clancy novel.

Funny how the world's looking more and more like one of his novels these days...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: makes a smidge of difference

In the US, that means he can use the insanity defense.

.. enabling them to lock him up in a mental institution and keep him on happy pills for the rest of his life.

Be careful what you wish for.

[Blazde]

Like that makes a smidge of difference to the US Government. If anything, whistleblowing gets you stiffer sentences.

Does it though? I don't think we have any cases where there was a deliberate act of leaking and the motive was 'winning a petty internet argument' so this case will be interesting. But the usual motives are whistleblowing in support of human-rights respecting liberal democracy, or 5th column activities against human-rights respecting liberal democracy (possibly secondarily to financial enrichment). The latter certainly seems to have earned stiffer sentences(*) in the US in recent decades, although it's interesting the true spies tend to have more leverage in a plea bargain because the intelligence agencies want to debrief them properly. Meanwhile leakers tend to only commit a single offence while serial spies get prosecuted for multiple.

(*) If Obama had commuted Robert Hanssen's sentence by 80% he'd still be serving 3 life sentences in solitary, and well.. he didn't.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whistleblowers are treated very badly as several NSA whistleblowers discovered. You might want to think of why Snowden decided to leave the country based on how badly William Binney and Thomas Drake were treated when they also exposed illegal surveillance being conducted against Americans.

Who knows if this leaker will find religion and claim whistleblower status. Just noting it didn't work for Reality Winner either.

[Blazde]

I don't know any area of life where whistle-blowers are exactly celebrated by the organisations they snitch on, contemporaneously at least. The best we can hope for is some protections and that's ultimately what's happening in these US intelligence whistleblower cases despite the heat. Maybe not enough but it happens - prosecutions get dropped, judges dismiss prosecutor's demands, there's public outcry, presidents issue pardons. Ironically the ones who go on the lam like Snowden and Assange probably end up worst off.

[Pascal Monett]

Um, no. The guy can find any religion he wants, posting classified documents on a Minecraft-associated server is not whistleblowing.

If you want to be a whistleblower, you send the documents to Wikileaks, or a reputable journal, along with a text stating your intentions and why those documents prove your act.

Leaking classified military documents to impress your buddies is not that in any way, shape or form.

This guy is going down.

[Cris E]

Any time there's a gap between arrest and a claim of some noble cause I tend to hear it in the voice of my kids, the longer the gap, the younger the voice. At this point any whistleblowing claim would come in at about eight years old and it's falling fast.

[_Elvi_]

Re: makes a smidge of difference

if they were properly "Filed".. the documents would be signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters...

This young fellow is a hack..

( And in deep doo doo )

[Boris the Cockroach]

If hes

guilty, then hes looking at a dishonourable discharge(and no amount of dressings will cure that) followed by a nice warm 25 year vacation.

Plus being used as an example in government staff briefing of what not to do. ie try and impress people in an on-line forum.

Also winner of this years "Being 'ing stupid' award

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: If hes

The year is yet young.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: If hes

He could run for president

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: If hes

indeed, the year is young...

https://malcontentment.com/a-russian-disinformation-empire-in-oak-harbor-washington/

[tmTM]

Re: If hes

I hope he likes long showers and rough sex.

because he's going to be inside for a long time.

[DS999]

Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

Someone in the Air National Guard has no reason to access that stuff. That's what's wrong with a system where something that's "Top Secret" can it seems be accessed by anyone with that clearance, without any random audits to look at who is accessing what to put some fear into people and keep them from accessing stuff they don't have a legitimate reason to see.

[Michael Hoffmann]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

You see this comment a lot, but someone explained elsewhere (I think it was Ars Technica) that that's actually an outdated view of the National Guard especially nowadays.

They are an extension of the active military (and have been called to active more and more), so they need they same knowledge and skills as those and to keep them honed. Apparently there's ANG units with F-35s. The way the US has been deploying, you can't have a bunch of "weekend warriors" with flintlocks, mostly skilled in piling up sandbags during floods.

The explanation made sense to me in that regard. However, why a 21-year old who hadn't joined that long ago needed a clearance to access that info, is a different question.

Which promptly led to speculation that he was given this by someone further down the depths... and the kid is just a useful idiot edgelord (is that redundant?).

[Zolko]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

And why is this stuff there to begin with : why are printed copies of TOP-SECRET/NOFORN documents about the war in Ukraine laying around in a National Guard airbase at all ? Who printed hundreds of these documents and left them "somewhere" ?

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

Top secret information is printed, not electronic, because it's too easy to slip a flash drive in and copy information. Sites that deal with top secret information, in my experience, don't allow cameras onsite, and do not have photocopiers.

[AVR]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

Cast your mind back. The year is 2001, it's mid-September. A bunch of hijackers just used passenger planes as weapons. The intelligence services were forewarned, but the warnings never reached anywhere useful because they were too deeply classified to move fast. The shock and fear will scar America for decades.

One of the minor effects of the episode was making classified information more available outside the silos where it arrives. Audits to check that this isn't being misused would be a good idea, but would take a lot of organisation and money and just haven't been implemented on the literal millions of people with access to some kind of classified information.

[Mr Dogshit]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

Because he was part of the 102nd Intelligence Wing. Presumably, military intelligence is kinda what they do.

Anyway, if you can't keep a secret, perhaps military intelligence isn't for you, eh Bradley Manning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

I'd say intelligence was lacking in this one, ironically so..

[Roj Blake]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

Chelsea. Her name is Chelsea.

Deadnaming is not nice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

"Someone in the Air National Guard has no reason to access that stuff."

The issue, and this is for anything linked to security, aka data security, cyber-security, all things security is this: usability vs. security. One always goes against the other.

If data would have been properly secured, aka decrypted only by properly authorized eyes, backed by a proper scrutiny process, it would have been a pain for said high ranked eyes to use the data. Therefore, the process was eased up (aka compromised) and some ego full idiot had access to this, possibly just to be printed on paper.

I work (partly) in cyber sec and I see it all the time.

[Zolko]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

for said high ranked eyes to use the data

How would high ranked eyes in a National Guard airbase "use" data about the war in Ukraine ? What were they supposed to do with that ?

some ego full idiot had access to this, possibly just to be printed on paper

you mean like: "Lad, be nice and print me these top-secret documents for my strategic meeting about our war in Ukraine while I drink my coffee" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

Someone in the Air National Guard has no reason to access that stuff.

I agree, but with all due respect, that is almost irrelevant. If you recruit the right people and motivate them properly, then even a weakness in classification and access control would not immediately lead to a leak (I'd add rewarding people who report they can access more than their clearance allows, but I suspect that first needs a change in attitude at higher level).

Prevention starts with having the right people work with the right motivation. I've worked in places where I had the digitised signatures of generals so orders could be written and despatched at short notiuce without them being physically there to sign. That was miles above my paygrade and I should not have access to that data for the clearance I had at the time, but they had worked out I could be trusted so we had a pragmatic solution for emergencies. Having trustworthy people also helps when your protective measures fail or are simply not up to scratch - it still works.

I know the aim is to turn everyone into robots, but putting effort in getting the people part right yields quite a few benefits.

[Diogenes8080]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

I just don't believe the sheer stupidity, not just of the leaker but of the idiots who put that security framework together.

It's the sheer scope of the leaks that is mind-boggling. 13 years after the Manning incident we have a junior airman, this time not even an NCO, with access to many, many different areas of intelligence. It looks as if the military are depending on a simple stratified access model written circa 1940. Can't they do attribute-based access control?

Yes, a very senior analyst might need to pull apparently unrelated information from different theatres. For anyone else, even relatively senior officers, the fact that they are requesting top secret data from topics A, B, F, J, N, T, R and Z should start an alarm ringing.

[Cris E]

Re: Why would he have access to any of that stuff?

Lots of NG guys have day jobs and his could be doing things that require a Top Secret clearance. But the number of people with Top Secret (the government kind) who treat it like Top Secret (the movie or microwave popcorn) is a substantial concern. It does sound like they're going to go on another round of emphasizing the seriousness of this, so that'll surely fix it.

[Anonymous Coward]

This lad is truly screwed. He has no political backers, think Specialist Manning and Reality Winner, and he is up against an estabilishment who was lying through their teeth.

What is most concerning here was the press who went after him and did the FBI's job by finding this individual. "Democracy dies in darkness - but we will go after anyone exposing that we have been pedalling lies",

[Cav]

"he is up against an estabilishment who was lying through their teeth."

There is nno idication of that. Stop supporting traitors.

[Jan 0]

BBC journalists need a clue.

Listening to the BBC News today....

Why do the journalists think that a Discord server is a "gaming platform"?

[Bear]

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

They need to send Richard Attenborough to do a documentary on gamers and other spaces on the internet. Then they might find out what a Discord server is.

[Michael Hoffmann]

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

Did you mean Sir David?

(also Richard passed some years ago)

[Bear]

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

Yes, quite correct. Sir David Attenborough.

Very talented family - not sure why I mixed them up.

[2Fat2Bald]

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

Most Journos have - literally - no idea what they're talking about. And this is fair enough. They have to write/talk about the "dish of the day". One day they're reporting on X celebrity dying of cancer, the next it's X car being recalled due to safety issues and then it's something funny about a pilot reporting a UFO & then an alternative energy source that could be the solution to our energy crisis (in a pigs eye.. but) & finally whatever a minor royal is doing this week that we should not approve of. Can they really be expected to be experts on all these subjects? In reality they have a few minutes to read the texts about it, write something up that sounds engaging, interesting and natural and then move on to the next story. Outside the specialist press it's unrealistic to expect anything other than a quick re-word of a press release from them and it's getting worse because they're all in a race to deliver the news first.

[SundogUK]

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

Up until maybe 25 years ago the major international press organizations managed in-depth, quality journalism on tight deadlines, every day. Nowadays people don't become journalists for those reasons. They become journalists to push a 'narrative.'

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

Yes, they do. Had it been Trump instead of Biden, the media would have paraded the information about and harranged Trump for the leak. Since it was Biden, the media still reported on it as they never pass upna story, but sold out the source for making their boy look bad.

[simfin]

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

Noticing more and more nowadays BBC are posting videos that have been on Reddit. Seems that have a new dept that follows r/interestingasfuck sub

This morning https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65258108 - was there few days ago

[IGotOut]

Re: BBC journalists need a clue.

It was a Minecraft discord server, so you could argue it was a gaming (discussion) server.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bragging rights

New achievement unlocked!

[ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo]

Bragging

For achievement locked up

[Potemkine!]

a twenty-something American who liked gaming and guns

Who also likes racist and antisemitic slurs. In other words, a scumbag.

I read somewhere that more that 1.25 million people can access secret documents in the US. I'm surprised there isn't more leaks, unless we aren't just aware of them.

[Paul Crawford]

There are multiple levels of "secret" and as others have already said, WFT was someone as new doing with access to "Top Secret" files?

A lot of "secret" information is things as critical like the colour of paint used in buildings and how much loo roll a battalion gets through, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

And these slurs were? What is happening here is straight out of The Running Man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqCch8WmFxc

"We don't lie!"

[Rich 2]

What an idiot

I can understand it when someone is caught stealing military secrets for profit or ideology or even (like the Wikileaks fiasco) a wish to expose wrong-doing.

But from what I’ve read and the news videos I’ve seen (interview with a guy from the circle of people who saw this stuff originally). It seems that this guy was just messing about and was just sharing this stuff to stroke his ego or for “fun” or something like that - he never intended for it to “get out”.

I’ll finish where I came in - what an idiot!

[PhilipN]

“deliberate criminal act”

And there’s me thinking, Land of the Free, innocent until proven guilty, right to fair trial, legal counsel… silly me.

[seven of five]

Re: “deliberate criminal act”

Not with national security, uh-uh, sir no sir.

[doublelayer]

Re: “deliberate criminal act”

He's going to get all of that. You seem not to understand what that means. He gets to have a trial, with his own lawyers, and the prosecution has to prove him guilty before he can be convicted. He still has all of those protections. "Innocent unless proven guilty" means what the court has to do, not that, before conviction, nobody can denounce what he did.

This is a popular and annoying argument tactic. Whenever somebody you like is arrested for something and people start talking about his guilt, even if it's really obvious that he is guilty, someone like you will come along to spout this nonsense. By saying that it was a crime and he has little chance of acquittal if the prosecutor can prove the point, they're not convicting them; they're just describing what they think the likely situation will be and in some cases what they'd like it to be. I do not have to presume that everyone on the planet is innocent of everything until a court decides otherwise. Only the court has to do that.

[PhilipN]

Re: “deliberate criminal act”

“what he did” .. and you have personal knowledge sufficient to say that. You just proved my point.

[doublelayer]

Re: “deliberate criminal act”

The great thing is that I don't have to have all the evidence before expressing my opinion, just as you don't have to know everything about me before making an assumption as you've just done. It's possible that I am one of the investigators on this case and know everything there is to know about the situation, but you didn't have to prove that I'm not (I'm not, by the way) before deciding that I was basing my evidence on the reports, not all the source evidence. This assumption is, in my mind, justified based on the evidence that has been released and the fact that the accused isn't trying to pretend he didn't leak the information. You may feel differently. Neither of us is the court, so neither of us has to prove this beyond all doubt before we can make statements.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: “deliberate criminal act”

Bear in mind regular defence attempts to have trials moved to jurisdictions where jurors haven't been exposed to publicity about a case. Not that I ever see the point, like a serial killer bang to rights might get a lighter sentence if tried in a different city than the one the murders were done in. But there is obviously recognition within the legal system that pre-trial publicity and speculation can compromise the chance of a fair trial.

[doublelayer]

Re: “deliberate criminal act”

That is to make jury selection easier, as they usually try to find people who are poorly informed about the facts of the case so they're hopefully impartial. Which is certainly worth doing, but it means they work to find jurors who don't know about the case, not that all of us must be denied information until a court has ruled on it or to restrict public statements on that basis.

If they were picking me to be on the jury, they would ask me whether I have existing opinions about the accused and the crime. I would answer that I was convinced that he had leaked the documents given the public statements and limited evidence released. If his defense was that he didn't actually leak them, then that would likely disqualify me from serving. If his defense was that he leaked them for a noble purpose, then they would have to ask another question to determine whether I had already prejudged the morality of the actions, and if his defense was that he leaked them but the punishment they were planning was excessive, there would be an entirely different question. On those questions, I would not have such an absolute opinion; I'm unaware of any noble purpose for leaking the documents, but neither have I seen convincing evidence of a malicious purpose; it mostly seemed like an ill-considered idea. This means that I'm not in the mood to throw the book at him, though neither would I advocate he be acquitted of all charges. If the lawyers were unsure of my impartiality, they might opt for safety and not allow me to serve on that jury.

[Anonymous Coward]

I blame management

everyone in IT understands "least privilege" I doubt it will come to light how he had to much - to protect the management.

To bad we can't have zeri secrets in government, but ya know, that would require credibility, humility and being responsible. 404.

[ShingleStreet]

He's not the only idiot.

Bad enough that the leak wasn't prevented - but it wasn't detected either.

It's 2023 and we're all well-practised in applying security like the layers of an onion.

Assuming that this user did have legitimate access to the leaked data, there are quite a number of security controls which could have prevented, or at least detected this event:

- Physical checks of printouts, PCs and removable media leaving secure sites

- Lockdown of user PCs to a defined security posture which excludes use of removable media such as flash drives and not allowing users to administer their own machines

- Exfiltration prevention/detection systems at the network perimiter covering what should be a limited number of proxies which handle traffic to the outside

Other heads really need to roll too.