re: Wikileaks is a threat to American National Security

quote:

---

... But in the grand scheme, open leaks, though we're alerted of them, probably do more damage to the country's credibility and national cohesion ...

---

First, the government and the country are not synonymous. What is being described here does damage to the government's credibility, and its ability to get people to blindly follow it.

Second, national cohesion is not a virtue in itself. If the government is acting in a corrupt way (infringing on rather than protecting the rights of individuals) then some will object and as experience shows, some will continue to support the corrupt actions of the government. Cohesion is disrupted. In that case cohesion could be recovered by everyone supporting the corrupt actions of government, or everyone demanding and end to such actions.

I prefer the second case, and so did the patriots who carried national incohesion to the point of fighting a war for independence.

I'll say it again: CIA and NSA (and other IA's) have a major problem. The organizations are too big and have too many people with access to TS/SCI information. From the Atlantic:

quote:

---

As of last October, nearly five million people held government security clearances. Of that, 1.4 million held top-secret clearances. More than a third of those with top-secret clearances are contractors, which would appear to include Mr. Snowden.

---

As for the problem of contractors, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said this:

quote:

---

"There isn't a phone or computer at [NSA headquarters] that the government owns."

---

That's shocking to me. We have basically handed over our national security to private contractors like Booz. On top of that, we have a lot of IT people who have keys to the kingdom (Snowden) when they should NOT have such access. Snowden literally walked around looking at all the info on various NSA computers because he was an IT worker. That's crazy. Snowden doesn't even have a college degree and had no business looking at SCI material that he wasn't read in on.

In the old days the spooks were career men -- they got hired out of college and stayed on with good salaries and benefits. They became part of the culture, a fraternity of sorts. Today we have Booz-Allen-Hamilton hiring random guys with no loyalty and then letting them see TS/SCI data. These employees know their jobs could end at any time and, as a result, they have no loyalty. They understand they are just cogs in a massive corporate wheel.

Top that off with the culture of the millennials (fight the man) and you have a recipe for a lot more leaks. It's going to happen more and more and there's nothing the government can do to stop it unless they take a serious look at internal reorganization. The sprawling IC has become too big and has too many people with clearances.

Also, sticking a few of these guys in prison for life (or executing them) might help as well.

I agree

I would like to know how we are "less secure"

I do not believe assholes having a harder time hiding shite from us automatically makes us less secure.

Libs still jack off into copies of the pentagon papers

quote:

---

If you support the leaks of hacked or stolen information just because it suits your political agenda, then you are a fool.

---

Obama commuted the sentence of one Bradley Manning because he liked to dress up like a woman. And Mr./Mrs. Manning stole classified information on a burned CD while he was acting like he was queening out to tunes on his headphones.

A coward and a centerpiece of the Democrat Party.

quote:

---

Honest question. What do you think the chances are that they'd publish something unflattering about Snowden if our IC leaked it? Or Assange? Or what if someone specifically tasked an asset to give what they had on some Russian interest to Wikileaks instead of passing it in routine channels? Do you think they'd run it? Obviously this is speculative, but we're not in a court of law. I mean we're Scaliamurderpizzagatejadehelmsandyhook.com.

---

I think that's a great question. It's clear to me that JA has am intense dislike of the USG, and I'm quite certain he takes great joy in sharing information about its operations with the world. I honestly think that JA would leak any credible info on any government, and i think his reputation will be on the line if he doesn't get some leaks from China and Russia out there at some point. That should ve motivation enough for him. Would he sit on some of it to protect mother Russia? I don't think so. so far there is no indication that he is acting as an agent for anyone but himself. If the IC had credible info that he was sponsored by another government, they would be wise to leak that info and harm JAs cred. We haven't seen that yet though, so either it's not there or the IC just likes getting beat up.

I dont inherently trust JA or WL, but their veracity is high enough that I would use their info with high confidence. Obviously I would want to continually test that assessment, for exactly the reason you outlined here.