The Trust Is Lost Why is it there are so many leaks of classified information in every area of government in this country? Could it be there are too many documents classified which causes us to have to keep an eye on too many places. I was saying to myself when I heard about the latest leak, it was not only the leak that let us down, but the fact the info was on the web so long before it was even noticed. There are reports online that the secret information was on line for months, before we found out about it. How could this be? I would have thought with all the security we have on some truly unimportant things we must have incredible security on the important stuff. I guess I was wrong. I remember hearing how the government was watching all the chat rooms to try and catch terrorists. What happened, or did we ever really do this? This makes me wonder what is going on online with all the people sneaking over the border. How many of them are terrorists and are they using the internet to plan any nefarious deeds? I personally believe from experience too many documents are classified. When I was in the military I had a secret clearance, but the stuff I handled was anything but secret. Most of it was from magazines. I was at the lowest level you could be at the time. A private tasked with burning this stuff and mixing it with sand and burying it. I probably burned and buried more pages out of Popular Mechanics than anyone else. A lot of this stuff is just magazine articles, newspaper clippings, and such and stuff like that which was already out in the public, and it as no business being classified, and if it wasn’t, the person who was charged with getting rid of it would not need a secret clearance, it could be thrown into the trash. With less people with clearances there should be less problems. I heard on the radio there are about one million people with secret clearances in this country. That is totally ridiculous. How can this many people have a clearance without someone leaking something? We are just asking for trouble allowing so many to have clearances. I have to think the current leaker who was finally caught, could be just one of many out there who may not be even using the internet, but still spreading our secrets around. If a clearance is needed, should it be given to someone who is a kid or at the bottom of pyramid of need to know? If we got rid of all the crap which should not be classified, how many people would even need a clearance? I bet it would only be a fraction of what we have now. I don’t want anyone to misunderstand me, we need people with secret clearances, because some things should be kept secret, just not everything. Why is it we hardly ever hear about security leaks from other countries? I think one reason is their citizens are too scared to do that. Another reason there are far less people with clearance. In some places the punishment would be death. We have a very big problem, and it is not only that we have had a terrible security leak which has damaged this country immensely, but we now have a matter of trust issue with our allies. If you had a friend and you told them an important secret and asked them not to tell anyone and he or she blabbed it to others, would you trust that person with any more secrets? I don’t think you would. This is the exact problem we now have with our allies. They are going to keep more secrets from us and maybe even turn away from us thinking we just can’t be trusted. The damage which was done, just can’t be stated enough. We were already in trouble with some of our allies before this happened and new alliances were being made with what I will call the other side. Now I bet it will get even worse. I just don’t know what the young leaker was thinking when he shared all that secret information. It doesn’t look like he was paid to do this. It seems to me he was just showing off, but I could be wrong. Most of the time when we get a serious case, the people are spies, or disgruntled employees who are in some position where they handle secret documents like Edward Snowden and these people are traitors. I can’t help but think this current leak was not caused by a traitor, but more like a wise kid thinking he would impress his friends. How could anyone be this stupid? From what I hear, when he spread these documents around, it involved about ten or more of his friends and now they will also be in trouble. One radio announcer said some of the friends were under age so there is a possibility they might be tried in juvenile court, and if this is true the government faces a bigger problem. If it turns out there are some children involved, how would it look for the government throwing the full weight of the law against a bunch of children? These children may not have even realized how wrong what they were doing was. What a mess this has turned out to be. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea must be laughing their butts off. This is some coup for them. They got all this information without spies which was devastating to us and to other countries, and from what I hear may have gotten the Ukrainian battle plans. I have to believe just this one incident caused us to lose face in most of the world, if we haven’t already. I feel very sorry for this country right now and for the life of me, can’t figure out what we can do to recoup. As they say, trust is very hard to gain, but very easy to lose.
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