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MrRodgers -> The secret of TOP secret and classifying anything (3/16/2016 7:38:25 AM)
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It is quite ridiculous. I don't care the source here. From what I can tell, classifying anything is getting to be a joke.
Lowlights:
Espionage laws: Spying. But now there are those that want to use it for mishandling classified info.
Right now, there are thousands of people in the government who can classify information. Think about the reality: A person can put a “classified” stamp on a document and ensure it is kept secret, or can leave it unclassified, subject to disclosure, and later be accused of having revealed something needing protection. No one risks any real penalty for using the stamp; the only punishment comes from not using it. The result is overclassification.
Many times, I’ve seen information in a document marked “top secret” that is easily available on the Internet. Similarly there are numerous examples where the exact same paragraph is marked “secret” in one document but left unclassified in another. Yet people have been prosecuted for disseminating such information, and at trial, the government blocks them from using the unclassified document as a defense.
Moreover, the courts will not accept the argument that information should not have been classified in the first place. Given how almost random the decision to classify is, this is astounding.
Often, the motive for classifying something is to protect not that information, but its source. For example, a document states that Kim Jong-un of North Korea had a hamburger for lunch. That is not information that has to be protected, but that we know that he ate it reveals a source that needs protecting. This is where the classification system has to operate properly because real lives and methods are in peril. Yet this kind of information, in my experience, is typically not what is being protected.
A high-ranking official gives behind-the-scenes intelligence to a reporter in hopes of putting the administration in a good light. No one is charged. But a lower-ranking official tells a different reporter classified information calling attention to a Middle Eastern terrorist organization and is charged with a felony.
The former head of the C.I.A. gives classified information, including code words for intelligence programs and war strategy, to a biographer with whom he is in a relationship and then lies about it. He is allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor. But a State Department analyst who speaks to a reporter about the threat of North Korea’s nuclear program, and then lies about it, is charged with a felony and serves 11 months in jail. (remind you of anything ?)
But the idea that she [Clinton] violated laws about classified information is simply wrong. Any investigation based on after-the-fact determinations of classification would do nothing to protect national security and would distract from the need to reform classification laws.
HERE
The above is absolutely ridiculous and ripe for politicizing anything that comes out.
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