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For those who fall into the camp that have never taken a security clearance before but have worked on more interesting tech ... why is this all so sensitive? Are we to ignore these capabilities as if they do not exist or what? Is there a handbook for stuff you read you probably shouldn't know about or are we ready to accept the fact everything is hacked or can be hacked? Personally as an independent small timer with no cool or a secret accomplishment to date ....... assumed breach is my day to day reality.



It's sensitive because our government is full of criminals, and that makes it look bad.


Really? Do we have names and evidence or just feelings on this? From the outside looking in ... any institution feels dirty for the fact institutions sacrifice the individuals in favor of the institute. But is this criminal or systemic? Does the system define the crime or is there an individual to convict?


One of hundreds of similar situations (literally) - [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/other-burn-pits...]

And the US is actually a relatively good gov’t on this front.


Good point, this is probably the gist of it. I imagine this particular case went something like this...

We have stuff that can't go offsite what do we do? Burn it. Why? Because that's what we always have done. Why? Because it is cheap, fast and it works anywhere. Ok, lets just burn it. Good burn it. Ok here is the burn pile dump secret trash in. We don't have a list of dangerous stuff to burn just a bunch of stuff with no other costly or timely plan to dispose of and everyone has 100 other important things to do like process stuff that is still useful and not being burned. Just burn it and save the country with a more important task on the 100 point todo list. Ok done, and had time to save the country left. Oops we burned carcinogens. Who? No idea ... something in the pile. Will we ever know? No way to know but xyz is highly classified so no can do.

Somewhere somehow the risk of material leaving site exceeded the risk of burning carcinogens. We can't ever let anyone know what we burned. That's why we burned it. The institutions rights again exceed the humans rights. Why? Because institutes are few controlling many. Why? Because humans are mostly automatic and predictable. Why? Because we programmed them to be. Why? Because we are lazy and useless without successful programming and hedonism rules the land otherwise. What's wrong with hedonism? We get complacent and die faster to the trillions of dangers we have successfully mitigated with our institutions. Ok burn it. Got it.


I personally would never work in intelligence because I'm capable of reading the big numbered list we can all see.


Which list?


Are you asking why classified documents are classified? Or why they remain classified after being leaked?


Neither but both are good questions.


If they declassified them, they couldn’t go after people trying to get them, or stop their own people from reading them.

They classify them because they either look bad, or would be helpful to enemies if they got out.

And as long as they stay classified, they get to keep the courts, etc. from using them too.




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