Seymour Flops
Diamond Member
I won't even mention names or party in this thread. I want to talk about an aspect of the idea of classified information and documents that is not at all a function of party and politics. That is my contention that way too much information is classified and that it is almost impossible to avoid having classified documents at home, if a person works at home.
First of all, why should any information owned by the government in a democratic republic ever be kept secret from the taxpaying citizens who own the government and therefore own that information? I believe there should be two requirements:
1) Knowledge of the information would give significant assistance to adversaries seeking to harm the United States and/or the people of the United States.
2) The information is not already out in the public.
At the lowest level, classified information is in reports such as the number of vehicles that are currently inoperable in a military unit's motor pool, number of soldiers on leave, number on sick call, etc. Those type reports are generated daily and are classified "Confidential." I'm fine with keeping that information out of the public.
When I was in the Army, we did those reports by pen and paper or typewriters, and hand-carried them up the chain. I'm sure the adversaries can access it, now that it is done online, but we should at least try to keep it close.
At a higher level, information such as nuclear codes, and locations of submarines, attack and defense plans, would be highly classified and rightfully so, since that information is not known to the public and could certainly help our allies.
But, the overwhelming majority of classified information satisfies neither requirement.
Classified information such as everything that the government knows about the Kennedy assassination, the FBI's treatment of Martin Luther King and other perceived political enemies, how many agitators the FBI had at the Capital on Jan 6, the CIA's human experiments, CIA interference in the politics and conflicts in other countries, etc. is not really a secret. There are books, news articles, 60 Minutes stories, and Netflix documentaries about those things.
Nor is the country or its people harmed by the fact that these things are widely known. Theoretically, the people in a constitutional democratic republic benefit from knowing what the government does.
So, why are those things classified, if the government knows that we know them and doesn't really care that we know them?
The answer is simple: To give government officials, that we pay and supposedly choose, an excuse to avoid answering questions about those things. Through the magic of classification, our executive branch can avoid all oversight by our legislative branch. They can also avoid all questions from our media. Therefore they can avoid ever being held accountable for anything.
What does the executive branch want to be held accountable for? Nothing, of course. So the default for any information is that it is classified. If not classified officially, it is "part of an ongoing investigation." (these days what isn't?)
So . . . if everything is classified, and senior officials are going to take work home with them, they are going to take home classified documents.
You may be thinking, 'take home work? I never take home work with me! I get my job done in 8 hours at my office.' I'm sure that's true. But that's you, not a senior government official. Whatever you may think of this senior official or that one, they didn't get where they are by only working 8 hours a day and only working at the office. They take home work and obsess over it. They keep it by their bed to skim it one last time before they leave for work. They don't spend every evening watching Survivor.
Let us not also forget that for about two years, working at home was all the rage due to COVID. We still can't get our federal employees to get back to "work." Blaming someone of either party for working at home is pretty silly. Notice it is the older folks that are getting caught with documents lately. They are paper documents. Younger people work with electronic documents on their home computers and that would never be "caught" by a lawyer stumbling over it. I doubt that the FBI technicians went to the home of every government worker who worked on confidential information from their home computer, to make sure they had a SCIF set up.
Point being, lets stop stressing over who had classified information at home. That's what those who want to run government as an underground enterprise want us to focus on. Lets focus instead on forcing them to be transparent and answer to their employers which is we the taxpayers.
First of all, why should any information owned by the government in a democratic republic ever be kept secret from the taxpaying citizens who own the government and therefore own that information? I believe there should be two requirements:
1) Knowledge of the information would give significant assistance to adversaries seeking to harm the United States and/or the people of the United States.
2) The information is not already out in the public.
At the lowest level, classified information is in reports such as the number of vehicles that are currently inoperable in a military unit's motor pool, number of soldiers on leave, number on sick call, etc. Those type reports are generated daily and are classified "Confidential." I'm fine with keeping that information out of the public.
When I was in the Army, we did those reports by pen and paper or typewriters, and hand-carried them up the chain. I'm sure the adversaries can access it, now that it is done online, but we should at least try to keep it close.
At a higher level, information such as nuclear codes, and locations of submarines, attack and defense plans, would be highly classified and rightfully so, since that information is not known to the public and could certainly help our allies.
But, the overwhelming majority of classified information satisfies neither requirement.
Classified information such as everything that the government knows about the Kennedy assassination, the FBI's treatment of Martin Luther King and other perceived political enemies, how many agitators the FBI had at the Capital on Jan 6, the CIA's human experiments, CIA interference in the politics and conflicts in other countries, etc. is not really a secret. There are books, news articles, 60 Minutes stories, and Netflix documentaries about those things.
Nor is the country or its people harmed by the fact that these things are widely known. Theoretically, the people in a constitutional democratic republic benefit from knowing what the government does.
So, why are those things classified, if the government knows that we know them and doesn't really care that we know them?
The answer is simple: To give government officials, that we pay and supposedly choose, an excuse to avoid answering questions about those things. Through the magic of classification, our executive branch can avoid all oversight by our legislative branch. They can also avoid all questions from our media. Therefore they can avoid ever being held accountable for anything.
What does the executive branch want to be held accountable for? Nothing, of course. So the default for any information is that it is classified. If not classified officially, it is "part of an ongoing investigation." (these days what isn't?)
So . . . if everything is classified, and senior officials are going to take work home with them, they are going to take home classified documents.
You may be thinking, 'take home work? I never take home work with me! I get my job done in 8 hours at my office.' I'm sure that's true. But that's you, not a senior government official. Whatever you may think of this senior official or that one, they didn't get where they are by only working 8 hours a day and only working at the office. They take home work and obsess over it. They keep it by their bed to skim it one last time before they leave for work. They don't spend every evening watching Survivor.
Let us not also forget that for about two years, working at home was all the rage due to COVID. We still can't get our federal employees to get back to "work." Blaming someone of either party for working at home is pretty silly. Notice it is the older folks that are getting caught with documents lately. They are paper documents. Younger people work with electronic documents on their home computers and that would never be "caught" by a lawyer stumbling over it. I doubt that the FBI technicians went to the home of every government worker who worked on confidential information from their home computer, to make sure they had a SCIF set up.
Point being, lets stop stressing over who had classified information at home. That's what those who want to run government as an underground enterprise want us to focus on. Lets focus instead on forcing them to be transparent and answer to their employers which is we the taxpayers.