Cause SIPR, JWICS, GIANT etc… are nearly impossible to access - to the extent where for SCI info (which is arguably the level of data they were passing) they constrain you to having to communicate in a certified SCIF
The SecDef has a bunch of SCIFs but even NSC staff don’t to the same degree.
People pass TS/SCI data outside of the system regularly - congress is notorious for this and I have personally had multi year operations shut down because a congressman talked about it at a hearing.
I know of plenty of parking lot “SCIF” and sneakernet SCI conversations because time was an issue
The reality is this admin doesn’t care about the structures that the national security community is statuatorily mandated to use, but there’s nobody that is going to do anything to them about deviating.
Classified networks suck to use, anyone who can get around it does. The fact that its the secdef and nsc and they got busted just demonstrates that they view their behavior as more important than the system.
Left to the viewer to determine if thats a good tradoff
The thing is, it's up to the official classification officer to decide on how far is too far for classification down and this administration loves to short man everything so likely they decided it wasn't an issue, but it is, and someone should be blamed in my opinion since that is that official's job.
You can go around legally too just ask what is and isn't considered classified by derivative.
Most OCAs are 2-3 stars and are marginally aware of what they are signing
Rescinding or otherwise ignoring OCAs and caveats as an appointee, NSC officers or especially cabinet level person (don’t get me started on elected officials who have zero respect for classified information ntk) is basically an embedded privilege of rank
SIPR is easy to access, there are terminals all over. We had SIPR laptops in cabinets no one ever used. TS/SCI not so much, but there are still SCIFs on every military base and there are a lot of those. Not having access to proper facilities is a bad excuse for the people who work with the president.
SCIF (Wikipedia): A sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF /skɪf/), in United States military, national security/national defense and intelligence parlance, is an enclosed area within a building that is used to process sensitive compartmented information (SCI) types of classified information.
Cause SIPR, JWICS, GIANT etc… are nearly impossible to access - to the extent where for SCI info (which is arguably the level of data they were passing) they constrain you to having to communicate in a certified SCIF
The SecDef has a bunch of SCIFs but even NSC staff don’t to the same degree.
People pass TS/SCI data outside of the system regularly - congress is notorious for this and I have personally had multi year operations shut down because a congressman talked about it at a hearing.
I know of plenty of parking lot “SCIF” and sneakernet SCI conversations because time was an issue
The reality is this admin doesn’t care about the structures that the national security community is statuatorily mandated to use, but there’s nobody that is going to do anything to them about deviating.
Classified networks suck to use, anyone who can get around it does. The fact that its the secdef and nsc and they got busted just demonstrates that they view their behavior as more important than the system.
Left to the viewer to determine if thats a good tradoff