US Intelligence Community Has Lost Credibility Due To Leaks (bloomberg.com)

Two anonymous readers and Mi share an article: U.K. police investigating the Manchester terror attack say they have stopped sharing information with the U.S. after a series of leaks that have so angered the British government that Prime Minister Therese May wants to discuss them with President Donald Trump during a North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting in Brussels. What can Trump tell her, though? The leaks drive him nuts, too. Since the beginning of this century, the U.S. intelligence services and their clients have acted as if they wanted the world to know they couldn't guarantee the confidentiality of any information that falls into their hands. At this point, the culture of leaks is not just a menace to intelligence-sharing allies. It's a threat to the intelligence community's credibility. [...] If this history has taught the U.S. intelligence community anything, it's that leaking classified information isn't particularly dangerous and those who do it largely enjoy impunity. Manning spent seven years in prison (though she'd been sentenced to 35), but Snowden, Assange, Petraeus, the unknown Chinese mole, the people who stole the hacking tools and the army of recent anonymous leakers, many of whom probably still work for U.S. intelligence agencies, have escaped any kind of meaningful punishment. President Donald Trump has just now announced that the administration would "get to the bottom" of leaks. In a statement, he said: "The alleged leaks coming out of government agencies are deeply troubling. These leaks have been going on for a long time and my Administration will get to the bottom of this. The leaks of sensitive information pose a grave threat to our national security. I am asking the Department of Justice and other relevant agencies to launch a complete review of this matter, and if appropriate, the culprit should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There is no relationship we cherish more than the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom.

Comments

Re:Good

[smooth wombat]

Just look at all the domestic spying that has been uncovered, admitted to, and simply resumed without anything being done about it.

You mean the domestic spying which got its real start when Bush forced telecom companies to install equipment which allowed the government to listen in on every phone call without a warrant? That he admitted to signing the executive orders and which were subsequently found to be illegal? Who then went and expanded the program?

You mean those hacks who kept saying over and over it's for our protection, that the right to privacy no longer exists?

Re:It's still confidential and classified.

[ausekilis]

He's the President. He's the highest level classification authority in the U.S. It even says in the Executive Order (possibly an old one):

(a) Top Secret. The authority to classify information originally as Top Secret may be exercised only by:
(1) the President;

Then for Secret and Confidential it's folks appointed by the Pres.

In Section 3.4 it even states that the President is exempt from the declassification process. The real argument is would any sane person give away that kind of information to a country that has been an antagonist for decades.