Thread on classification

Mark Hertling on Twitter

Great info!

Many years ago I was an NSA intelligence analyst with a top-secret security clearance (seriously). The types of documents that Trump may have absconded with ought to have been accountable documents. In other words, there is a limited number of copies, each copy has a serial number, and there's a record of who has which copy.

This accountability could be an important part of how the investigation was put together.

Polly Paperclip : I’m willing to bet he gave some documents to an intern (or lower ranking employee) and told them to take them to the copy room for copies.

Oh, for sure. As you might imagine, many of those documents are on watermarked paper that reveals photocopying. And though I can't recall seeing an example, I'm sure that some are printed in black ink on red paper, which creates an overall black copy on a standard photocopier.

One interesting thing: Some Republicans are saying that the material is just mundane stuff that you can pull up on your phone. A lot of classified material is, in fact, mundane common knowledge.

a lot of the fuss over HRC's emails was there was classified material on the server - stuff that was classified after the emails were sent. I remember most of it was just really boring, like this ambassador is meeting for a luncheon on this day. But Republicans lost their shot over it/made it a convenient scapegoat.

at least one document was TS-SCI I believe

Boom:

The NY times today is saying this:

Polly Paperclip : oh damn, the actual list

He took documents at all three levels of classification lol

Yeah, SCI documents are NOT supposed to leave the facility. Well, really, none of them are without the proper authorization, but those are especially sensitive.

I have just been told that boxes marked "A" are physical evidence, not documents.

Polly Paperclip : what do you mean by that?

Page 2 of the receipt:

Amber Presumably it means that it's evidence of any type other than paper documents. Could be phones, hard drives, cameras, anything really.

Polly Paperclip : ok, ty for explaining that, that makes sense

I did a search, because while the spouse once had to have secret level clearance, he'd never even heard of SCI clearance.

I think SCI only applies to the top secret level.

Polly Paperclip : Yeah, the page makes it sound like its the highest security level?

Well, sort of. It's still top secret, but it's compartmentalized so that only specific people can see it, and it should only be handled in a sensitive compartmentalized information facility, or SCIF.

Compartmentalized information is controlled by codewords.

So if your document is marked Top Secret Sargasso, then only people cleared for Sargasso intelligence, and with a need to know, would be granted access.

The idea is that virtually no one would have access to all intelligence because people are only cleared for the intelligence they need.

(And if Sargasso is a real codeword it's pure coincidence; I just plucked it out of thin air)

Oh, okay - that makes sense. It did say top secret + need to know on the gov page that bing pulled up for me.