WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon on Wednesday introduced plans to tighten safety for categorized info following the explosive leaks of lots of of intelligence paperwork that had been accessed via safety gaps at a Massachusetts Air Nationwide Guard base.
Airman 1st Class Jack Texeira, 21, is accused of leaking the extremely categorized army paperwork in a chatroom on Discord, a social media platform that began as a hangout for avid gamers.
Protection Secretary Lloyd Austin, in a memo launched Wednesday, ordered the entire division’s secured rooms the place categorized info is saved and accessed to be introduced into compliance with intelligence group requirements for oversight and monitoring. The modifications name for elevated ranges of bodily safety, extra controls to make sure paperwork aren’t improperly eliminated, and the task of top-secret management officers to watch customers.
Austin additionally stated the delicate compartmented info services, or SCIFs, have to be monitored to forestall the usage of digital units contained in the rooms. That effort would come with “acceptable digital machine detection methods and mitigation measures” contained in the safe areas, based on the memo.
In accordance with authorities, Teixeira, who enlisted within the Air Nationwide Guard in 2019, started sharing army secrets and techniques first by typing out categorized paperwork and later by eradicating categorized paperwork from the bottom and taking them house to {photograph} them.
Teixeira labored as a a “cyber transport methods specialist,” basically an IT specialist liable for army communications networks, which gave him vast entry to the army’s categorized computing networks.
The case highlighted the potential vulnerabilities the division faces as it really works to safeguard categorized info at army services throughout the globe which have various safety procedures and layers of safety, a senior protection official stated in a briefing with reporters on the brand new directives.
“There wasn’t a single level of failure,” stated the official, who spoke on situation of anonymity in accordance with Pentagon floor guidelines for the briefing.
Courtroom filings in Teixeira’s case revealed that Air Nationwide Guard supervisors warned him at the very least 3 times about improper entry to categorized info, however no additional motion to limit his clearance or entry was taken.
The official stated one of many issues the division present in its evaluate was that services that had been farther from headquarters had ambiguity on among the army’s categorized info insurance policies, reminiscent of when a safety violation was required to be reported larger up the chain of command.
Teixeira pleaded not responsible final month to federal felony expenses.
The beautiful breach uncovered to the world unvarnished secret assessments of Russia’s battle in Ukraine, the capabilities and geopolitical pursuits of different nations and different nationwide safety points. It has led to sweeping safety critiques trying on the giant variety of customers who’ve entry to prime secret info, who’s monitoring them, and whether or not or not they’ve a have to know.
Austin additionally directed the Protection Counterintelligence and Safety Company to develop methods to extra rapidly flag and talk issues to native commanders about personnel, reminiscent of by enhancing how “steady vetting info” — any up to date studies on legal information, credit score studies or different indicators which might be tracked as a part of background checks — might be extra rapidly shared to flag a potential security risk.
An estimated 4 million folks maintain U.S. safety clearances, based on a 2017 report from the Workplace of the Director of Nationwide Intelligence. Of these, roughly 1.3 million are cleared to entry top-secret info.
The Protection Division has beforehand been criticized for delays vetting new staff for safety clearances and for over-classifying info. Officers have tried to stability these issues towards efforts to give you methods to higher shield the paperwork with out additional slowing down wanted entry to info, the official stated.
Newer figures weren’t instantly obtainable. However some lawmakers have lengthy needed to replace the U.S. system of classifying info and add safeguards for the way paperwork are saved and tracked.
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Related Press writers Nomaan Service provider and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.