Hacker News Reader

Comment by londons_explore | Hacker News Reader

Are these documents actually leaked...?

It seems lots of journalists have them, and none of the public.

And none of the journalists will just publish the actual complete documents.

If you post top secret documents to a discord server, that's a leak. That's a leak even if everyone else on the server is cleared for top secret or even if no-one other than you is on the discord server.

Almost looks like one of those 'leaked to the media, but please let us review any article before you publish it' type leaks...

Journalists have a responsibility to make sure people are not killed (including their own colleagues who might be there) as a result of their reporting.

But previously with the Snowden and Manning leaks, journalists still published the leaked docs (with selective redactions for truly sensitive content). In this case, I've not seen any actual docs linked or published, even though they claim "they're on Twitter"

NY Post used one of the leaked images as illustration for their article (this one was available on 4chan for a couple of days, so not as sensitive as others it seems):

https://nypost.com/2023/04/14/jack-teixeira-made-frantic-fin...

From a quick skim of that (and also some other coverage), my first two impressions:

- This kid's emotional age is too low to justify anything resembling the the security clearance that he seems to have had.

- Sending the FBI's "special forces" and armored car out to pick up this kid was a stupid machismo waste of resources. Two grannies and a golf cart would have been more than enough to do the job.

How many guns did he own?

If he actually had "how many people I can take down with me?" inclinations, he'd hardly need to wait for the FBI to show up.

Impulsive people can act impulsively.

But if you actually desire a small response, then only apply a small stimulus.

It is done to send a very clear message to anyone else thinking about doing the same thing.

Is it disproportionate to the threat? Absolutely. But that’s not why it’s done.

Maybe I'm too old, or hang with the wrong crowds - but my sense is that that "very clear message" only works within a certain narrow, violent, and machismo mindset. Outside of that mindset - it sends quite different messages, most of which are counterproductive.

Any chance that you've seen an action movie or two in which a lone hero was hauled off by a whole gang of big, tough bad guys?

The message is meant for people with security clearance. "Don't leak documents, or this might happen to you."

Weren't they leaked on Discord? So also non journalists have them too.

I've seen documents that are claimed to be part of the leak on reddit. Hard to be certain, of course.

And for what it's worth, they were about role-playing games, which limits their impact even if they are bona fide :)

I’ve seen ~40 images of realistic looking gov docs on 4chan and Twitter back when this broke. Most of it was pretty boring stuff, and indicated Ukraine has a lot more hardware than Russia in-theater.

Seems pretty suspect.

I do wonder how does a national guard “intelligence” grunt have access to decisive foreign intelligence. Maybe the docs they have access to are fuzzed/not that secret.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com