As we reported on Thursday, a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman with the Massachusetts National Guard, Jack Teixeira, was arrested regarding the leaks of Pentagon documents. The arrest of a seemingly low-level guy raised a lot of questions — how he would have had access to such highly sensitive documents and if there is more to this story that we are not being told. The stories seem to keep shifting, but the “incompetence is stunning,” noted Marc Thiessen, the former chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush. But it’s right in line with what we’ve seen from the Biden administration, unfortunately.
But while the Biden team is making noises about trying to figure out how this all happened, NBC is also reporting that they’re looking into how to ramp up the surveillance/censorship state.
The Biden administration is looking at expanding how it monitors social media sites and chatrooms after U.S. intelligence agencies failed to spot classified Pentagon documents circulating online for weeks, according to a senior administration official and a congressional official briefed on the matter.
The possible change in the intelligence-gathering process is just one potential shift as officials scramble to determine not only how the documents leaked but also how to prevent another damaging incident. [….]
The intelligence community is now grappling with how it can scrub platforms like Discord in search of relevant material to avoid a similar leak in the future, said the congressional official.
There’s also the obligatory Jan. 6 nod.
However, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have come under criticism for how they responded to alarming posts on social media in the run-up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by former President Trump supporters.
The House Jan. 6 committee concluded the FBI and DHS were too cautious about acting on information gleaned from social media out of misplaced concern over potential free speech violations, NBC News previously reported.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) said, “I think it’s time that Congress plays a role here in setting some parameters.”
This comes on top of concerns about how far the proposed RESTRICT Act might go to intrude/suppress social media speech when it’s supposed to be aimed at TikTok.
Here’s a thought: How about the Biden team look into how this leaked rather than using it as an excuse to clamp down on speech and social media? By the time it’s out on social media, it’s already a problem. The problem here isn’t social media, the problem is how the material was leaked. How about being serious about that and what was happening here?
But the Biden team can’t even get their stories straight on that one. Here’s what the Pentagon said about the material that was leaked.
The leaked documents appear to contain “sensitive and highly classified material” and pose a potentially serious risk to national security, the Pentagon said on Monday. NBC News obtained more than 50 of the documents, which appear to be briefing slides for the U.S. military’s Joint Staff based on information from a range of U.S. intelligence agencies.
The documents include detailed intelligence on Russian tactical moves in the war in Ukraine, descriptions of Ukraine’s combat power and weaknesses, alleged sabotage by Ukrainian agents inside Belarus and Russia, and spying reports on allies, including South Korea and Israel. Much of the intelligence reporting in the documents signals intelligence — or electronic eavesdropping — as the source of the information, a crucial tool for America’s spy services.
Yet Joe Biden downplayed it all because nothing bad ever happens on his watch. First, he said he was going to “plant a tree.” Then he responded that there was nothing of consequence in the leaks.
BIDEN on the leak of classified military documents:
"I'm not concerned about the leak because — I'm concerned that it happened, but there's nothing contemporaneous that I'm aware of that is of great consequence." pic.twitter.com/06PPpAexYd
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 13, 2023
He downplayed the Chinese spy balloon situation too. His team claimed they blocked the collection of intelligence, then we found out that wasn’t true (although we didn’t believe them when they said it, to begin with).
If Biden can’t even be straight, how are they going to seriously address the question? Everything from them always seems to be an excuse about how to surveil and censor social media more.
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