7 ms·

Say what you will about the cuts, you can't have people with zero clearance being given access to all of this data.

by wobblyasp 2y ago

HideousKojima 2y ago
The president has absolute authority on who has access to classified data (with the exception of some nuclear secrets)
- a12k 2y ago
  They probably meant “should,” not can’t.
- dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
  That's presidential fiat, not clearance.
- esmevane 2y ago
  No, that isn't correct. Clearance is a process and it hasn't been obeyed, and the ultimate purpose of it is to both audit potential recipients and train them in security protocols. The president can't elude it, though he can pardon them for federal crimes, which they're committing a lot of.
  - FergusArgyll 2y ago
    No that isn't correct. The authority of classification rests solely with the executive branch and the policies are established by EO. A President can absolutely classify and declassify whatever he wants. This has been done a million times. "It is true that the President has broad authority to classify and declassify, derived from the President’s dual role “as head of the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief” of the armed forces. The “authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant" ... "Finally, as the district court recognized, the suggestion that courts can declassify information raises separation of powers concerns.... such determinations encroach upon the President’s undisputedly broad authority in the realm of national security." - The New York Times v. Central Intelligence Agency, No. 18-2112 (2d Cir. 2020) The only reason the material was not considered declassified in that case was because the possible declassification was "inadvertent" etc etc. Even that ruling does not go far enough, and I'd be willing to give 10:1 odds SCOTUS would give Pres. full and complete powers over classification
    - caspper69 2y ago
      You are technically correct. What you are overlooking is the underhanded plays executed by a certain political party to allow one president during one 4-year term to appoint 3 supreme court lackeys in order to ensure no matter what bs went before them, they'd rule in his favor. The idea of the "unitary executive", a concept that has long been a wet dream of the Federalist Society and other conservative think tanks, is the most decidedly un-American thing I can imagine. Our country was founded on the idea of 3 co-equal branches of government, who each have the duty and authority to exercise checks and balances against the other 2 branches (trust but verify). Further, the citizens are supposed to have representatives in the house & senate who act as their voice on issues and execute their will and represent their interests. Nowhere in this entire framework was there a President with the authority to rule by executive fiat, who has absolute immunity from every law of the land, and who is given free reign to do as he pleases like a bull in a china shop. The President of the United States is not a Monarch and he is not a King. There is no divine bloodline in the US of A. The President should always be answerable and accountable to the citizens of the United States and the other 2 branches of government, and they should be held to account for his/her actions. The current legal framework is a travesty and a result of a gradual erosion of many foundational principles of our republic that have been ground down since FDR dared to empower the working man 80 years ago. In short, it's an abomination. And don't give me this "but Biden had that same authority" bs. Anybody who knows anything about politics know Dems are spineless. If a Dem tried to pull one tenth of the shit the Republicans do, Rs would be all over AM radio, Fox News, Breitbart, X, Rogan, screaming at the top of their lungs about socialism or some kind of "takeover" or telling people their country is being stolen from them, or some other boneheaded idiotic conspiracy theory. They know there's always someone to fall for their shit. Remember the guys showing up at the DC pizza place looking for the child sex dungeon in the non-existent basement? Yeah, these geniuses. It's always the same old shit- rich & powerful people don't like being told "no" by the government. Oh, and they also hate paying the government (we all do, but to them it's an actual insult). This is a tantrum of epic proportions, and all this crap is political theater for people who don't know any better. As an aside, not a one of them has any problem holding out their hand to get old Uncle Sam's money, nor do they have a problem suckling at the government teet their entire career. Ironic, no? If half these people knew they were carrying water because some spoiled brat of a man didn't want to pay his taxes or got pissed because they can no longer light a river on fire, they'd tell these gold-brickers to pound sand. But that can't happen anymore. Everybody is plugged-in. The algorithms that drive engagement drive the feedback loop. People can't even argue anymore, because no one knows what the hell is really going on. This is what our ancestors fought and died for: Twitter and Donald "I can't even make money running a casino" Trump. The worst part? These people truly don't care. "Gee whiz, why are all these billionaires building bunkers thousands of miles away from the continental US?" Because they're planning to light the USA on fire and bounce. They don't care if you are a republican or a democrat. They don't care about anything. They got theirs. They raped the system, rigged the system, and that's it. Why? Because, paraphrasing George Carlin, "You ain't in their club, you ain't ever going to be in their club. They don't give a shit about you." And one half the country is helping burn it all down, while blaming the other half of the country for "making them do it ha ha, see what you get you stupid <insert insult here>", meanwhile, the greatest grifters of all time will be sneaking out the back door with the loot to live out their days sipping mai tais, sailing around on aircraft carrier sized yachts, talking on satellite provided cellphones, and jacking off all day, while we continue to argue with each other about whose fault it is that all the money's gone. Pathetic.
  - perihelions 2y ago
    No, the greyed-out parent comment is correct. It's an unintuitive and weird legal truth, but it *is* the truth. - "While the president has the legal authority to grant a clearance, in most cases, the White House’s personnel security office makes a determination about whether to grant one after the F.B.I. has conducted a background check. If there is a dispute in the personnel security office about how to move forward — a rare occurrence — the White House counsel makes the decision. In highly unusual cases, the president weighs in and grants one himself." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner-security-clearance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner... ("Trump Ordered Officials to Give Jared Kushner a Security Clearance" (2019))
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Why would you need “clearance”? Only positions like with military sensitive things have clearance requirements.
- mind-blight 2y ago
  That's not true. Many government positions and rules require different levels/types of clearance. E.g. the DoD and DHS have entirely different clearances managed by different organizations. The DoD funds so much scientific research. There are entire budgets that are classified to hide how much we spend on - say - split satellites. Having access to the books of all of these orgs likely would require tons of different background checks and clearances from different organizations under normal circumstances
fsckboy 2y ago
at the same time, far, far too much stuff is classified not to protect national interest, but to protect the spooks and deep military industrial state neocons from scrutiny.
- a12k 2y ago
  Like what?
  - wahnfrieden 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
- ihuman 2y ago
  Its safer for the people in charge of determining classification to overclassify and be wrong than underclassify and be wrong
jonhohle 2y ago
Why shouldn’t all public transactions be public? IRS and personal taxes may be legitimate since it’s, well, personal, but we are all “shareholders” with equal stake in all other payments. This is the perfect use case for public ledger. We should all have access to all of this data. All outflows should note which bill authorized that expenditure, every bureaucrat that’s involved with spending it. If I’m getting $600 in income tracked as a free citizen, I want the even more accountability for anyone spending that amount on behalf of the government. There’s almost certainly no clearance requirement for what they’ve looked at already. Maybe HIPAA. I’m not sure why one executive branch org has any more or less right to access this data than any other.
- viraptor 2y ago
  They had access to both financial and personal data. This included for example social security numbers and bank accounts. Sure, more financial data being public would be nice, but the current dataset as it is can't be made public safely and definitely needs clearance.
  - jonhohle 2y ago
    Is that not how audits work?
    - viraptor 2y ago
      By assigning random people with no experience and criminal work history to an internal system with no data restriction on personal information scope? No, that's not how they work. What are you even asking?
      - jonhohle 2y ago
        You’re confusing the point. The data accessed so far is not classified. Where does a clearance requirement come from?
        2y ago
mbrumlow 2y ago
All this data? We really don’t know what data is being accessed. We have a lot of people saying lots of things about the access. Such as he will block payments or tarter people based on how they vote. You have not claimed those so I won’t rebuttal then here. But “all this data” I will. The systems bending accessed are the ones which handle money approved by congress to be spent in a specific way. As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live. Even more so that the specific legislation that granted the money was already public. Now let’s say there are social security numbers and maybe even social security numbers tied to addresses or even names. This is still not a reason to not allow an audit. You might say. Okay let’s audit. But people need to be verified. And at this point your argument is watered down to “I don’t like who is doing this”, which is the same bullshit politics we deal with in any tech company and the same bs that only delays results. If people were actually worried they would not be trying to stop musk. What they would actually be doing is asking for somebody who they politically align with to also have access to the data and perform their own audit, on top of making much if not all of the data public so those with real trust issues can draw their own conclusions.
- talldayo 2y ago
  > As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live. As a taxpayer, I'm offended that more of my money isn't spent protecting it. Clearly it wasn't enough to stop a rudimentary attack. I can give you three good reasons this is offensive to American liberty in an apolitical context: 1. The personal information of federal employees should remain private in respects to the Civil Rights act and the impartiality of hiring all candidates. This is what protects both Democrats and Republicans from having punitive action held against them by political opposition. 2. America's actual itemized expenditure is a matter of national security. Publishing a precise budget lets an adversary (of which America has many) estimate our weaknesses and, if specific enough, predict our intent before we strike. The current system of budgeting rather than begging is safe and can still be audited by both parties. 3. Elon Musk has stated business interests in opposing Apple and Google, both of which have secret testimonies he could access for illegal leverage against them in negotiations. Allowing him unfettered access to government records and defunding regulators is an expressly unfair business advantage that should not be tolerated in any free market.

Say what you will about the cuts, you can't have people with zero clearance being given access to all of this data.

HideousKojima 2y ago

The president has absolute authority on who has access to classified data (with the exception of some nuclear secrets)

a12k 2y ago
They probably meant “should,” not can’t.
dkjaudyeqooe 2y ago
That's presidential fiat, not clearance.
esmevane 2y ago
No, that isn't correct. Clearance is a process and it hasn't been obeyed, and the ultimate purpose of it is to both audit potential recipients and train them in security protocols. The president can't elude it, though he can pardon them for federal crimes, which they're committing a lot of.
- FergusArgyll 2y ago
  No that isn't correct. The authority of classification rests solely with the executive branch and the policies are established by EO. A President can absolutely classify and declassify whatever he wants. This has been done a million times. "It is true that the President has broad authority to classify and declassify, derived from the President’s dual role “as head of the Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief” of the armed forces. The “authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant" ... "Finally, as the district court recognized, the suggestion that courts can declassify information raises separation of powers concerns.... such determinations encroach upon the President’s undisputedly broad authority in the realm of national security." - The New York Times v. Central Intelligence Agency, No. 18-2112 (2d Cir. 2020) The only reason the material was not considered declassified in that case was because the possible declassification was "inadvertent" etc etc. Even that ruling does not go far enough, and I'd be willing to give 10:1 odds SCOTUS would give Pres. full and complete powers over classification
  - caspper69 2y ago
    You are technically correct. What you are overlooking is the underhanded plays executed by a certain political party to allow one president during one 4-year term to appoint 3 supreme court lackeys in order to ensure no matter what bs went before them, they'd rule in his favor. The idea of the "unitary executive", a concept that has long been a wet dream of the Federalist Society and other conservative think tanks, is the most decidedly un-American thing I can imagine. Our country was founded on the idea of 3 co-equal branches of government, who each have the duty and authority to exercise checks and balances against the other 2 branches (trust but verify). Further, the citizens are supposed to have representatives in the house & senate who act as their voice on issues and execute their will and represent their interests. Nowhere in this entire framework was there a President with the authority to rule by executive fiat, who has absolute immunity from every law of the land, and who is given free reign to do as he pleases like a bull in a china shop. The President of the United States is not a Monarch and he is not a King. There is no divine bloodline in the US of A. The President should always be answerable and accountable to the citizens of the United States and the other 2 branches of government, and they should be held to account for his/her actions. The current legal framework is a travesty and a result of a gradual erosion of many foundational principles of our republic that have been ground down since FDR dared to empower the working man 80 years ago. In short, it's an abomination. And don't give me this "but Biden had that same authority" bs. Anybody who knows anything about politics know Dems are spineless. If a Dem tried to pull one tenth of the shit the Republicans do, Rs would be all over AM radio, Fox News, Breitbart, X, Rogan, screaming at the top of their lungs about socialism or some kind of "takeover" or telling people their country is being stolen from them, or some other boneheaded idiotic conspiracy theory. They know there's always someone to fall for their shit. Remember the guys showing up at the DC pizza place looking for the child sex dungeon in the non-existent basement? Yeah, these geniuses. It's always the same old shit- rich & powerful people don't like being told "no" by the government. Oh, and they also hate paying the government (we all do, but to them it's an actual insult). This is a tantrum of epic proportions, and all this crap is political theater for people who don't know any better. As an aside, not a one of them has any problem holding out their hand to get old Uncle Sam's money, nor do they have a problem suckling at the government teet their entire career. Ironic, no? If half these people knew they were carrying water because some spoiled brat of a man didn't want to pay his taxes or got pissed because they can no longer light a river on fire, they'd tell these gold-brickers to pound sand. But that can't happen anymore. Everybody is plugged-in. The algorithms that drive engagement drive the feedback loop. People can't even argue anymore, because no one knows what the hell is really going on. This is what our ancestors fought and died for: Twitter and Donald "I can't even make money running a casino" Trump. The worst part? These people truly don't care. "Gee whiz, why are all these billionaires building bunkers thousands of miles away from the continental US?" Because they're planning to light the USA on fire and bounce. They don't care if you are a republican or a democrat. They don't care about anything. They got theirs. They raped the system, rigged the system, and that's it. Why? Because, paraphrasing George Carlin, "You ain't in their club, you ain't ever going to be in their club. They don't give a shit about you." And one half the country is helping burn it all down, while blaming the other half of the country for "making them do it ha ha, see what you get you stupid <insert insult here>", meanwhile, the greatest grifters of all time will be sneaking out the back door with the loot to live out their days sipping mai tais, sailing around on aircraft carrier sized yachts, talking on satellite provided cellphones, and jacking off all day, while we continue to argue with each other about whose fault it is that all the money's gone. Pathetic.
- perihelions 2y ago
  No, the greyed-out parent comment is correct. It's an unintuitive and weird legal truth, but it *is* the truth. - "While the president has the legal authority to grant a clearance, in most cases, the White House’s personnel security office makes a determination about whether to grant one after the F.B.I. has conducted a background check. If there is a dispute in the personnel security office about how to move forward — a rare occurrence — the White House counsel makes the decision. In highly unusual cases, the president weighs in and grants one himself." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner-security-clearance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/us/politics/jared-kushner... ("Trump Ordered Officials to Give Jared Kushner a Security Clearance" (2019))

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Why would you need “clearance”? Only positions like with military sensitive things have clearance requirements.

mind-blight 2y ago
That's not true. Many government positions and rules require different levels/types of clearance. E.g. the DoD and DHS have entirely different clearances managed by different organizations. The DoD funds so much scientific research. There are entire budgets that are classified to hide how much we spend on - say - split satellites. Having access to the books of all of these orgs likely would require tons of different background checks and clearances from different organizations under normal circumstances

fsckboy 2y ago

at the same time, far, far too much stuff is classified not to protect national interest, but to protect the spooks and deep military industrial state neocons from scrutiny.

a12k 2y ago
Like what?
- wahnfrieden 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A
ihuman 2y ago
Its safer for the people in charge of determining classification to overclassify and be wrong than underclassify and be wrong

jonhohle 2y ago

Why shouldn’t all public transactions be public? IRS and personal taxes may be legitimate since it’s, well, personal, but we are all “shareholders” with equal stake in all other payments. This is the perfect use case for public ledger. We should all have access to all of this data. All outflows should note which bill authorized that expenditure, every bureaucrat that’s involved with spending it. If I’m getting $600 in income tracked as a free citizen, I want the even more accountability for anyone spending that amount on behalf of the government. There’s almost certainly no clearance requirement for what they’ve looked at already. Maybe HIPAA. I’m not sure why one executive branch org has any more or less right to access this data than any other.

viraptor 2y ago
They had access to both financial and personal data. This included for example social security numbers and bank accounts. Sure, more financial data being public would be nice, but the current dataset as it is can't be made public safely and definitely needs clearance.
- jonhohle 2y ago
  Is that not how audits work?
  - viraptor 2y ago
    By assigning random people with no experience and criminal work history to an internal system with no data restriction on personal information scope? No, that's not how they work. What are you even asking?
    - jonhohle 2y ago
      You’re confusing the point. The data accessed so far is not classified. Where does a clearance requirement come from?
      - 2y ago

mbrumlow 2y ago

All this data? We really don’t know what data is being accessed. We have a lot of people saying lots of things about the access. Such as he will block payments or tarter people based on how they vote. You have not claimed those so I won’t rebuttal then here. But “all this data” I will. The systems bending accessed are the ones which handle money approved by congress to be spent in a specific way. As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live. Even more so that the specific legislation that granted the money was already public. Now let’s say there are social security numbers and maybe even social security numbers tied to addresses or even names. This is still not a reason to not allow an audit. You might say. Okay let’s audit. But people need to be verified. And at this point your argument is watered down to “I don’t like who is doing this”, which is the same bullshit politics we deal with in any tech company and the same bs that only delays results. If people were actually worried they would not be trying to stop musk. What they would actually be doing is asking for somebody who they politically align with to also have access to the data and perform their own audit, on top of making much if not all of the data public so those with real trust issues can draw their own conclusions.

talldayo 2y ago
> As a tax payer I am appalled that this data is not already public and broadcasted live. As a taxpayer, I'm offended that more of my money isn't spent protecting it. Clearly it wasn't enough to stop a rudimentary attack. I can give you three good reasons this is offensive to American liberty in an apolitical context: 1. The personal information of federal employees should remain private in respects to the Civil Rights act and the impartiality of hiring all candidates. This is what protects both Democrats and Republicans from having punitive action held against them by political opposition. 2. America's actual itemized expenditure is a matter of national security. Publishing a precise budget lets an adversary (of which America has many) estimate our weaknesses and, if specific enough, predict our intent before we strike. The current system of budgeting rather than begging is safe and can still be audited by both parties. 3. Elon Musk has stated business interests in opposing Apple and Google, both of which have secret testimonies he could access for illegal leverage against them in negotiations. Allowing him unfettered access to government records and defunding regulators is an expressly unfair business advantage that should not be tolerated in any free market.