insanitybytes22’s post considers the problem of Reality Winner from a human perspective. Who is Reality Winner? My sneaking suspicion she is a product of our Lord’s sense of humor. We cannot make this stuff up, but He can.
Why the joke? Why the absurdity of Reality Winner? What does our Lord want us to see? Let’s consider how this happened. Why do we give people security clearances to people who (1) don’t need them, and (2) should not be given a clearance?
Sounds like easy problems to solve, right? Well, there are understandable reasons why these problems exist.
(1) We are not a serious people. Look who we elect. Consider what we expect our government to do. Doesn’t our government exist to protect our rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Because we live in a dangerous world, shouldn’t we be seriously concerned about protecting the rights of our family, friends, and neighbors? Instead, we elect people who make promises to give us other people’s things. Most of us have to know the people we are electing either can’t or won’t keep those promises, but we vote for those people anyway.
(2) Technical innovation has made our societies far more complex and war an engineering operation. Since no one by him or herself has the expertise to plan a large scale operation, leaders have to consult multiple experts. Think not? Then put yourself in the position of a leader who makes an important decision and that decision in hindsight proves to be a costly failure, many people die. Imagine your boss asking you this question: why didn’t you ask so an so? If you say because so and so did not have a clearance, do you really think that is going to satisfy your boss? It won’t. Because we the people too readily form lynch mobs, his boss is looking for someone to hang the blame upon. As a result lots of people have clearances that give them access to information they don’t need.
(3) Technical innovation has also made the exchange of information quite easy. Computer security, on the other hand, is quite complicated. Once we put information on a network of computers, it takes considerable effort (expense $$$$) to make certain only cleared people have access.Of course, these questions and issues only addresses a small part of the problem. We protect lots of information that doesn’t even need to be protected. Why do we classify information that doesn’t need to be classified? How does stuff that does not need to be classified get classified?
We could go on, but the point is that to even get start on solving such a problem we need to be serious about who we elect. When our elected officials look ridiculous, it is because of the clowns who voted for them. It is because of us.
Truth is stranger than fiction they say and I suspect that is true. These days I read the news and think, I could not have imagined that if I tried.
Reality Winner is the young gal working for the NSA, recently arrested for leaking a document to the media. Can anybody tell me why I am cleaning toilets while the young-uns are working for the NSA? Than again, I’m not entirely sure I could respect myself in the morning, so perhaps my career as a spy is not such a good idea. But I digress…
Let’s just start with her name, Reality Winner. That name alone pretty much sums up all that ails us. Reality is not something you “win.” That has become the very nature of the beast. Today people seem to believe truth is like a game of capture the flag. Social media, politics, fake news, reality is…
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Thanks Tom, much appreciated. A Divine comedy,indeed. I hope we at least amuse the Lord now and then. I do feel some mild optimism, change does seem to be in the air. 🙂
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a great addendum Tom to IB’s observation of the latest American idiocy…oy vey to be sure!!!
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I guess in an ironic sense the name applies.
She wins the reality award (a booby prize).
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After my head returns to my body due to the explosion………I’ll comment.
May take a while. 😉
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I don’t want to be Debbie Downer but…this is just a symptom of a bigger problem. Many of the new generation feel more loyalty toward outlier/outsider groups than their own communities. The repercussions of that would fill a book. As you note, Citizen Tom, technology makes it relatively very easy to steal this information (relative to the past). What once took a spy ten years to duplicate, encode and transmit (at very great personal risk) can now be downloaded in minutes and transmitted extremely easily.
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The sheer amount of information someone can pilfer and pass onto foreign sources these days is amazing. Of course, we can develop technology to detect, monitor, and stop such activities. What would be involved is real-time auditing. Unfortunately, like anti-virus software, such software would be a drag on performance.
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