Air national Guardsman Jack Teixeira [Ta-SHARE-a] was arrested by the FBI this morning as the main suspect in the information leak. The highly classified information spread like wildfire as members of the group chat re shared the documents on the social platform , Discord. This caught the attention of the New York Times which reported the leak about a week ago and ultimately led to the search for Teixeira.
Teixeira allegedly shared hundreds of classified documents including intelligence briefings to a gaming group chat on Discord. Allegedly he was trying to educate his group of about 30 online friends.
USC student reactions to the information leak have been mixed.
Samantha Choi is a junior communications major. She believes that the information leaked in the last few weeks should never have been top secret to begin with.
SC: I think that the Pentagon Papers being leaked and the person who leaked it being arrested as well just further incentivizes people to keep quiet when the government is doing things behind the public’s back. There needs to be more transparency and just more protection for people who do decide to whistle blow.
Others say the government needs to do more to stop leakers. Mechanical engineering junior, Adam White says to start with some basic steps.
AW: I think that one obvious form of repercussion would be revoking this person’s security clearance. If they’ve proven that they’re willing to distribute classified documents to those without access, then I feel like it’s not a good idea to give them access to all classified documents.
And when people with clearance are looking at documents they shouldn’t be allowed to have cell phone cameras and other personal devices on them says, communications junior Paulene Ng Chee.
PN: if you don’t want these things to be spread out on social media, then like anyone who has access to them shouldn’t be able to just like have their personal devices on them if they can like record or like send all of these out because obviously, like things spread very fast on social media.
Teixeira will be arraigned in Boston tomorrow ...if convicted he could face up to ten years in custody per document. The pentagon has its work cut out trying to determine who should even have access to classified documents.
For Annenberg Media, I’m Alexis Lara