According to the leaked documents,<\/a> the U.S. spied on South Korea and learned Seoul was worried \u201cthat the U.S. would not be the end user if South Korea were to comply with a U.S. request for ammunition.\u201d Seoul was concerned that the U.S. would end up relaying the munitions to Ukrainian forces, which would violate South Korea\u2019s policy of not sending armaments into a war zone. The leaked data also includes sensitive briefing content on Canada and Israel.<\/p>\nSpying on allies doesn\u2019t come as any big surprise. The WikiLeaks revelations disclosed that the U.S. tapped the phone calls of then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel for years, and spied on three French presidents. But when such surveillance is disclosed to the world, it\u2019s more than embarrassing \u2014 it sows seeds of mistrust among allies.<\/p>\n
Barack Obama\u2019s presidency was rocked by leaks attributed to Snowden and Manning, and Obama was right to pursue both of them criminally. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, fled to Russia and in 2022 was granted citizenship by Putin. Manning served seven years in prison before Obama commuted her sentence in 2017. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published the classified information Manning, a former Army intelligence analyst, had collected, is now in a British prison as he fights extradition to the U.S.<\/p>\n
Neither Obama nor former President Donald Trump nor President Joe Biden have been able to patch up what obviously are glaring deficiencies in the way the U.S. safeguards sensitive, classified data.<\/p>\n
The leaks associated with Manning, Snowden and Assange may have been more embarrassing than damaging, but that\u2019s not the case with the latest tranche of leaks. Their disclosure could work to Putin\u2019s advantage, and it could make it doubly tough for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to turn back the invasion and preserve his country\u2019s sovereignty.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian forces are in the midst of a critical juncture in the war. The positioning and capability of their air defense systems are vital not only to Kyiv\u2019s push to regain more territory from Russian troops, but also to keep Putin\u2019s MiG and Sukhoi fighter jets from entering the fray. A major step-up in the Kremlin\u2019s use of Russian air power could seriously jeopardize Kyiv\u2019s chances for victory.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s good to see that U.S. investigators are getting cooperation from Discord, an online chat service usually used by video game players, and a platform on which the leaks were posted. The documents themselves appear to be photos of classified briefing content printed out on A4 paper and folded up, as if they were shoved into a pocket before being brought out of a secure area. Strangely, some of the documents apparently had been uploaded on a Discord channel used by players of the video game Minecraft.<\/p>\n
Finding and prosecuting the people responsible for the leaks is a must. But it\u2019s equally important for the Biden administration to take a deep dive into shoring up cybersecurity for classified data.<\/p>\n
Too much is at stake in Ukraine to allow this to happen again.<\/p>\n
Snowden, Manning and Assange should have provided more than enough incentive for Washington to act decisively. It shouldn\u2019t have to take a devastating turn of events in Ukraine for the U.S. to, once and for all, plug the leaks.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
\u00a92023 Chicago Tribune. Visit at chicagotribune.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/p>\nKeyWords:: 36b05986-75a0-4182-8fee-f652f828c6a6
\n36b05986 75a0 4182 8fee f652f828c6a6
\nBC-US-DOCUMENT-LEAK-EDITORIAL:TB
\nBC US DOCUMENT LEAK EDITORIAL TB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The gaping holes that Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden poked into what America assumed were secure, firewalled troves of classified data taught Washington a sobering lesson about the importance of keeping secrets leakproof. Now, however, it seems Washington needs a refresher course. The Pentagon is scrambling to find the source responsible for a tranche of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4646"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4647,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4646\/revisions\/4647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}