Classified informationHow did classified information get into those Hillary Clinton e-mails?
FBI director James Comey publicly rebuked Hillary Clinton for being “extremely careless” in handling classified information while she was secretary of state. Were the secretary of state and her aides careless with such information? And how can they maintain that they did not knowingly mishandle classified information? To answer these questions, we need to understand two facts about the classification of information and its transmission. First, the determination of what information is classified is subjective, meaning that reasonable people can disagree about the relative sensitivity of particular information. In fact, different agencies disagree about issues like this all the time. Second, Clinton has not shared classified documents, and this is not something she is accused of. It is extremely difficult to share a classified document electronically over e-mail, because most government agencies, including the State Department, maintain separate systems precisely to make it all but impossible to electronically pass information between classified and unclassified systems. This is partly why Clinton and her aides say so assuredly that they did not knowingly e-mail classified materials. The issue is thus whether she and her aides should have known that matters discussed in e-mails were classified or sensitive.
Jeffery Fields engaging a class in discussion // Source: usc.edu
Two weeks ago FBI director James Comey publicly rebuked Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information while she was secretary of state. This came at the conclusion of the FBI’s investigation of her use of a personal e-mail server. He subsequently testified on the matter before the House Oversight Committee. Comey reported that of more than 30,000 e-mails sent and received by Clinton, 110 contained classified information with eight e-mail chains containing “information that was top secret at the time they were sent.” Comey concluded that Clinton and her aides were “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
How could the secretary of state and her aides be so careless with classified information?
What information is classified in the first place and by whom?
How does that information get transmitted?
The answer to the first question partly lies in the way sensitive information is handled and classified at the State Department and other U.S. government agencies.
An important thing to understand is that the determination of what information is classified is subjective. This means reasonable people can disagree about the relative sensitivity of particular information.
Before coming to academia, I worked for many years as an analyst at both the State Department and the Department of Defense. I held a top-secret clearance and worked on issues related to weapons of mass destruction and their proliferation. Debates and arguments about whether certain information should be classified were frequent. More often than not the debates centered on why something was classified in the first place. This is why determining whether Secretary Clinton was careless is not a cut and dried issue.
Classification levels and what gets classified
The U.S. government uses three levels of classification to designate how sensitive certain information is: confidential, secret, and top secret.
The lowest level, confidential, designates information that if released could damage U.S. national security. The other designations refer to information the disclosure of which could cause “serious” (secret) or “exceptionally grave” (top secret) damage to national security.
