I don't get it. Say someone generates a top secret report

[question everything]

Only 72 copies, each is stamped and numbered and there is s distribution list. How difficult is it to keep track on each copy?

We know that the National Archives knew that some documents were missing after Whiny was forced out of the White House. How come the ones found at Biden's Corvette (Corvette??) were not?

[CanonRay]

1. If you read a secret document and make notes

the notes become secret as well. Archives may not even know they exist. I think that's part of this.

[Bev54]

2. We don't even know if any of these are top secret.

[CanonRay]

4. Right. It may be "secret" or just "classified"

[SickOfTheOnePct]

7. Classified docs

Fall into three categories - confidential, secret, or top secret.

Then there additional caveats that determine who is permitted to see them, special access programs, etc.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Actually, there is lower level, yet. "SBU"

Sensitive But Unclassified

Before you can get access to even that, you get training, albeit pretty minimal.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

10. I said three categories of classified

SBU is, by definition, unclassified.

[Stinky The Clown]

12. Are you actually familiar with it?

It actually carries actual penalties

[SickOfTheOnePct]

13. Very familiar

I work in TS//SCI environment daily.

The fact that mishandling of SBU carries a potential penalty doesn’t change the fact that it is still unclassified.

[Stinky The Clown]

14. Are the Sunday comics unclassified? Is it legal to pass them around?

Yes and Yes

SBU?

Not so much.

I'd call that classified.

But this is your area of expertise, so if you say no, then by gosh, no it shall be.

Have a swell evening.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

15. You can call it whatever you like

But the fact the name actually contains the word “unclassified” makes it pretty obvious that it’s unclassified.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. I'll stick with classified, thanks. Consider:

These plans for a nuclear powered Mk2 Mod2 Brush, Tooth, Rotary are CLASSIFIED Top Secret

That movie we saw last week needs to be CLASSIFIED as seriously artistic

Some might CLASSIFY that weed as atomic level good

I talked to him just last week and would still CLASSIFY him as an asshole but with the caveat that he doesn't know it.

I would CLASSIFY her among the caring and nurturing.

How would you CLASSIFY a Tesla Model S?



See wut ah mean?

[SickOfTheOnePct]

19. As I said

Call it whatever you like. Doesn’t make it true.

[Stinky The Clown]

20. :snort:

[Throckmorton]

17. And the ever popular NOFORN

Kinda in the same boat as SBU, but the impacted population is somewhat easier to define. At least in my little brain.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

21. NOFORN

Is simply a caveat to any classification level, as opposed to being a classification level in and of itself.

But yeah, it definitely adds a level of who can or can’t see something.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

3. Classified is way different than Top Secret, Biden's Chief of Staff could walk into his home office

And hand him a piece of paper that says 'at 10am tomorrow you meet with Foreign Leader X at the White House, and at 1pm you have a phone call with Ambassador Y' ... and then boom ... that's a 'classified document'.

Archives wouldn't know of this, and it is not akin to lending library as you're envisioning. They're not in charge of knowing every classified doc that's ever created. AFAIK, no single entity is. The National Archive is about 'history', not about 'managing all the classified documents'.

And lets not forget how much talk everyone was doing 6 months ago about 'who the mole was at MAL'. Much of the information on 'what Trump had' prior to the raid was likely based on a mole saying 'there's a bunch of classified stuff here', and I doubt the Archive people actually knew 'what documents they were' ... until they were recovered.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

6. Exactly n/t

[SickOfTheOnePct]

5. It doesn't work that way

There aren’t numbered copies or tracking like that.

A classified email can be sent to 10,000 people, and each of those people can print 10 copies, and boom, there are now 100,000 classified documents.

There is no way to track that.

[GGoss]

9. Apparently, They Need To Hire A Librarian

They know how to keep track of stuff.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

11. How would they track

Something they don’t have or know about?

[LiberalFighter]

22. I doubt there would even be that many copies of a classified document.