• Twenty-one-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira may have joined Edward Snowden, Bradley Manning, and Reality Winner in the ranks of infamous leakers.
• People in the movies often joke about the “need to know.” But “need to know” is an archaic term. Because everything — intelligence information, special access programs, and all else — is on the Defense Department’s and/or the intelligence community’s computer networks. The issue is the need to have access.
• Teixeira clearly had no need to access the intelligence and other top-secret information he allegedly leaked. So why the hell did he?
• Teixeira held a rank, airman first class, equivalent to an army private first class. He was not someone who normally would be trusted with top-secret information. He was a junior Air Force “Cyber Transport Systems Journeyman,” which means he wasn’t qualified to do more than pull cables and connect or disconnect computers. But to do that work, he must have had “administrator” privileges on the Air Force computer networks.

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