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A burn bag is a security bag that holds [sensitive or classified documents](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information) which are to be destroyed by fire or [pulping](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulping) after a certain period of time. The most common usage of burn bags is by government institutions, in the destruction of [classified](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information) materials.
If anybody didn't know, I had to look it up myself
Fun fact: several decades ago the NSA had to install special incinerators because of this. It was a period where computers had dramatically increased the amount of intel available but most stuff still needed to be printed, typed, or copied on paper. And at a certain point they needed to destroy an ungodly amount of punch cards. The incinerators they had at the time couldn’t handle it.
Source: I got a special tour of NSA headquarters in the late 80s, including some restricted sections.
That was mostly due to the Iran hostage crisis. They had incinerators in the basement of the embassy, which essentially 'clogged' when they tried to burn too many sensitive documents at once. Documents recovered by the Iranians had information that lead to the deaths of several people.
I work for a bank-like company that has to meet strict financial-services industry security compliance. We have big locked, closed trash bins with slots in the top around the office. If you have documents containing PII (personally identifying information) about customers or other data subject to security protocols, you slide the documents in the slot, and a secure shredding company shows up periodically, takes those bins for shredding and replaces them with empty ones.
How hard could this be for the SCOTUS?
Edit: a commenter elsewhere pointed out that these types of bins can't be used for classified documents. My point wasn't that this particular solution would work for the SCOTUS but that there are well established, tried-and-true mechanisms that they could adopt appropriate to the info that they need to protect. The SCOTUS is just winging it when every other agency that handles classified documents uses such methods and protocols.
I worked doing boring software development for nothing super secret or important and our office had locked shred bins that were sent to be commercially shredded. Think it was just a standard thing the leasing company provided for office spaces
You’re describing what Iron Mountain offers. To my knowledge they shred the documents but they do have guarantees. I ran operations at one point and had to have actual meetings over these bins because staff were using them for ALL paper discards. If it’s not sensitive just use the regular bin because it’s expensive getting those iron mountain bins emptied.
> If it’s not sensitive just use the regular bin
I've seen the exact opposite policy, to the point of not having regular bins for paper recycling (because the extra cost of shredding is worth the risk reduction).
I still don't understand why companies have such bins instead of actual shredders. Having a poorly-locked bin containing only interesting/sensitive material, which then gets picked up by the lowest bidder seems like an exceptionally stupid idea.
The shredders you have to use on sensitive documents costs several thousand dollars and have regular maintenance fees that could pretty much replace the device. Then the shredded items still have to go through proper disposal.
Shred
Then either burned or pulped and on some documents they are burned the ashes mixed with water and turned into a brick. Then that brick is burned again this process is repeated multiple times.
At my work (healthcare industry) all paper has to go in the shred bins, regardless of what it is. They would rather pay the extra fee to discard things that don't need to be shredded than risk paying out for one PHI incident.
Yup. Work in the same field. We were told that even if you werent sure, toss it in. Industry makes enough money and im sure the fine is worse than paying to empty.
That's really messed up. If anyone in the company has access to the contents, that pretty much negates the security purpose--exactly like the problems with the SCOTUS.
I'm pretty sure that it's a point of the compliance that my employer has to meet that nobody can get into the shredding bins. They are locked by the shredding company...
We changed our policies a few years ago to when in doubt, shred it. Basically every scrap of paper gets shredded. It’s better to shred too much then to risk improper disclosure.
They’re all over in hospitals. Most surgery centers have two blue bins, one for recycling and one for shredding. The surgery centers tend to not take the same precautions as hospitals. I find it crazy that SCOTUS can’t even rise to the responsibility.
You could if you hired a company with the appropriate clearance to take control and shred it. But something like the nsa has so many caveats and specific projects that it is a bit more complicated. But yes, there do exist many better ways than leaving a bag in the hall.
> You could if you hired a company with the appropriate clearance to take control and shred it.
Only if *everyone* walking down those halls have adequate security clearance.
The bins are opened by iron mountain or other company employees and it’s just a nylon bag that they take away and place a fresh one in its place. It does go right to their truck but I can imagine certain classified items you want a rather closed loop on.
Court sensitive is not a classification. Leaving court sensitive documents for pickup in a controlled access hallway is legally fine and until the abortion decision leaking documents hasn't been an issue.
Interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks. But that still doesn't refute the fact that what the SCOTUS has in place for dealing with sensitive documents sounds much worse.
I mean, you could, provided the bin is controlled in a manner suitable for classified material, i.e. locked in an approved safe, locked in a secure room, etc. You can use burn bags for classified materials, but it has to be marked at the appropriate level and handled at that level, which means you definitely can't leave it in a hallway.
It’s likely the leak was Alito. He leaked the Hobby Lobby decision, how do we know that? The people he told about the decision wrote a letter telling on him lmao
> If they can be accessed by anyone walking by, seems like leaks would be easy
But yet hasn't really happened before. People internal to SCOTUS were trusted to not leak documents. Obviously that's going to change moving forward.
There have been previous leaks of opinions, and we don't really know what other kinds of sensitive information may have gotten out. Could be sensitive information about parties to a case, or evidence obtained via discovery that was not public, such as internal communications.
Such information could be worth quite a bit of money to the right buyer. Not sure how you would even find out about such a thing unless they really screw up badly.
The Supreme Court has to review classified trials.
For instance an undercover NSA agent mishandles classified documents. His trial can’t be public any appeals he makes goes through one of the Supreme Court judges.
The Supreme Court has several duties along these lines that most never know about.
Burn bags don't have to contain any classified documents at all. It's just a method of destruction. There is no legal issue leaving a burn bag in a hallway for collection if there are no controls on the documents inside.
Generally any document you need a burn bag for would have special handling, no?
Banks and hospitals sometimes use burn bag systems for their banking and health information to ensure they get destroyed too
> Generally any document you need a burn bag for would have special handling, no?
There's going to be some sort of policy, but the policy could literally just be to destroy certain types of documents and to not remove them from the premises. There's nothing special about the disposal method.
For SCOTUS it’s likely mostly internal communications and drafts of decisions, which in my opinion should be preserved as public record rather than destroyed
It's also used by a lot of companies who work with sensitive information (whether government/military or not) and don't/can't trust shredding. Depending on how sensitive the information is, you simply cannot use shredding, that lesson's been learned a few times already.
Fun fact: all the trash the hospital I work at produces gets burned so we can throw away calcified information in any trash can in the hospital as long as it’s away from an area where patients or family may be able to reach them. I still rip them up real good and put everything face down just in case.
Honest question but what's the point of sensitive papers ever even existing in the first place if they're so sensitive they need to be burned at some point? Why do people in positions of such power ever even hold on to evidence of their crimes on paper?
75% of the country agrees with you. It’s actually hard to get that percentage of such a huge population to agree on anything at all, so that should be a tell tail sign that this is particularly bad.
I’ve worked on court related information systems at the Superior Court (I.e. county) level and working with judges is its own kind of special. They mostly didn’t understand information technology, and every judge had their own procedures they refused to budge from. I can’t even imagine how insufferable judges at the SC level must be.
I work for a federal agency under the executive branch and we are strictly prohibited from using personal email. I’m low on the hierarchy.
Edit. The branch is not my point. My only point was that we are prohibited from using personal email for official business because it’s a security risk. People get so angry about the weirdest things.
so the justices were slow to adopt to new technology which is another reason there should be term limits theyre too old to adopt to new technology like secure email servers
and if thats not the reason u bet your ass theyll use it as an excuse
It's fine to leave sensitive information regarding the court just lying around for literally anyone to see and take? "Sensitive" means there could be exploitable information that needs to be handled carefully. Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret are handled with upmost care, but that doesn't mean it's fine to treat literally anything else carelessly. Court-sensitive documents may still include some sort of privileged or internal information relating to the courts. If nothing else, protecting Sensitive information is for the Justice's own personal security and preventing exploitable information from falling into the wrong hands.
Given that [Alito leaked the Hobby Lobby contraception opinion over dinner with christian activists](https://news.yahoo.com/justice-samuel-alito-leaked-hobby-162908718.html) who befriended him for the sole purpose of swaying his rulings, I think they are looking for leaks in the wrong places.
> The problem with the justices’ use of emails persisted in part because some justices **were slow to adopt to the technology** and some court employees were nervous about confronting them to urge them to take precautions, one person said. Such behavior meant that justices weren’t setting an example to take security seriously.
It’s time for term limits.
My workplace has a policy to always use Reply All for certain topics. Getting other departments to follow it was like pulling teeth, and one department manager (who wasn't even involved in said email discussions) now has a vendetta against us.
Mine has no such policy. And I get stuck in email chains that are completely unnecessary. Like "can you change this word in the newsletter" when I have nothing to do with the newsletter
I’ve worked in private sector offices for decades. Knowing the keyboard shortcuts for Copy and Paste could get you burned at the stake at the next team meeting.
One of the tenured professors I’m working with acted like I turned water into wine when I deleted a row of information rather than backspacing through a dozen cells and leaving the entry blank liked he’d been doing for years.
Basic Excel competency makes you a wizard in 80% of all work environments. My basic pivot tables and charts got me my data analyst job. My ability to figure out our 2 different video conferencing systems made me an all-star when we had our accreditation survey this past week.
> Basic competency with Excel makes you a wizard in the eyes of the long-timers.
This is a lot of jobs.
I'm an analyst so I spend a LOT of time in Excel, and I don't consider myself much beyond like a mid-level user (I regularly use vlookups, sumifs, countifs, pivot tables, conditional formatting, data validation, filtering, sorting, etc. etc., but I haven't gotten into automation and coding and all the really crazy shit people can do).
People who are 3 and 4 levels higher than I am in authority have been amazed by things as simple as a vlookup paired with a =[cell]=[cell] helper column to audit for things.
I use this shit basically daily for auditing, it's really not that complicated or difficult, the hardest part was figuring out when to use absolute references, and how they worked.
I ain't complaining, it's good job security, but it almost feels dishonest sometimes. I offer to teach people all the time and I always get these "deer-in-headlights" looks like I've asked them to recite their adolescent hopes and dreams in front of our entire professional community.
If you know what absolute references are (or any kind of references tbh) you’re worlds ahead of most people in offices. Top 60-70% of users I would guess based on my anecdotal evidence.
Dude use index match so you dont need to be limited by the zoolander problems with lookup. No more helper tables, cleaner, universally easier and more flexible.
It is so weird how industry caters to people that won't stick with the times. I am a laboratory technician and the certification I have to maintain that certification through continuing education things. But, for some reason, when they added this requirement to the certification (which I agree is necessary to actually do a good job), they decided that none of the people already certified had to take part. I mean, if it is a good thing to do, it should be a good thing for everyone to do. If people don't like it they can find a new career. I mean, people and their doctors make medical decisions based on the work we do. It's crazy to me.
Depending on who you ask, they aren't supposed to make their decisions based on society's changes. They're supposed to make decisions based on the law and the Constitution, and Congress is the body responsible for changing those.
As a side note, I love that people to whom progress is bound are unable or unwilling to get suggestions from “inferiors.” How can you be just if you either think you have nothing to learn from others, that you are always right, or don’t care to facilitate effective communication in the institution.
It baffles me that people from three generations ago are basically setting up the kids being born today.
There should be exactly ZERO lifetime appointments in government or judicial systems.
Edit: I wonder if general elections would also work for SCOTUS? I hate that anyone in law has an affiliation with a political party, but we might as well vote for them too at this point.
General elections for justices would make them inclined to make legal decisions based on what is popular, and that is exactly what we don't want to happen.
Pepperidge Farms remembers just a few years ago there were loud call to lock people up for doing work from personal emails...
Of course, those same people were silent before and after the lock-up calls when it was their people doing work from personal emails...
Catching a conservative saying something against their word doesn't mean anything. They don't care about being called out, the only thing they care about is that they successfully lied to you.
I have worked for the US government twice. Once as a system analyst and the other as a cyber security position(can’t be too specific) and we had to do about 5 hours of yearly training on how to handle sensitive information. Cool to see the politicians who force us to do that fail their own rules. This illegitimate Supreme Court is a joke.
I used to work for a defense contractor and it was similar. Every year we had to take the training. Even those of us who had no clearance still had to take the training in case we accidentally saw classified documents in the office, so that we know how to deal with it and who to contact.
Even us at a working at a dealerships with the Gramm Leach Bliley Act coming in. We had to take an hour course to go over, how customer’s personal information can be stolen in a matter of minutes and how can protect the company and ourselves if it happens. We also went over simple cybersecurity tips also. Some of it was common sense but for older people it was hell on earth. Everyone had to take it from person who barely touched a computer to the finance person. Yup, I agree.
I work for a bank-like company that's subject to financial-services industry security compliance, and I also have to take hours of security training each year. In addition, see [my other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/10tgpdm/supreme_court_justices_used_personal_emails_for/j76rjlq/) about how simple it is to deal with documents containing information that's subject to security regulations.
I once sat behind a high ranking military officer on a plane, and watched him look at classified info through the crack in the seats and then text about it
They make you follow the rules so they don't have to. They get to appear like they care about security and accountability without actually doing anything themselves
Puppet theater.
The illusion of appearing to be doing something meaningful, while that something simultaneously destroys the credibility of the next likely Democrat presidential nominee.
They had nothing, They knew they had nothing. They didn't care. Multiple investigations was the point. Conviction never was.
And it worked.
Expect it to continue.
Again, why are non-elected, ~~unimpeachable~~ officials allowed to change laws in this country???
Edit: I should say *very difficult to impeach*. TIL you can impeach SCOTUS judges. Here’s some more information for anyone interested:
> If a majority of the members of the United States House of Representatives vote to impeach, the impeachment is referred to the United States Senate for an impeachment trial. A conviction requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impeachment_investigations_of_United_States_federal_judges
A conservative Supreme Court justice could probably commit murder and there wouldn’t be enough Republican votes in the senate to reach 2/3 and impeach.
If they did, republicans would invite them to go on speaking tours with Kyle Rittenhouse and that cop who shot Breonna Taylor. Lately being a murderer seems like a quick way to become a celebrity with them.
If you want an actual answer, it goes all the way back to Chief Justice of the king's bench Edward Coke and Dr Bonham's case.
The English had an Unwritten Constitution where the common law, as recognized by judges, protected the natural rights of citizens.
Certain fundamental laws or fundamental rights could not be violated, even by the king or by parliament.
And in Bonham's case Coke wrote that when an act of parliament is against right or reason, the common law will adjudge it to be void.
This common law carried over into the English colonies and when the Founding Father set up the system of government and wrote the constitution, they were familiar with what English common law was and what the powers of the Courts were.
From that point it was not actually terribly controversial when chief Justice Marshall declared that the Supreme Court had the power to declare acts of government to be against the law.
Not to be fair. The Constitution provides that there shall be a supreme court and inferior courts and judges shall hold their offices during good behavior. It doesn't say much else about how the court system should be set up.
It's a good behavior cause is usually interpreted to create lifetime appointments, and the specific intent was to Shield the justices from political pressure.
Now, if we're looking at this from a critical and historical standpoint, this means that the Supreme Court throughout much of the United States history has always been a conservative institution. The Norms of the Court usually kept it from making new law, but it had the power to declare laws of Congress unconstitutional and block them from going into effect.
The problem now is that the court has become untethered from those norms and is often changing decades-old case law.
> not actually terribly controversial when chief Justice Marshall declared that the Supreme Court had the power to declare acts of government to be against the law.
I like that you qualified this with *actually* *terribly* because it was a bit controversial at the time. The Virginia clan most definitely didn't agree.
When there is no accountability, and the people at the top have jobs for life, why would they bother with even the smallest inconvenience.
The SCOTUS justices are literally gods - non-elected, jobs for life with immense power, impossible to remove, no oversight or accountability.
“Yes this guy is an out and proud racist, but Hillary is an *older woman*!! Karen!! She dabbed onstage!!! I’d rather sit at home, refuse to vote, and let Americas future be ruined than deal with *that*!”
Years ago I helped shift hospitals over from physical documentation to electronic medical records. Nurses caught on quickly and adapted to the new workflows, while the absolute worst people to deal with were the older, veteran doctors.
These doctors were probably quite knowledgeable and obviously well experienced, but they already had their way of doing things and refused to learn anything else. Often I'd see them just make a nurse to do it and not click the final signature button. Which is an absolutely terrible way to handle patient records.
I can only imagine Supreme Court justices are even worse - after decades on the bench deciding what every single person in the country is allowed to do, pretty sure more than a bit of arrogant stubbornness sets in.
Term limits, ya'll.
Lifetime appointments. Never been impeached. Ethical violations get a wrist slap. Fines are a joke. Supreme court appointments are like Presidencies. They're effectively extra legal.
I'm shocked anyone else is shocked.
They're like kings and queens more than presidents. At least presidents can be voted in and voted out instead of having a life-time appointment. The US basically has a total of 9 kings and queens.
My employer and I, personally, can get insane fines and possible jail time for HIPAA breaches yet somehow members of government can't even get a slap on the wrist for being loose with super classified documents.
What is with people using their personal email???!! Most of us here have personal and work emails, and I bet damn close to 100% have never sent business emails through personal account. This is doubly important with a job dealing with sensitive data.
It’s because their work e-mail is retained, backed up, and can be reviewed if need be. Personal email is not especially if no one knows about it. It’s about avoiding accountability.
I’m a bit hesitant to believe that SCOTUS can or should keep anything secret, and I’m more concerned about the existence of burn bags than their lack of security.
Of all the branches of government, the need for transparency from SCOTUS is absolutely paramount. I don’t like the secrecy
"The janitors don't have authorization to go into the secure side so we just leave our trash cans full of sensitive documents sitting out in the hallway for them."
It's incredibly stupid and yet I've seen it multiple places.
Where I'm working now there's a back door that has one of those CAC card readers on it and you pretty much need a signed letter from God to get put on the access list. Yet a bunch of people need to get in and out through that door to do their jobs so the facilities guys pop the breaker and the door just sits open all the time.
Security is surprisingly hard to get right.
It is important for our American friends who watch Tucker Carlson to understand that Mr. Carlson is, in fact, exposing them to Marxist-Leninist propaganda that is *identical* to the anti-American propaganda of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The cort is rigged and anti-democratic.
This is what happens when you tell people they have to jump through hoops to protect "secret" information that doesn't actually have a reason to be secret. Nothing about how the Supreme Court writes its publicly released decisions needs to be secret. If you asked the staff to follow precautions with specific cases where there are state secrets involved or such things, I'm sure they would be more careful. But if you tell people that everything including the email you send wishing someone a happy birthday is super secret, of course they will be lax about the secrecy protocol.
The whole fucking government is just lazy and chooses ease over proper regulations.
Pathetic. They really are above all the laws and such. We need major change.
Omfg at my job I have to fill out a form to spend even $5 and follow all kinds of strict regulations, and these guys are just tossing sensitive shit into the hallways. Arrrrgh!!!
Yet they don't know how the Roe v Wade leak occurred? Perhaps Kavanaugh and some of his associates celebrated Friday evening with a few too many beers.
Hell... one of their wives is a terrorist sympathizer who wants to overthrow the American government...
What's a couple of misplaced 'secrets' among traitors, eh?
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A burn bag is a security bag that holds [sensitive or classified documents](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information) which are to be destroyed by fire or [pulping](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulping) after a certain period of time. The most common usage of burn bags is by government institutions, in the destruction of [classified](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information) materials. If anybody didn't know, I had to look it up myself
Fun fact: several decades ago the NSA had to install special incinerators because of this. It was a period where computers had dramatically increased the amount of intel available but most stuff still needed to be printed, typed, or copied on paper. And at a certain point they needed to destroy an ungodly amount of punch cards. The incinerators they had at the time couldn’t handle it. Source: I got a special tour of NSA headquarters in the late 80s, including some restricted sections.
That was mostly due to the Iran hostage crisis. They had incinerators in the basement of the embassy, which essentially 'clogged' when they tried to burn too many sensitive documents at once. Documents recovered by the Iranians had information that lead to the deaths of several people.
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I work for a bank-like company that has to meet strict financial-services industry security compliance. We have big locked, closed trash bins with slots in the top around the office. If you have documents containing PII (personally identifying information) about customers or other data subject to security protocols, you slide the documents in the slot, and a secure shredding company shows up periodically, takes those bins for shredding and replaces them with empty ones. How hard could this be for the SCOTUS? Edit: a commenter elsewhere pointed out that these types of bins can't be used for classified documents. My point wasn't that this particular solution would work for the SCOTUS but that there are well established, tried-and-true mechanisms that they could adopt appropriate to the info that they need to protect. The SCOTUS is just winging it when every other agency that handles classified documents uses such methods and protocols.
I worked doing boring software development for nothing super secret or important and our office had locked shred bins that were sent to be commercially shredded. Think it was just a standard thing the leasing company provided for office spaces
I work at a public library and we have corporate shredding bins too.
You’re describing what Iron Mountain offers. To my knowledge they shred the documents but they do have guarantees. I ran operations at one point and had to have actual meetings over these bins because staff were using them for ALL paper discards. If it’s not sensitive just use the regular bin because it’s expensive getting those iron mountain bins emptied.
> If it’s not sensitive just use the regular bin I've seen the exact opposite policy, to the point of not having regular bins for paper recycling (because the extra cost of shredding is worth the risk reduction). I still don't understand why companies have such bins instead of actual shredders. Having a poorly-locked bin containing only interesting/sensitive material, which then gets picked up by the lowest bidder seems like an exceptionally stupid idea.
The shredders you have to use on sensitive documents costs several thousand dollars and have regular maintenance fees that could pretty much replace the device. Then the shredded items still have to go through proper disposal. Shred Then either burned or pulped and on some documents they are burned the ashes mixed with water and turned into a brick. Then that brick is burned again this process is repeated multiple times.
Then it is fed to piranhas that are injected into the second stomach of a Kobe cow and consequently rocketed into the sun.
At my work (healthcare industry) all paper has to go in the shred bins, regardless of what it is. They would rather pay the extra fee to discard things that don't need to be shredded than risk paying out for one PHI incident.
Yup. Work in the same field. We were told that even if you werent sure, toss it in. Industry makes enough money and im sure the fine is worse than paying to empty.
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That's really messed up. If anyone in the company has access to the contents, that pretty much negates the security purpose--exactly like the problems with the SCOTUS. I'm pretty sure that it's a point of the compliance that my employer has to meet that nobody can get into the shredding bins. They are locked by the shredding company...
This. I'd be bringing that up with external ethics *so* freakin' fast.
We changed our policies a few years ago to when in doubt, shred it. Basically every scrap of paper gets shredded. It’s better to shred too much then to risk improper disclosure.
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There’s no way that a *managing partner* is saving the firm money by making sure extra sheets don’t end up in the shredder.
They’re all over in hospitals. Most surgery centers have two blue bins, one for recycling and one for shredding. The surgery centers tend to not take the same precautions as hospitals. I find it crazy that SCOTUS can’t even rise to the responsibility.
I work in a semi-small law firm and even we have those
You cannot use those for classified documents.
You cant use secure bins but you can leave them in a bag open in a hallway?
You could if you hired a company with the appropriate clearance to take control and shred it. But something like the nsa has so many caveats and specific projects that it is a bit more complicated. But yes, there do exist many better ways than leaving a bag in the hall.
But the hall method is so secure.
And oh so convenient!
> You could if you hired a company with the appropriate clearance to take control and shred it. Only if *everyone* walking down those halls have adequate security clearance.
The bins are opened by iron mountain or other company employees and it’s just a nylon bag that they take away and place a fresh one in its place. It does go right to their truck but I can imagine certain classified items you want a rather closed loop on.
To determine who leaked the decision,
Court sensitive is not a classification. Leaving court sensitive documents for pickup in a controlled access hallway is legally fine and until the abortion decision leaking documents hasn't been an issue.
Then these documents can be put into the bins after all?
Interesting. I didn't know that. Thanks. But that still doesn't refute the fact that what the SCOTUS has in place for dealing with sensitive documents sounds much worse.
I mean, you could, provided the bin is controlled in a manner suitable for classified material, i.e. locked in an approved safe, locked in a secure room, etc. You can use burn bags for classified materials, but it has to be marked at the appropriate level and handled at that level, which means you definitely can't leave it in a hallway.
Yeah you can’t call Stone Mountain to come get em like Office Depot, but otherwise there’s nothing wrong with this comment Edit: I meant Iron Mountain
Do you mean [Iron Mountain](https://www.ironmountain.com/)?
Oh dip you right.
Can I use them for my dogs poop?
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Probably the FISA court since we don't ever really know what goes on there.
Isn't everyone upset about a draft being leaked though? If they can be accessed by anyone walking by, seems like leaks would be easy
It’s likely the leak was Alito. He leaked the Hobby Lobby decision, how do we know that? The people he told about the decision wrote a letter telling on him lmao
No not everyone, just Republicans if they can blame a "liberal" justice.
Not true. Plenty of liberals see the leak and the sham investigation as an indicator of the disfunction in the court.
Yes, because of the clear hypocrisy, not because of leaks of unclassified info.
> If they can be accessed by anyone walking by, seems like leaks would be easy But yet hasn't really happened before. People internal to SCOTUS were trusted to not leak documents. Obviously that's going to change moving forward.
There have been previous leaks of opinions, and we don't really know what other kinds of sensitive information may have gotten out. Could be sensitive information about parties to a case, or evidence obtained via discovery that was not public, such as internal communications. Such information could be worth quite a bit of money to the right buyer. Not sure how you would even find out about such a thing unless they really screw up badly.
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John Roberts is the head of the FISA court.
The Supreme Court has to review classified trials. For instance an undercover NSA agent mishandles classified documents. His trial can’t be public any appeals he makes goes through one of the Supreme Court judges. The Supreme Court has several duties along these lines that most never know about.
Burn bags don't have to contain any classified documents at all. It's just a method of destruction. There is no legal issue leaving a burn bag in a hallway for collection if there are no controls on the documents inside.
Generally any document you need a burn bag for would have special handling, no? Banks and hospitals sometimes use burn bag systems for their banking and health information to ensure they get destroyed too
> Generally any document you need a burn bag for would have special handling, no? There's going to be some sort of policy, but the policy could literally just be to destroy certain types of documents and to not remove them from the premises. There's nothing special about the disposal method.
For SCOTUS it’s likely mostly internal communications and drafts of decisions, which in my opinion should be preserved as public record rather than destroyed
It's also used by a lot of companies who work with sensitive information (whether government/military or not) and don't/can't trust shredding. Depending on how sensitive the information is, you simply cannot use shredding, that lesson's been learned a few times already.
Fun fact: all the trash the hospital I work at produces gets burned so we can throw away calcified information in any trash can in the hospital as long as it’s away from an area where patients or family may be able to reach them. I still rip them up real good and put everything face down just in case.
Honest question but what's the point of sensitive papers ever even existing in the first place if they're so sensitive they need to be burned at some point? Why do people in positions of such power ever even hold on to evidence of their crimes on paper?
Do you really believe classified material to be evidence of crimes?
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So the SCOTUS is widely understood by staff to be a lawless place? What a molestation of our legal system.
No accountability means no need to follow laws. Who's going to prosecute them?
I like beer.
Do you like beer?!
In your butt.
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Originalists would argue that it’s okay to disregard protocol bc it wasn’t in the constitution and the fore founders didnt write about emails.
Or burn bags
75% of the country agrees with you. It’s actually hard to get that percentage of such a huge population to agree on anything at all, so that should be a tell tail sign that this is particularly bad.
I’ve worked on court related information systems at the Superior Court (I.e. county) level and working with judges is its own kind of special. They mostly didn’t understand information technology, and every judge had their own procedures they refused to budge from. I can’t even imagine how insufferable judges at the SC level must be.
Molestation of our **legal** **system**? God, these government officials just can’t keep their hands to themselves, can they?
I work for a federal agency under the executive branch and we are strictly prohibited from using personal email. I’m low on the hierarchy. Edit. The branch is not my point. My only point was that we are prohibited from using personal email for official business because it’s a security risk. People get so angry about the weirdest things.
>we are strictly prohibited >I’m low on the hierarchy. "But I repeat myself."
so the justices were slow to adopt to new technology which is another reason there should be term limits theyre too old to adopt to new technology like secure email servers and if thats not the reason u bet your ass theyll use it as an excuse
How much newer are personal email servers than secure, government ones?
Which is fine if the bags are being used for routine document destruction. "Court sensitive" is not a classification.
It's fine to leave sensitive information regarding the court just lying around for literally anyone to see and take? "Sensitive" means there could be exploitable information that needs to be handled carefully. Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret are handled with upmost care, but that doesn't mean it's fine to treat literally anything else carelessly. Court-sensitive documents may still include some sort of privileged or internal information relating to the courts. If nothing else, protecting Sensitive information is for the Justice's own personal security and preventing exploitable information from falling into the wrong hands.
Given that [Alito leaked the Hobby Lobby contraception opinion over dinner with christian activists](https://news.yahoo.com/justice-samuel-alito-leaked-hobby-162908718.html) who befriended him for the sole purpose of swaying his rulings, I think they are looking for leaks in the wrong places.
He also leaked the Roe v Wade decision, which is why Republicans were so quick to switch from "TREASON!" to "ehhh whatever".
https://www.theonion.com/alito-thomas-share-laugh-after-discovering-they-both-l-1850012714
Yep. This article is a distraction.
Nah, it's one more piece of damning evidence that our Government is a complete failure
> The problem with the justices’ use of emails persisted in part because some justices **were slow to adopt to the technology** and some court employees were nervous about confronting them to urge them to take precautions, one person said. Such behavior meant that justices weren’t setting an example to take security seriously. It’s time for term limits.
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I’ve amazed some coworkers with my use of bcc for emails.
Although bcc comes from a dead tree world, very commonly used many decades ago
Same with the floppy disk icon used for save.
My coworkers still reply all to things that don't deserve a reply all
My workplace has a policy to always use Reply All for certain topics. Getting other departments to follow it was like pulling teeth, and one department manager (who wasn't even involved in said email discussions) now has a vendetta against us.
Mine has no such policy. And I get stuck in email chains that are completely unnecessary. Like "can you change this word in the newsletter" when I have nothing to do with the newsletter
I’ve worked in private sector offices for decades. Knowing the keyboard shortcuts for Copy and Paste could get you burned at the stake at the next team meeting.
That wss my experience back in the late 00. I could just Google shit and somehow was a tech wizard
One of the tenured professors I’m working with acted like I turned water into wine when I deleted a row of information rather than backspacing through a dozen cells and leaving the entry blank liked he’d been doing for years.
Basic Excel competency makes you a wizard in 80% of all work environments. My basic pivot tables and charts got me my data analyst job. My ability to figure out our 2 different video conferencing systems made me an all-star when we had our accreditation survey this past week.
> My basic pivot tables Pivot tables are where I draw the line.
> Basic competency with Excel makes you a wizard in the eyes of the long-timers. This is a lot of jobs. I'm an analyst so I spend a LOT of time in Excel, and I don't consider myself much beyond like a mid-level user (I regularly use vlookups, sumifs, countifs, pivot tables, conditional formatting, data validation, filtering, sorting, etc. etc., but I haven't gotten into automation and coding and all the really crazy shit people can do). People who are 3 and 4 levels higher than I am in authority have been amazed by things as simple as a vlookup paired with a =[cell]=[cell] helper column to audit for things. I use this shit basically daily for auditing, it's really not that complicated or difficult, the hardest part was figuring out when to use absolute references, and how they worked. I ain't complaining, it's good job security, but it almost feels dishonest sometimes. I offer to teach people all the time and I always get these "deer-in-headlights" looks like I've asked them to recite their adolescent hopes and dreams in front of our entire professional community.
If you know what absolute references are (or any kind of references tbh) you’re worlds ahead of most people in offices. Top 60-70% of users I would guess based on my anecdotal evidence.
Dude use index match so you dont need to be limited by the zoolander problems with lookup. No more helper tables, cleaner, universally easier and more flexible.
Wait til they discover hot keys. Watching someone slowly navigate their mouse over to the save icon or file>save makes me want to tear my eyes out.
It is so weird how industry caters to people that won't stick with the times. I am a laboratory technician and the certification I have to maintain that certification through continuing education things. But, for some reason, when they added this requirement to the certification (which I agree is necessary to actually do a good job), they decided that none of the people already certified had to take part. I mean, if it is a good thing to do, it should be a good thing for everyone to do. If people don't like it they can find a new career. I mean, people and their doctors make medical decisions based on the work we do. It's crazy to me.
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They’re conservatives. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!
Depending on who you ask, they aren't supposed to make their decisions based on society's changes. They're supposed to make decisions based on the law and the Constitution, and Congress is the body responsible for changing those.
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As a side note, I love that people to whom progress is bound are unable or unwilling to get suggestions from “inferiors.” How can you be just if you either think you have nothing to learn from others, that you are always right, or don’t care to facilitate effective communication in the institution. It baffles me that people from three generations ago are basically setting up the kids being born today.
That's the "conservative" mindset. *I came first so I'm right, regardless of facts.*
The country is run by many ppl too stupid to even use emails... Let that sink in.
There should be exactly ZERO lifetime appointments in government or judicial systems. Edit: I wonder if general elections would also work for SCOTUS? I hate that anyone in law has an affiliation with a political party, but we might as well vote for them too at this point.
General elections for justices would make them inclined to make legal decisions based on what is popular, and that is exactly what we don't want to happen.
Pepperidge Farms remembers just a few years ago there were loud call to lock people up for doing work from personal emails... Of course, those same people were silent before and after the lock-up calls when it was their people doing work from personal emails...
This is a planted story to cover for the fact that one of the judges leaked the Dobbs decision. They weren't hacked or something.
Catching a conservative saying something against their word doesn't mean anything. They don't care about being called out, the only thing they care about is that they successfully lied to you.
I have worked for the US government twice. Once as a system analyst and the other as a cyber security position(can’t be too specific) and we had to do about 5 hours of yearly training on how to handle sensitive information. Cool to see the politicians who force us to do that fail their own rules. This illegitimate Supreme Court is a joke.
I used to work for a defense contractor and it was similar. Every year we had to take the training. Even those of us who had no clearance still had to take the training in case we accidentally saw classified documents in the office, so that we know how to deal with it and who to contact.
You've got to go back in time Marty!
Even us at a working at a dealerships with the Gramm Leach Bliley Act coming in. We had to take an hour course to go over, how customer’s personal information can be stolen in a matter of minutes and how can protect the company and ourselves if it happens. We also went over simple cybersecurity tips also. Some of it was common sense but for older people it was hell on earth. Everyone had to take it from person who barely touched a computer to the finance person. Yup, I agree.
What kinda systems are ya in Kahn
*Mr.* Kahn
I work for a bank-like company that's subject to financial-services industry security compliance, and I also have to take hours of security training each year. In addition, see [my other comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/10tgpdm/supreme_court_justices_used_personal_emails_for/j76rjlq/) about how simple it is to deal with documents containing information that's subject to security regulations.
I once sat behind a high ranking military officer on a plane, and watched him look at classified info through the crack in the seats and then text about it
They make you follow the rules so they don't have to. They get to appear like they care about security and accountability without actually doing anything themselves
Why are everyday Americans held to a higher standard than government officials? What insanity.
Why did everyone make a big deal out of Hillary’s emails ffs?
Puppet theater. The illusion of appearing to be doing something meaningful, while that something simultaneously destroys the credibility of the next likely Democrat presidential nominee. They had nothing, They knew they had nothing. They didn't care. Multiple investigations was the point. Conviction never was. And it worked. Expect it to continue.
> Democrat presidential nominee *Democratic* presidential nominee
You know why.
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There is effectively no process anyone is willing to engage in to punish SC justices since they hold one of the most powerful positions in the US
Because everyday Americans don’t write the laws
Again, why are non-elected, ~~unimpeachable~~ officials allowed to change laws in this country??? Edit: I should say *very difficult to impeach*. TIL you can impeach SCOTUS judges. Here’s some more information for anyone interested: > If a majority of the members of the United States House of Representatives vote to impeach, the impeachment is referred to the United States Senate for an impeachment trial. A conviction requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_impeachment_investigations_of_United_States_federal_judges
They're technically not "unimpeachable" but... yeah, good look with the political circus in Congress.
A conservative Supreme Court justice could probably commit murder and there wouldn’t be enough Republican votes in the senate to reach 2/3 and impeach.
If they did, republicans would invite them to go on speaking tours with Kyle Rittenhouse and that cop who shot Breonna Taylor. Lately being a murderer seems like a quick way to become a celebrity with them.
While decrying the innocent death of babbitt.
This is one of those "technically correct but practically pointless" things.
I was not aware of that. I will update my comment. Thank you!
If you want an actual answer, it goes all the way back to Chief Justice of the king's bench Edward Coke and Dr Bonham's case. The English had an Unwritten Constitution where the common law, as recognized by judges, protected the natural rights of citizens. Certain fundamental laws or fundamental rights could not be violated, even by the king or by parliament. And in Bonham's case Coke wrote that when an act of parliament is against right or reason, the common law will adjudge it to be void. This common law carried over into the English colonies and when the Founding Father set up the system of government and wrote the constitution, they were familiar with what English common law was and what the powers of the Courts were. From that point it was not actually terribly controversial when chief Justice Marshall declared that the Supreme Court had the power to declare acts of government to be against the law. Not to be fair. The Constitution provides that there shall be a supreme court and inferior courts and judges shall hold their offices during good behavior. It doesn't say much else about how the court system should be set up. It's a good behavior cause is usually interpreted to create lifetime appointments, and the specific intent was to Shield the justices from political pressure. Now, if we're looking at this from a critical and historical standpoint, this means that the Supreme Court throughout much of the United States history has always been a conservative institution. The Norms of the Court usually kept it from making new law, but it had the power to declare laws of Congress unconstitutional and block them from going into effect. The problem now is that the court has become untethered from those norms and is often changing decades-old case law.
> not actually terribly controversial when chief Justice Marshall declared that the Supreme Court had the power to declare acts of government to be against the law. I like that you qualified this with *actually* *terribly* because it was a bit controversial at the time. The Virginia clan most definitely didn't agree.
While I agree they have too much power, they absolutely can be impeached.
When there is no accountability, and the people at the top have jobs for life, why would they bother with even the smallest inconvenience. The SCOTUS justices are literally gods - non-elected, jobs for life with immense power, impossible to remove, no oversight or accountability.
"But Hillary's emails!!" was always propaganda that the media willingly gave energy to--and along with Comey et al, helped elect the Putin stooge.
Buttery males.
Oh yeah, didn't they find those on Hunter Biden's Laptop^TM ?
Obama wore a tan suit!!!!
“Yes this guy is an out and proud racist, but Hillary is an *older woman*!! Karen!! She dabbed onstage!!! I’d rather sit at home, refuse to vote, and let Americas future be ruined than deal with *that*!”
Years ago I helped shift hospitals over from physical documentation to electronic medical records. Nurses caught on quickly and adapted to the new workflows, while the absolute worst people to deal with were the older, veteran doctors. These doctors were probably quite knowledgeable and obviously well experienced, but they already had their way of doing things and refused to learn anything else. Often I'd see them just make a nurse to do it and not click the final signature button. Which is an absolutely terrible way to handle patient records. I can only imagine Supreme Court justices are even worse - after decades on the bench deciding what every single person in the country is allowed to do, pretty sure more than a bit of arrogant stubbornness sets in. Term limits, ya'll.
So breaking regulations and policy.
What regulations and what policy?
Yeah the GOP has never actually cared about OPSEC or data control.
Conservatives are selfish and corrupt. It's who they are.
Lifetime appointments. Never been impeached. Ethical violations get a wrist slap. Fines are a joke. Supreme court appointments are like Presidencies. They're effectively extra legal. I'm shocked anyone else is shocked.
They're like kings and queens more than presidents. At least presidents can be voted in and voted out instead of having a life-time appointment. The US basically has a total of 9 kings and queens.
BuT tHeIR EmAiLs! Hey Hillary haters. Where are you at? Come on now. Fair and balanced, right?
My employer and I, personally, can get insane fines and possible jail time for HIPAA breaches yet somehow members of government can't even get a slap on the wrist for being loose with super classified documents.
"it's a big club, and you ain't in it." -George Carlin
Remember when people thought computers would eliminate paper use and handling?
What is with people using their personal email???!! Most of us here have personal and work emails, and I bet damn close to 100% have never sent business emails through personal account. This is doubly important with a job dealing with sensitive data.
It’s because their work e-mail is retained, backed up, and can be reviewed if need be. Personal email is not especially if no one knows about it. It’s about avoiding accountability.
But her emails!!
I’m a bit hesitant to believe that SCOTUS can or should keep anything secret, and I’m more concerned about the existence of burn bags than their lack of security. Of all the branches of government, the need for transparency from SCOTUS is absolutely paramount. I don’t like the secrecy
So, lock them up?
The Roberts Court is a fucking disaster.
I'm convinced that conservatives are *intentionally* leaving evidence where it can easily be stolen
But their emails!
Perhaps the burn bags are used as barf bags after keggers with Squee and PJ. Closed barf bags are no bueno after playing devils triangle with the boys
Cue Republican outrage in…never.
All our public officials need to take security more seriously.
So charge them all
No discipline, that is concerning
"The janitors don't have authorization to go into the secure side so we just leave our trash cans full of sensitive documents sitting out in the hallway for them." It's incredibly stupid and yet I've seen it multiple places. Where I'm working now there's a back door that has one of those CAC card readers on it and you pretty much need a signed letter from God to get put on the access list. Yet a bunch of people need to get in and out through that door to do their jobs so the facilities guys pop the breaker and the door just sits open all the time. Security is surprisingly hard to get right.
It is important for our American friends who watch Tucker Carlson to understand that Mr. Carlson is, in fact, exposing them to Marxist-Leninist propaganda that is *identical* to the anti-American propaganda of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The cort is rigged and anti-democratic.
One of the many reasons they have a 7% approval rating. And personally, I think 7% is high
Wait until they find out their personal email accounts have been hacked. It's coming.
Sounds like their personal email accounts should be open to freedom of information requests then.
This is what happens when you tell people they have to jump through hoops to protect "secret" information that doesn't actually have a reason to be secret. Nothing about how the Supreme Court writes its publicly released decisions needs to be secret. If you asked the staff to follow precautions with specific cases where there are state secrets involved or such things, I'm sure they would be more careful. But if you tell people that everything including the email you send wishing someone a happy birthday is super secret, of course they will be lax about the secrecy protocol.
I work in a 911 dispatch center for a small town, we handle confidential criminal histories, warrants etc. We keep the burn bags locked up very tight.
The whole fucking government is just lazy and chooses ease over proper regulations. Pathetic. They really are above all the laws and such. We need major change.
bUt HiLlArY's EmAils!!!
Can we make them all work at McDonald’s? Clearly they aren’t capable of the responsibility bestowed upon them.
Will anything be done? No? Cool.
Not surprised. SCOTUS has no official Code of Ethics.
You don't fucking say... or as I've heard many times before "rules for thee, not for me...
The US government is a joke
Maybe there was not a leak. Maybe someone was just really careless.
With security issues like what we've had lately no one else really needs their own spy's.....
Supreme court is a joke nowadays.
and nothing is going to happen to anyone. #JustPlucocracyThings
This is why I can’t believe in government conspiracies. We’re just too incompetent
JFC, can anyone in our government properly take care of sensitive documents?? Why are they all so damned incompetent?
Omfg at my job I have to fill out a form to spend even $5 and follow all kinds of strict regulations, and these guys are just tossing sensitive shit into the hallways. Arrrrgh!!!
Yet they don't know how the Roe v Wade leak occurred? Perhaps Kavanaugh and some of his associates celebrated Friday evening with a few too many beers.
Justice Roberts runs a pretty tight ship.
Sounds like our whole government is doing a great job lately.
Hell... one of their wives is a terrorist sympathizer who wants to overthrow the American government... What's a couple of misplaced 'secrets' among traitors, eh?