Classified information

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I was watching a movie, and one of the characters claimed he was going to say something that was classified information. Giving out this information could end his military career. Well, it was just a movie. Nobody lost their career, and everything worked out in the end. It does bring up the question of secret information that might be classified in the interest of national security. What happens when some of this information gets out? Does some Russian or Chinese agent learn something that could put lives in jeopardy, or does nothing happen? There is so much information today it is hard to accumulate it. Think of all the information accumulated since World War II. My mother told me my father visited from Parris Island. He had secret classified information. He was learning about electricity to work on night fighter radar. All the information he told her was classified. That was probably why they got married. What woman could resist the thrill of learning about volts, amps, ohms and alternating or direct current? Imagine the thrill of learning that this information about this electricity was secret. How could all this stuff be secret? Now we fast forward to today and think of all the stuff that is still classified. Seems like every day somebody writes a book that gives out some secret information. Some secret service agent writes about guarding the president and reports he stood in the hall of a hotel to make sure the president was safe. Uproar ensues, because this information is classified as secret. What the heck? Somebody guards the president every day. We’ve been at war somewhere for a long time. After 50 years, should it be a surprise that we bombed Hanoi? How long should classified stuff be classified? Even the real secrets of the greatest secret agent of all time have been released. A lot has changed since James Bond traveled the globe, righting wrongs and protecting Britain from the evils of the world. “Listen carefully 007. This is classified.” I wish I could get an Aston Martin with all the tricky things. Fifty years of Bond info is out, and I believe we still have evil in the world. I don’t know anyone who has suffered from leaking classified information. Veterans have told me tales of their classified missions. Nothing much happened. I don’t feel bad about having heard of this. I’m not even afraid of getting a letter with “Penalty for private use $300” written on it. There is just too much information to keep up with everything. The Super Bowl is this weekend. The teams playing probably have some secret plays for the game. Well how many plays could they have? The old Green Bay Packers ran the ball up the middle, ran a sweep and had a pass play. That was good enough to be champions for quite a while. Now they have hundreds of plays. Secret football plays, military secrets, espionage plans, secret negotiations with rouge governments and secret messages written in high school yearbooks. We might have to classify everything and quit letting out all these secrets. Sometimes letting out classified information is good. Where would I be if my parents didn’t marry? Imagine my mother hearing about the classified secret information about electricity. My dad probably asked her to marry him. She had just heard about Ohm’s law, and of course, resistance was futile.