Biden administration mulls expanding online surveillance after missing leak: Report

The Biden administration is evaluating its social media and chatroom monitoring programs. This comes after classified documents circulated online for weeks, without being detected until last week. The administration has expressed disappointment about the incident, especially as President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, had just been informed of the leak. An anonymous administration official revealed that the government is looking into expanding the number of online websites being monitored.

The nature of the breach, which occurred in March, has prompted the expansion. Approximately a hundred classified documents were leaked on social media sites, including Discord. These documents were not intended for public viewing and provided insight into the scope of the US intelligence community’s activities and its readiness to carry out surveillance on allied countries. The Pentagon and the Department of Justice are investigating the leak, while the government has opened a criminal investigation. However, none of the documents were genuine, having been doctored in some way.

The identity of the person responsible for the leak is not yet clear, nor is it evident how they managed to obtain the documents. The breach came against the backdrop of recent disclosures of classified materials being found both at former President Donald Trump’s office and home, as well as in the residences of Biden and former Vice President, Mike Pence.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), in his comments on the security breach, said that Congress must play a greater role in setting guidelines on the classification of documents. “We’ve now got two examples, you know, the potential mishandling of documents by current and former presidents and now this potential leak, or real leak,” he said.

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