Findings of the Supreme Court Report on Leakage: Lax Security, Loose Lips | NASCAR Racing News

The leak sparked protests at the judges’ homes and raised concerns about their security. This came more than a month before the release of the final opinion of Judge Samuel Alito and the court She officially announced that she was dropping Roe v. Wade.

The report also provides a window into the internal operations of the Court. It acknowledges that the coronavirus pandemic, which has expanded people’s ability to work from home, “combined with loopholes in the Court’s security policies, has created an environment in which it was very easy to remove sensitive information from the building and the Court’s IT networks.” The report recommends changes be made so that leaks are less likely to occur. In the future.

Some questions and answers about the report:

If the investigation did not find the Laker, what did it find?

Aman sagging and loose lips. The report concluded that too many people had access to certain sensitive information, and that the court’s policies on information security were outdated. A court cannot actively track, for example, who handles and accesses highly sensitive information.

Furthermore, some people interviewed by federal investigators called to assist in the investigation admitted that they did not strictly follow the court’s confidentiality policies. In some cases, the employees admitted to “telling their spouses about the draft opinion or vote count,” the report said.

The leak did not appear to be the result of a hack, but the report said investigators could not rule out that the opinion was inadvertently disclosed, “for example, by being left in a public place either inside or outside the building.”

How accurate is the investigation?

The investigators conducted 126 formal interviews with 97 employees. They looked at communications between staffers and reporters, including those at Politico. They looked at the call logs of the personal phones. They looked at the printer’s logs. They even analyzed fingerprints for an “investigation-relevant item.”

Each person interviewed signed a sworn statement that they were not the source of the leak. Lying about it could violate the federal false statements law.

After all that, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, himself a former federal judge, was asked to assess the investigation. Chertoff described the investigation as “exhaustive” in a statement issued by the court.

One open question: It is not clear from the report whether the court’s nine justices also sat down for interviews.

What will change as a result?

It seems clear that the court will tighten its procedures, possibly upgrade equipment and likely do more staff training in response to the leak. But the court does not say what you have already done or will do in the future. The investigators provided a list of recommendations, but it was not attached to the public version of the report to protect against “potential bad actors.”

How about determining who it was?

After the leak, speculation swirled in Washington as to who the source could be. Conservatives pointed the finger at the liberal side of the court, speculating that the leaker was someone upset about the outcome. The Liberals suggested that it might be someone from the conservative side of the court who wanted to ensure that one of the undecided members of the five-judge majority would not be replaced.

On social media, there has been speculation that several law clerks may have been the ones wanting the leak due to their personal backgrounds, including their connections to Politico and past writings. The report acknowledged that investigators were watching.

Investigators also assessed a wide range of public speculation, often on social media, about any individual who may have disclosed the document. Several law clerks were named in various positions. In their investigations, the report said, the investigators found nothing to support any of the Social media allegations regarding disclosure.

The report says the investigators are not quite finished, but indicates that any active investigation is nearing completion. “Investigators continue to review and process some of the electronic data collected and some other inquiries remain pending,” they said. “To the extent that further investigation yields new evidence or leads, investigators will pursue them.”

The final paragraph of the report states that “over time, ongoing investigation and analysis may produce additional leads that could identify the source of the disclosure.”