What you and I know is that secret is actually really common. You can actually get an interim secret clearance without having any background check at all. It's it's something they give you in the military and they give you in the government during the time that they are vetting you to make sure that you are qualified for a secret clearance. So there's actually a huge number of Americans that have a secret clearance. basically every entry level military uh enlisted person officer, you know, newly recruited federal agent from anything from IRS to homeland security to USA ID. Like lots of people have secret clearances. Yeah. What's interesting is after you're vetted for secret, usually there's a long history or a long timeline where all you have is access to secret information. And secret information is defined as information that that is damaging to national security. Yeah. So, it is secret. It is not unclassified. You're not going to find it on the open internet or on the deep web. But if you disclose that secret information, then it could do damage to national security. Not significant damage, but some damage. And that's what makes secret clearances kind of a prime target for prosecution under UCMJ, the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Okay. Or in the federal courts as well. Yes. And I think it's very important that we distinguish for the audience. Um guys, there's two different If you were to look at like the criminal justice system, right, at the federal level, there's two different segways you can go. You can go the military courts and then you can go the um criminal courts. Um which by the way, did you see that they um literally gave a plea deal to Khaled Shik Muhammad, one of the orchestrators of 9/11 yesterday. Oh my gosh. And it's UCMJ. It's military court, which means we can't find any of that which we could talk about that too. Um but um but yeah guys, so that's basically the two different routes that you have. So with the with the secret thing, and I find it interesting that you mentioned the military courts, um they like to pro if you're like a military guy, they would prefer to prosecute you in the military courts way more cuz like the burden of proof is less. They have higher conviction rates and you have you're just afforded less rights when you're a service personnel. Yeah. Your rights are essentially taken away from you once you sign on the dotted line as a resource of the US government. Yeah. And that's why the UCMJ like it's so difficult. It's difficult to manage. It's difficult to navigate. It really is just your your commanding officer can basically be like, "I'm going to try you for insubordination because you didn't do what I said." Yeah. And you got And it's interesting, too. So, like, so we talked about the military side like where you'll get hit with that um you know, SP like So, you'll get hit with that for having secret information. On the criminal side, let's say you're not a service member, guys, and they decide to go through an A USA or whatever, Department of Justice. You're going to get hit. Typically, this is where you start to get hit with espionage. um you know uh 18 USC 793 I think it is. Bills if you could double check it see but that's like once you start getting into secret information if you're not carrying it correctly you're not storing it correctly you're taking it away from where it's supposed to be etc. This is how you start to get in trouble with like um the espionage act. But uh so okay, so we talked about unclassified secret. What about confidential? So confidential lands in the in the Yeah, sensitive unclassified area, right? Because it's confidential to you but not necessarily damaging to national security intelligence 18793. Um okay, so we covered secret and now uh and now what about the next level? The next level is a big step actually. You go from secret to top secret, right? And top secret is what movies make you think that top secret is super sexy. Honestly, top secret still isn't that sexy. You have to be vetted and you have to be proven to have need to know for top secret information. But often times, if you're a specialist of any kind in the government, if you're in the national security, law enforcement, or intelligence world, you're going to get a topsecret clearance. I that's what I had when I was an agent that was uh top secret. And if you guys apply for any special agent position, they're typically going to um get you a topsecret clearance because what what top secret gives you is the ability to have joint operations. So now Homeland Security can talk to CIA, can talk to NSA, can talk to FBI, top secret level clearance to top secret level clearance. Yeah. Even though what's really wild, brother, is that they they define classified information for an agency differently. So for example, CIA considers their surveillance methodology top secret, no foreign, right? No foreign meaning not for release to foreign uh foreign contacts, foreign allies. Y where FBI considers their surveillance methodology unclassified. Mhm. Same methodology. Yep. Right. FBI does the same thing CIA does. CIA classifies it as top secret. FBI says it's unclass. Yeah. And a big reason for that, guys, is if you think about it, like the FBI prosecutes people in open court. So when you prosecute people in open court, there's something called the discovery process, which means it needs to come out to the defendant who are criminals. They don't have a clearance. So that is why they can't have their surveillance stuff being um unclassified because that has to come out in the during the course of a criminal prosecution, right? Otherwise, it's got to go to a secret court, a court that's a court of cleared people, FISA court. Yep. And if they have if you have a cleared court, you have less control over who's in the court, who the judge is, what the district is, and where you work. The general public can go in there, guys. Any of you right now can literally go into a federal court house, sit in there, and watch trials all day. You know what I mean? And they're in there testifying and talking about all this stuff. It's open to the public. So, you can you can absolutely do that. And then what's above um TS cuz TS is like, yes, I agree. Like that's that's the beginning where it's like real. You actually takes like six years, sorry, 6 months to a year and a half to get a background check cleared. Um this is where you start to deal with sensitive information if you actually do get access to it. Um and then what's above that? SEI. Well, what's really interesting is you have compartments inside TS. Yeah. So SCI, special compartmented information is a category of top secret. Yes. You also have categories 1 through 15. So like category 6 is nuclear secrets. Category 12 is nuclear targeting secrets. So you would have a TS special compartmented information. So TSSEI or you'd have a TS, Cat 6, CAT 12, like I did when I was in the military in nuclear missile services. You could also have a TS privy. Privy is when you've got information that goes to a subset of a subset. So let's say that you're uh let's say that you're NSA working against China and you're also working against China telecommunications. Now you might have a privy access that gets you the highest level secrets about what's happening in China telecommunications. Whereas everybody else in NSA is going to have TSSEI so they know we're we're collecting Chinese telecommunication secrets but they don't have the highest level of information. Yeah. Right. Right. So you got all these subco compartments that further prioritize and and uh limit what information people have access to. [Applause] Freedom. So fresh.