As the next president you will have countless issues on your plate. But an issue I would like to call forward is government security. Already in the few months of this election, you candidates have had major lapses in the handling of top secret information. Some will take these leaks as being transparent and honest but it can jeopardize national security. As the next president my question to you is how will you handle top secret information?

A big issue with our nation is the amount of secrecy but also an inability to keep secrets. In 2012 the federal government made about 95 million classifications with the number of people cleared for that information steadily growing. With that many classifications it calls into question if all this information has nation security value. “When everything is classified, nothing is classified.” warned former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart. This just simply means that when government officials classify too much information the handling of this information begins to get careless. Snowden’s leak of the federal government’s top secret information shows that much of this information had no place being classified. There should be large focus on not only becoming more transparent but also handling top secret information more carefully. Gaining the trust of the nation is very important during such tense times, so being more lenient with what information is classified is imperative. It is also understood that a nation must keep top secret information for the protection of the people and the state. To keep these secrets classified there must be less classifications but also the number of people cleared to handle that information must cease to grow or shrink entirely.

There are so many issues close to home and around the world so I hope that this issue is addressed properly. To protect our democracy and to ensure our safety the next president must tackle these issue early. My name is Nathan Mackey and I got to Mead High School in Longmont, CO. Thank you for your time.