[easilyBored]

Turns out I'm right. I thought about the military and contractors as well. "A Top Secret clearance, meanwhile, costs the government nearly 20 times more, at an average of $3,959 per background check. At that rate, investigating the 1.5 million people with Top Secret passes may have cost as much as $5.9 billion over several years. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/24...

"As of last October, nearly five million people held government security clearances. Of that, 1.4 million held top-secret clearances. More than a third of those with top-secret clearances are contractors, which would appear to include Mr. Snowden." https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323495604578535...

Now we can get into semantics until the cows come home but even tens of thousands of people are way too many. Imagine 1+ million people.

[tomschlick]

My point was that while tens of thousands have TS clearance, they only get access to specific information if and when they need it.

Its not like they go to the "Top Secret File Share" and have access to everything that is Top Secret across the government.

[jpitz]

A TS clearance isn't some magical pass card to every piece of TS information.

[easilyBored]

I know you can't walk to NSA HQ and demand to see everything that they have in TS but Snwoden and Manning case showed that stuff isn't that compartmentalized