Classified records  need protection

Just my 2 cents again. Confidential, secret, top secret — say, does anyone know what these classifications mean anymore? In reference to documents or data being transmitted or received, someone in authority has to decide what is to be classified under the National Security Agency. Anything that may cause damage or do harm to this country or its allies is always put in a classified category. The person in authority may be the abuser.

The United States has a security service responsible for identifying different classifications on materials affecting this country’s security; everyone should have to abide by the same laws. Lately we are hearing a lot about e-mails and unsecure servers, lack of protection or classified digital data.

While I was in the U.S. military service, I was assigned to telecommunications groups worldwide. I was required to have a background check for a secret/crypto clearance.  This background check took one year.

Later in my military career, I was assigned to another organization where I was required to get another security clearance top secret/crypto (SAP) again, background check one year, SAP meaning Special Activities Programs.

Now I look back at the things that I was exposed to and wonder what would happen if I had sent this data over unsecured facilities and divulged any of this information; I would be in prison for life. How is it that a person in high office does not have to comply with the same security regulations as all other American citizens?

And now we have the Apple communications and FBI fiasco over iPhone security. Who should be protected, the terrorists or free people? I know what I believe.

— Hugh Martin    

Salisbury

Twists of history

February being Black History Month, the Feb. 1 front page story on Simone Martin was fine until it got to Rosa Parks. At that point, the reporter totally missed the mark.

Ms. Parks was a Rosa come lately rather than the “mother of the civil rights movement.” The original mother was a 15-year-old girl, Claudette Colvin, who had refused to surrender her seat well before Parks did. Claudette was pregnant and unmarried, and it was decided Rosa would be a more suitable stand-in.

As to the ongoing bus boycott, another inflated figure was Martin Luther King Jr., who virtually hijacked it from the Rev. Frederick Lee Shuttersworth.

Much has been made and reported of the water hoses, police dogs, tear gas and beatings. Much ado was also made of the first Selma March, which has been referred to as “Bloody Sunday.” The march was illegal and stories speak of Governor Wallace’s “storm troopers” violently breaking it up and beating demonstrators.

However, a not only violent but deadly Bloody Sunday occurred in Northern Ireland in 1972.

There, Irish Catholics imitating Dr. King’s nonviolent protests attempted to march unarmed but illegally like Selma. British paratroopers shot down 13 in cold-blooded murder, then wounded 17 others. Obviously the Irish would have been grateful to have dealt with the violence of Bull Connor and Governor Wallace. In April of that year, all troops involved were exonerated.

Rosa Parks, who was never beaten or bruised by storm troops in Alabama, was not so lucky after moving to Detroit in 1994, where she was robbed and beaten in her own apartment. After he asked her name, the attacker then beat her around the face before leaving.

One must wonder about her thoughts after having done so much for her people to have this happen by one of them.

— W. F. Owens 

Spencer

Endorsements

Letters endorsing candidates in the March 15 primary should be received in the Post newsroom by 5 p.m. Thursday,  March 10, to be published before the primary.