"Gabbard Says More Than 100 Intelligence Officers Fired for Chat Messages"

The coverage of this issue, including the quoted NYT article, is suspect. 

The chat program was administered by the National Security Agency and intended for discussions of sensitive security matters. But a group of employees used it for discussions that contained sexual themes, intelligence officials said this week. The chats also included explicit discussion of gender transition surgery, officials said.

The whole thing comes off as an official take without any input from the other side. Why did over 100 intelligence officers feel comfortable doing this? 

That isn't one or two. These aren't from what I can tell just a few low-level types. Why would they risk their jobs? Why doesn't the article tell their side? 

Transcripts of the chat were first disclosed Monday by Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who writes for City Journal.

Christopher Rufo is an anti-LGBTQ conservative troll. He latched on to this since trans people talking about themselves is "icky" to some people. 

Furthermore, if you read past the clickbait language, his own coverage says that they didn't break the rules. He used this to attack DEI policies.  

Erin Reed, who talks about these issues intelligently, noted such chats "are commonplace in workplaces across the United States, including within federal agencies." What is the big deal? The implication is that it is akin to watching porn or something. 

From another angle, a Fox News article explains the chats were related to DEI policies. So, what exactly did these people do wrong? I wouldn't take Tulsi Gabbard's comments at face value.

Furthermore, my wider concerns are twofold. 

(1) What amount of knowledge and know-how is being lost here? It's asinine to fire these people. They could pass new rules regarding the usage of chats and it still would be stupid to fire skilled people unless they continuously broke the rules. 

(2) Is there going to be a general firing of people who use it for "sexual themes"? What about racist conversations? Other non-work related conversations? This comes off as an anti-trans measure.

I did a quick article search to learn about this story and the articles regularly did not tell me all the details. They did not tell both sides of the story though ironically some conservative-leaning ones did ultimately suggest there was not an actual vioation.

Which underlines the point: firing them is stupid. 

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Michelle Trachtenberg died at 39. I see a lot of news alerts and only some make me go "Oh!" 

She was on Buffy and Gossip Girl. I saw her in Ice Princess, which also co-starred Kim Cattrall in a somewhat atypical role. I enjoyed it. 

MT had health problems so her death was not totally surprising for those in the know. For instance, coverage noted recent online photos concerned people. People under 40 dying is still more sad.