Questions remain more than a week after the arrest of a 21-year old Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of sharing classified documents thrust the town of Dighton into a national spotlight.
As the discussion continues, a New York Times article on Friday claimed Jack Teixeira had been sharing sensitive information for longer and on a larger scale than originally thought.
Speaking on Monday, local lawmakers shared their reactions.
“Of course I’m concerned,” Rep. Seth Moulton said at an event in Lynn. “I mean, any time something like this happens, until you get to the very bottom of it, you don’t know how broad it can be and how many lives this criminal has put at risk.”
The Times said Teixeira began posting secret intelligence days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of last year.
SKY7-HD was then overhead earlier this month when federal agents arrested Teixeira at his mother’s home on April 13.
Ayanna Pressley was in Boston on Monday at an event with Sen. Ed Markey in Copley Square. She said officials need to take any security breaches seriously.
“Now we have to do the work ensuring there are safeguards to ensure that this never happens again,” Pressley said.
Local lawmakers said they are impressed by the response to this incident. They also said, though, they are concerned about the fallout that could come from the leak.
“It’s really remarkable how quickly, once this became public, they were able to arrest this criminal,” Moulton said. “But we have a lot more work to do. More of the people who risk their lives to keep us safe could still be at risk.”
Officials said they’re now looking at ways to prevent such a leak from happening again.
“What sort of infrastructure do we need to harden to ensure there are not leaks like this again in the future, because it is a matter of national security,” Pressley said.
“We need a better system for our government to be able to identify when these leaks occur so that it can be shut down as quickly as possible,” Markey said.
Teixeira is expected to be back in court on Thursday for a detention hearing.