Ok, you'll have to explain that one to me.
Maybe in 1944, you needed a telecomm geek to transcribe the coded messages, or de-code them to another bit of paper that get's passed up the line. But that's not the situation today. There's no excuse for the telecomm guy to see the plain text, it could be encoded right through to the need-to-know guys.
Why in the world would an Army PFC need to be able to read a State Department cable sent from an Embassy straight to the State Department? And if it wasn't sent straight through, why not?
well most of the message traffic I wrote in the 90s was still typed or hand written and then provided (after chopping through the chain for approvals) to the radio room for entry into the encrypted part of the machinery. I didn’t have a need to know how the machinery worked so I was never allowed to type my own messages despite a TS. So the radioman typed it into the encryption hardware.
It wasn’t like every computer on the ship or in an embassy has encryption hardware on it - there are limited sets - though things change and maybe today they do, but I doubt it. I’d rather have a limited # of people that have access then try to prevent loss of a machine because then you loose much more than the specific messages in question.
That being said someone screwed up his background check, and the opsec on hardware in and out of the room was atroscious (sp).