Ex-CIA Engineer Convicted in Biggest Theft Ever of Agency Secrets - Slashdot

Posted by msmash

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  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 14, 2022 @11:33AM (#62702448)

  In the game of countries, everybody spies, but some, well, er, more than others. The various independent kindoms inside the US government are pretty brazen.

  But did they just shop around juries until they got a conviction, or what?

  • Re:

    When a jury deadlocks, it is not uncommon for the trial to be repeated to try to reach an outcome.
    • 1 hidden comment

  • But did they just shop around juries until they got a conviction, or what?

    It's not uncommon for one retrial following a hung jury.

  • In the game of countries, everybody spies

    The term "spying" is applied to people covertly working for their countries. When one works against his own, the term is usually "treason".

    But did they just shop around juries until they got a conviction

    Either a conviction or an acquittal.

    • No, treason in the US Constitution is fairly specific and spying (per se) isn't in that definition.

      Article III, Section 3, Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

      Giving information to Wikileaks is certainly not war, and unless Wikileaks is a named enemy, it is not adhering to any specific enemy, nor does it give them aid or comfort. And unless there are two specific witnesses to the act of handing the documents over (which seems unlikely) the person cannot be accused or convicted of treason.

      • Re:

        treason in the US Constitution

        Semantics...

        giving them Aid and Comfort

        Yep, right there...

        Giving information to Wikileaks is certainly not war

        It is not. It is giving Aid (and, perhaps, even Comfort) to enemies, because the betrayal helped foreigners defend themselves against America's spying efforts.

        • Re:

          They couldn’t even convict the Rosenbergs on treason.

          • Re:

            They couldn’t even convict the Rosenbergs on treason.

            No one arrested over January 6th 2021 events has even been accused (much less convicted) of insurrection either. Yet, the term is thrown around by you and yours all the time...

            • Re:

              No one arrested over January 6th 2021 events has even been accused (much less convicted) of insurrection either. Yet, the term is thrown around by you and yours all the time...

              But quite a few have been indicted for seditious conspiracy, and at least one that I know of pled guilty to it. That is tantamount to insurrection, as sedition is inciting an insurrection.

  • Re:

    Others have pointed out that in the USA you can get retried if there is a hung jury. It's worth noting that his defense may have been pretty bad. I read one summary of the case elsewhere where it seems that it was seriously argued along the lines of "Hundreds of other people were doing the same data copying, so why single out me?" That's the old "But judge, everybody else was speeding so writing me a ticket is unfair!" argument. That never works.

• But I'm sure it's nothing, just like Brennan's team totally didn't spy illegally on the Senate and Sharyl Attkisson was just high AF on LSD when she saw someone take over her keyboard and mouse pointer and start deleting content she was working on.

  I mean this is Murica, FFS. It's not like we have an unaccountable national security state that frequently even succeeds in keeping federal law enforcement from being able to investigate allegations of clear, serious, felony conduct.

  • and Sharyl Attkisson was just high AF on LSD when she saw someone take over her keyboard and mouse pointer and start deleting content she was working on.

    
    
    Her delete key was stuck [thehill.com].

    
    
    Also, it's funny how she claimed the Obama administration was treating journalists like "enemies of the state" yet has no problem when the con artist and his supporters openly attack reporters and/or bar them from attending meetings or press conferences.

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      They’re censoring me! screamed the man who’s house had a room dedicated to talking with the media.

    • Re:

      > Her delete key was stuck

      Dude, your comment glows. You know computers. You would believe that this is a stuck delete key?

      https://www.politico.com/blogs... [politico.com]

      Have you ever used a Macintosh?

      If the investigation had concluded it was fraud, that would be believable. Or taken in by an Indian 'calling' from the IRS. Total boomer move. But it didn't.

      The delete key story has no credibility and is easily contradicted by the evidence. Drop the ideological blinders.

      • Re:

        Total boomer move.
        
        I'm a boomer, and I resent that remark. I doubt that you realize it, but the first modern computers were invented, built and used by members of The Greatest Generation, and their work, both in hardware and software was carried on and developed into what we have now mostly by boomers. I think it's safe to say that if it weren't for boomers, there wouldn't have been a computer revolution, or at least, not one that went so far or so fast. Show a little respect to your elders and remembe

• • People would simply declare it fake news because they couldn't deal with the fact that they have believed all the harebrained bullshit they've been fed.

• • 1 hidden comment

• • Re:

    By posing the questions, it shows you don't understand how Slashdot works.

    You are supposed to read the article, fill in the gaps about the subject from your imagination and then argue about the article in the comments section!

    • Re:

      Aren't supposed to!! Stupid typo! Whole statement doesn't work with that typo!

• Blaming the inevitable out pouring endpoint, rather than those who created the the outpouring through the piling up of undisclosed of secrets in the first place.

  That could be fairly compared to blaming the person who got stabbed instead of the persons who piled swords(information that has been weaponized through secrecy) haphazardly on each other in the hallway to eventually avalanche.

• You can delay it but to collect and keep secret it is to ensure that one day it all leaks uncontrollably. Some responsibility, if not most of the responsibility, falls on those who purposely maintained the separation of awareness in the first place.

  Information is like water. It can be delayed but it always finds a way through. To deny that is to be purposely in avoidance of accountability to causality itself.

• ....to put him away for a long time

  "Mr. Schulte still faces a federal trial stemming from what prosecutors say were more than 10,000 images and videos of child pornography that federal agents found on electronic devices in his home in the course of the Vault 7 investigation"

  Not credible that someone with his knowledge & skills who worked for the CIA just had this lying around unencrypted

  • Not credible that someone with his knowledge & skills who worked for the CIA just had this lying around unencrypted

    But it was encrypted... Not only was it encrypted, it was stored inside of an encrypted virtual machine, but also inside of an encrypted volume inside of the VM. The CP was then apparently neatly organized by preference in a series of folders in the encrypted volume.

    However, all of that encryption didn't count for much when he had terrible operational security... he stored all of his passwords on his phone unencrypted, which he gave to them unlocked. doh.

    The New Yorker [newyorker.com] has a decent article about him and the whole case.

• Under the Orange Book standard for B-level security, information cannot be obtained by another person without the necessary clearance and cannot be transferred either to a user who lacks that clearance or to a device that is not certified as supporting the necessary multi-level security protocols for both users and devices.

  Since the data was copied off, one must ask why the CIA thought it could use devices that did not meet the necessary security standard for such information. Even though the Orange Book is no longer mandatory, it is still one of the best standards out there for mandatory access controls for hardware, storage, processes, and users alike.

  Indeed, modern standards are arguably tighter than Orange Book. Even the lowest levels in infosec have Class III certificates to validate their identity to the software, much of which has moved off personal computers and onto central servers (thanks be to the Great God Citrix), allowing for far stricter access controls. Even modern monitors for such uses are designed to not be visible at any measurable angle beyond that which the user can reasonably be expected to view the monitors at.

  If the CIA lost the information through sheer negligence despite knowing better, one can reasonably argue that deliberate and wanton failure to properly secure information is just as much of a crime as the stealing of it.

  Frankly, I'd want to see the IT department head before a tribunal on charges of wilfully aiding and abetting the enemy through incompetent security policies.

  • Re:

    > one can reasonably argue that deliberate and wanton failure to properly secure information is just as much of a crime as the stealing of it.

    It is. As in, that's literally explicitly stated in the statute.
    So for example, one would/should go to prison if you take a bunch of classified information home and store it on your home server, in your basement, managed by an idiot who asks basic questions about wiping data on Reddit.

    And before you ask, yes, one should also go to prison for attempting the violent

• Another American hero facing political persecution for leaking information the government was hiding from the People it works for. Because essentially our government agencies were (and are) have rebelled against the sovereign (aka the people) and assumed the crown for themselves. If it a shame our Republic has fallen to this.

  Joshua Schulte
  Edward Snowden
  Julian Assange