Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing Congressman's Data | Hacker News Reader

Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing Congressman's Data

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98 pointscolinprince20 comments

Here's the punishments they received: "In all, the conduct of 57 Secret Service personnel was reviewed, including 11 at the SES [Senior Executive Service] level. Of those, 41 are receiving some level of discipline. This discipline includes a letter of reprimand to one individual, suspended discipline contingent on no further misconduct for a period of five years, and suspensions from duty without pay for periods of up to 45 days. The one individual found by the Inspector General to have disclosed the private information to an outside source, the Washington Post, has resigned from the Secret Service."

In contrast:

"On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, and two counts of violating the Espionage Act through unauthorized communication of national defense information and "willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person." Each of the three charges carries a maximum possible prison term of ten years. The charge was initially secret and was unsealed a week later."[1]

"After making his concerns about mistreatment of whistleblowers known to his superiors, Crane was removed from his position in 2013."[2]

"In April 2010, Drake was indicted by a Baltimore, Maryland grand jury on the following charges: 1) Willful Retention of National Defense Information 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) (5 counts) (793(e) is a modification of the Espionage Act of 1917 made under the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950), 2) Obstructing justice 18 U.S.C. § 1519 (1 count), and 3) Making a False Statement 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a) (4 counts)"[3]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Criminal_charge...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crane_(government_officia...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake#Indictmen...

Now scale that behavior up by a factor of 10 where people never get caught. Same with Snowden. There are probably dozens of other people accessing the same data but handing it to a political party or selling it somewhere else.

> Now scale that behavior up by a factor of 10 where people never get caught. Same with Snowden.

Snowden hasn't been caught yet, but we can devoutly hope that he will be someday.

What he did was no different: taking information he had no need to know about but had access to, and giving it to folks who had neither need nor access.

As for selling it — he seems to have made quite the career from his crime.

The people in this country had a need for knowing what's going on.

It seems relevant that it was 41 Secret Service employees reprimanded and perhaps should be added to the title.

Reminds me of this recent article on the US Navy corruption scandal, just astonishing-

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/seduc...

In terms of it being a startlingly large group implicated in wrongdoing, I agree. However, I would argue that this intended harassment of an elected representative by a self-protecting bureaucracy is more heinous than the corrupt waste of money (and accompanied sharing of classified ships' schedules.) Maybe that's because I see the greatest threats to the US being internal rather than external. In both cases they should be punished harshly (and I'm satisfied to say that Navy careers are being ended quickly, with accompanying UCMJ sentencing), but one of these is the janitor who steals office supplies, while the other is the janitor who finds an unlocked computer and looks for incriminating emails for later blackmail.

Also, there was a short HN discussion of Fat Leonard recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11792183

> ..41 [Secret Service personnel] are receiving some level of discipline.

This sort of behaviour shouldn't be a disciplinary matter - it should be a criminal matter.

This is... the biggest thing that scares me about the assorted 3-letter-acronyms -- Not that they're spying on you or me (because most of us are irrelevant), but that they may have material on those with control of budgets and bombs.

If they're not in jail, they're not being punished. This is a staggering amount of willful, intentional corruption. The criminal conspiracy and "illegal fun" rises all of the way to Secret Service Assistant Director Ed Lowery. The only acceptable answer to this is to flush the toilet and rebuild the agency from the ground up.

Another sad day for government and its inability to maintain any sense of accountability. As others have stated, I don’t understand how this isn’t a criminal matter. Beyond just privacy issues, this seems to fit the definition of blackmail in D.C.

“Blackmail also has two elements. The first relates to criminal intent. That is, the person needs to intend to obtain property from someone else or to cause the other person to do or refrain from doing something. Second, in order to achieve the intended goal, the person needs to threaten either: (1) to accuse the other person of a crime, (2) to expose a secret or asserted fact that could subject the other person to “hatred, contempt, or ridicule,” or (3) to damage the other person’s reputation.” [1]

They exposed the congressman’s secrets with the intent to cause him to refrain from critiquing the agency. How isn't this a crime?

[1] http://koehlerlaw.net/assault-theft/extortionblackmail/

They didn't threaten the Congressman, they straight up leaked it. So, not quite extortion. But definitely feels crime-y.

"some level of discipline" for one branch of government attacking another. For violating a fundamental constitutional principle.

It's good to be the executive branch.

In the exact same situation if you aren't a congressman, well, then it just sucks to be you.

The precise context--which i didn't see mentioned in the OP--makes this story many times worse: Why were the SS out to get Rep Chaffetz? Because he was asking them questions during a Congressional Hearing. Why was the Hearing called? Because of an incident in which two senior SS got drunk at a farewell party for a colleague and rammed their car into a White House barricade. (Sadly) not from The Onion

We are quickly becoming India. Corruption as the status quo.

Our corruption doesn't require average citizens to pay bribes in order to get basic bureaucrats to do their jobs (simple things like obtaining a birth certificate) or to avoid arrest for a simple traffic stop. It's nearly all at the high level.

Whether that's better or worse is worth discussing.

Well no need to pay bribes when the police can forcibly take your money, and now even suck it right from your bank account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11862582

Of course, you can get it back, but it's up to you to prove that it's your money that they've just confiscated from you. Hope you don't need to hire a lawyer to get your money back since now you have no money.

Which doesn't quite answer the point the person one level above made about high vs low level corruption...

In the DC the name of the game is power. I think corruption is not the right word. More like court scheming.

The only thing secret about their service is how stupid these people really are. It's unfortunate that instead of taking healthy criticism from another US citizen, they instead chose to be vindictively juvenile. Real men don't hide from the truth. Not surprised, unfortunately.

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