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Comment by tspiteri | Hacker News Reader

Using that reasoning, there was no story when Klaus Fuchs was caught spying on the Manhattan Project for the Soviet Union: Of course the Soviet Union intelligence were spying on the Manhattan Project, if they weren't spying on it they'de be derelict in their most basic of duties.

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I mean, the story was that the Soviet Union was spying on its allies. Klaus Fuchs went to jail. All of this is pretty much accepted statecraft. Are we supposed to think that something _went wrong_ when Klaus Fuchs was caught spying and went to jail? That's what happens to spies who are caught. Hence Assange.

With the important difference being that Assange is not a spy.

Edit: Downvoted for pointing out that Assange is not a spy. I'm honestly surprised by HN.

That's actually very questionable. It's pretty clear by now that at the very least he's a Russian intelligence asset.

[citation needed]

Misdirection. The news is a spy was caught and who it was; not that the Soviet Union was attempting to subvert the Manhattan Project.

And the news here to me is that the Spanish contractor was caught spying. So while it can be argued that the US spying is no news story, the spying by the security company is.

Frankly I can't help but imagine that the outsourcing of everything (but especially janitorial and security staff) has made it incredibly easy for everyone from state intelligence agencies to private corporations to insert spies into interesting places.

that's stupid. counter intelligence is also one of our side's basic duties. spy on the other guys, and stop the other guys from spying on us, that's the job description.

From the perspective of the Soviets - yes this is true. This analogy doesn’t work at all.

BTW, Fuchs died of old age.

That's the most surprising thing in that story as far as I'm concerned.

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