Ex-CIA Software Engineer Goes on Trial for Vault 7 Leak
wsj.com
wsj.com
> Mr. Schulte wasn't charged immediately, and in conversations with authorities he denied leaking classified information. But by early April he faced a different legal peril: while searching Mr. Schulte's devices, agents found evidence of child pornography, opening up a new line of investigation. Mr. Schulte was arrested in August 2017 on federal child-pornography charges.
Yeah, sure they did.
What do you mean? archive.is blocks DNS requests from Cloudflare servers because they don't include the end user's IP range in the request using an optional DNS extension. They do answer such DNS requests coming from others.
https://mobile.twitter.com/archiveis/status/1018691421182791...
> In response to a request we received from 'US Digital Millennium Copyright Act' the page is not currently available.
> If you need it for research, investigation or other purposes, please, inquiry via email, or...
So if he just had some Loli hentai, they could charge him with CP, even if it isn't CP.
But, in this case, you have to remember that the FBI is perhaps one of the world's largest possessors and distributors of CP. For purposes of law enforcement, of course. And they have a way of "discovering" CP on the hard drives of espionage suspects at risk of exposing how the national-security sausage gets made...
I wonder if AI-generated CP would count as CP. It's fake, but it would look real.
For example: There was one guy that the jury was going to convict him for possession of CP, because he had videos of an adult actress that was asian and had small breasts, and so people believed her to be a child...
The only reason he was not convicted, is that when internet found out about it, they got in touch with the actress, that then personally went to the guy trial, and personally handed to the judge her ID and her studio documents, to prove she was adult when she made the movies.
EDIT: if someone remembers the name of the actress in question, please post it, I can't remember it and for some reason I am not finding it either... Juts so people know I am not inventing things.
https://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/16/national/supreme-court-st...
Like, hey, this type of content is less compatible with ads. Means sudo mark it CP. We don’t like this person have publicity here. Means hey mister CP.
Everyone’s only interested in CP and it’s disgusting and we gets to decide what’s CP, so what’s CP stands for? CP means CP of course!
FBI agents got a "covert search warrant", entered his house without him knowing, then magically find unencrypted CP on his drives. This is the same agency that can interview you, not record it, write up their version of your "interview" as a "form 302", then later charge you for lying to them if anything in their written version of your testimony is later shown to be false (no intent required on your part, if you said it rained last tuesday and it didn't you are guilty of lying to federal agents). No one should trust anyone with that kind of power, and you'd be naive to suggest such power has never been abused.
While I completely agree that "lying to a federal agent" is a charge that is open to abuse, it's worth noting that the lie needs to be material in order for a crime to have been committed.
We essentially have state-sanctioned black mail.
> here was no chance whatsoever that your denial — whether it was a panic-induced brain fart, or a failure of memory, or a lie — could have misled or deterred the FBI in its investigation for even a moment. But that doesn't matter. Though materiality is an element of Section 1001, it's a weak, diluted type of materiality. Statements to the government are deemed material if they are the sort of statements that have the capacity to influence it. Courts have come very close to creating a presumption of materiality by reasoning that if the information were not material the government would not have asked for it and you wouldn't have offered it.
Don't talk to any law enforcement without a lawyer. No matter how innocent you think you are. You may be the only suspect and any answer could be misconstrued against you. Sometimes it's not even personal or intentional.
Look at what they did to Pad? dock.
Things are not always as they seem.
I imagine I can become a suspect from a witness, if I make a mistake which is seen as a lie.
You hear a loud bang and see a car speeding away. Later on, from your window, you see that police have arrived and are investigating. Would you go and offer the info, what car, maybe number, at what hour.
Or lawyer up first, because where I live, finding a lawyer is not a common thing to do.
From a prominent legal blog:
'"A statement made to the “best knowledge” of a person does not mean that the person asserts the truth or accuracy of the statement or that the statement is based on that individual’s personal knowledge.'
Similar to undergoing an investigation for SF-86 process all questions are asked "To the best of your knowledge..." leaving you room to make accidental mistakes without incriminating yourself.
I'm old enough to remember transitioning my interaction from /. to HN to get more professional discussion of industry topics. That was a long time ago, and there's no reason to assume most of /. hasn't followed me here by now.
Edit: for those downvoting me, I'd appreciate a clarification on whether I was "off-topic," "troll," "flamebait," or something else; this is not the granularity of feedback to which I am accustom. ;)
I'm a bit bummed as HN was pretty unique / not likely to find a new one.
Slashdot, Digg and Reddit all had the same "unique" feeling for a long time. Something will replace HN eventually.
Like when I ask a question here I'm not inundated by "I just read wikipedia and i'm here to splain it to you!" folks (I did too man .. that's not my question) and the expected depth on HN was / sometimes is fairly comprehensive. Also a lot less meme level type blogsmap nad links to folks who have blogs that actually know something.
For me that was fairly unique to HN, at least as far as programming type stuff goes. Slasdhot, dig, reddit, always kinda spammy / shallow.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1524164
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1613021
See also "HN is turning into Reddit", which even goes back to before HN was HN:
It's astonishing that, during the vetting process and over the course of his employment, his alleged sexual preferences were never a cause for concern. These people can't keep secrets from their employers because any secret they keep is a possible liability.
I feel like that by default would just mean everything involving anyone with any power (or even little) would be thought to be a conspiracy.
The article does not mention it and I would like to know if it is know if this was some files on his laptop, or was in his browser cache or browser history or an USB stick
That kind of stuff will never be released though.
Exhibit A: "Mad Thad" McMichael / https://imgur.com/a/xr2IH - of "\things\dont click\cp\cp" fame.
"Your honor, the prosecution claims my client had CP on his hard drive, yet it does not appear in either his Apple backups nor his Google Drive synchronization images..."
This person has intelligence, technical acumen, and is immersed in secrecy and privacy at an extreme level on a daily basis.
Maybe people are just dumber than we want to credit them for. But I don't think its "conspiracy theory" to find this indecent strange.
The history of people being arrested for crime suggests no. People who are incredibly savvy in one field have been incredibly stupid in what should have been a very-closely-related field.
Entirely too many politicians who know how much people talk have had their careers tarnished by unpopular sexual trysts, for example.
Here is ANOTHER article from Today about a famous Hacker being arrested for child porn.
https://kotaku.com/nintendo-switch-hacker-busted-also-pleads...
It just feels like from reading the news, that to be an illegal hacker it's almost a requirement to have tons of child porn on your personal computers.
I'm really not sure which possible assertions is more disturbing: that the FBI would frame him or that the CIA may be full of paedophiles.
Those are two big assumptions.
HN is usually pretty logical, so I find it odd that people are jumping to conclusions here.
Jumping from "the CIA is all elite software engineers" to "CIA engineers must have extraordinary opsec" to "if unencrypted evidence was found, the most likely explanation is it was planted" requires several wild leaps.
Maybe the same sort of person who blows up their life by leaking classified information and does it in a manner sloppy enough to at least be accused of the crime is also careless to not properly cover up other crimes?
Also, clandestine service and analyst roles are two very different roles housed under the same agency. Not everyone in the CIA is in clandestine service. (In fact it's my understanding the vast majority are not)
I have no idea if this person is guilty, that's what a trial is for. But I'm not going to say the presence of evidence is evidence of innocence - that seems like extremely flimsy, circular logic.
Then again, I've never held a clearance or worked a government job - this is all just my own analysis based on open source information, so take what I say with a grain of salt :)
Folks may want to read this article:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9...
(There's also a HN discussion thread for that article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14500633)
Precisely. We give them the power to search our houses and take away our freedom because we trust them to do The Right Thing. When this trust is broken, we are in a very bad place.
I'm not sure I agree. You could say that about ... anything. Spam, racism... etc.
I would think that just given time someone has falsified such a thing before, I don't by into the idea that it makes sense to make that assumption for any or every given case.
But a whistleblower? A thorn in the intelligence agencies' side who has exposed them and attracted their ire? You'd be a credulous fool to take that story at face value. The IC has a long and documented history of flouting norms like honesty and integrity. These are institutions whose entire purpose is to use deceptive, extra-legal methods to focus the power of government against anybody who poses a threat to it.
In general or this case? In general: Because it's incredibly powerful. In this case? See below.
>The defendant broke his agreement with the CIA and the Federal Government by leaking classified information.
This has yet to be proven, and the defendant claims he is innocent. An alleged leaker claiming his innocence possessing unencrypted CP is incredibly convenient for the CIA. Almost too convenient.
>falsify evidence that could torpedo an entire case
Why when the risk to the gov is basically 0%. You run a kit to plant the files and metadata. The files are then "extracted" by a forensic tool, the "evidence" is now bulletproof. The only person who could conceivably challenge such a move would be a very wealthy person who knew they were innocent and chose to hire expert witnesses to analyze the planted data to prove it was faked. Even then... good luck.
As to why this happens more often than you might expect, it's because people that share classified info are all around bad. It's surprisingly uncommon that they are being blackmailed cause of the CP for example.
Also this was very young children being abused, horrible indefensible stuff.
Now this statement requires some serious proof. Most of the high profile whistle-blowers have been heroes standing up against the odds to at least let everyone of us know what the state is doing.
Camping people like Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden 'all around bad' is shameful.
Manning OR Snowden site:tass.com OR site:rt.com OR site:sputnik.com
>About 11,800 results
Thank you for making my argument for me.
Trump OR Obama site:tass.com OR site:rt.com OR site:sputnik.com
259000 results. I guess they are even worse people, by your twisted logic?
So I think you missed my point.
The fact that people can be used for propaganda says nothing about them. I'd also mention that Russia Today has some serious journalism interspersed with more problematic content, but I'm sure you'd decide I'm a Russian spy or something if I say that.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/joshua-adam-schulte-cha...
Also LOL they charged him with copyright infringement (probably for some torrented movies on his hard drives), they really want to throw the book at this guy.
EDIT: I realize now after re-reading this comment that it could definitely come off as very abrasive. I won't alter it so everyone can see the original. Sorry if I offended anyone, I purely meant it from the standpoint of an engineer who has control of their own career (and likely desires more money/status) and understands the kind of precedent this creates and what it means for preservation of self if one were to work in the CIA.
Money.
"Preempt threats and further US national security objectives by collecting intelligence that matters, producing objective all-source analysis, conducting effective covert action as directed by the President, and safeguarding the secrets that help keep our Nation safe."
I'm trying to be as non-judgemental as possible and could see that some people might find this mission compelling.
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/cia-vision-mission-values/inde...
Think of it like the guy in Firefly hunting down the Tam's. He is convinced he's doing work to create a paradise for everyone else, ostensibly in the hope said paradise will never have a need for someone like him.
People who engage with the apparatus do so because at some fundamental level, they have reason to believe the work has to be done, and many take on the responsibility of doing it to spare others of the burden of having to do so.
If you haven't lived or experienced something that's lit that spark, it generally means that someone else is hard at work trying to keep it that way. Some people never experience it, and most of the ones who have had that spark lit that I know tend to hope those around them never do. It changes you. Most I've talked to are non-committal as to whether the change was good or bad, but almost all felt it was their duty to step up.
Otherwise why risk divulging state secrets?
That being said, the pay was insulting for the skills desired and location (DC metro supposedly isn't cheap). I personally wouldnt work for the out of principle and probably wouldnt ever qualify (no degree, plus I have expressed views that would probably disqualify me anyway)