Ex-FBI employee jailed for mishandling classified material | Hacker News Reader

Ex-FBI employee jailed for mishandling classified material

theregister.com

70 pointsCoBE1046 comments

When I worked in a SCIF, we had people who inspected what we brought in and out. I always assumed this was standard practice. I must be wrong.

It maybe was when you were there. But just look at how almost all aspects of our government work today and how dysfunctional it all is. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see that standards have dropped or people just do not care anymore.

Do you have any hard evidence that it's changed or that it's disfunctional relative to other large organizations?

Overclassification has been a problem for years. Every year, millions of classified documents are generated--not all of it top-secret, scif-class stuff, but still restricted. Which makes the job of keeping tabs on all of it difficult. It is arguable that too many people have classification authority, and that a lot of material is classified for categorical reasons but have no real security meaning.

Oh, definitely. For anyone who hasn't been, you should really see the meme folders wasting space on these resources.

This is generally true, but there is the human factor of people getting lax. You would think something as simple as passive RFID stickers on all documents could be done to automatically scan as you go in and out of doors, but there is such a huge "nothing wireless, ever!" bias that the whole system is going to be stuck in error-prone human controls forever.

Presumably "nothing wireless, ever" makes it much easier to detect malicious wireless devices...

I could see legitimate risk with RFID tags. One of the tools sigint uses is simply the volume of transmissions going from one point to another. You can wrap tagged documents in RF blocking covers but eventually you'll have to unwrap them to view. You might even be able to infer the kinds of documents being moved if you track routes. White House to DoE etc.

Sounds far-fetched but there have been some pretty wild methods lately about timing screen flashes to determine hash creation and stuff like that. Nothing is too far-fetched to intelligence gathering.

When you have secrets that affect the fate of humanity, freedom, your country, and millions or possibly billions of lives, it seems reasonable to not broadcast any information.

There are some 1-person SCIFs.

Not every SCIF is a multi-story black tint'd cube.

Doesn't bode well for other people who may be in trouble for similar.

"He Who Shall Not Be Named On HN."

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-fbi-analyst-sentenced-...

> The DoJ said it's been unable to figure out why those calls were placed, and that Kingsbury declined to share any details.

This person shouldn't get only 46 months. Am I crazy?

What about ex-president?

It sounds like something suspicious was going on with this person, but it could also be completely innocent and the person just wanted to work from home. They mention calls were made from her to suspicious people, but that the employee would not reveal the nature of the calls or who they were to - I guess they invoked their Fifth Amendment privilege, but you can do that and be totally innocent - it is your right not to speak to the investigators once you are in their custody, even if you have nothing to hide.

I'm guessing the severity of the sentence though was based on the fact the FBI could never figure out the whole picture, as it seems long for a situation where it was never shown that the information was shared with anyone.

Unlike with the Trump case where it is claimed he showed some of the documents to friends and associates. So, if Trump does get convicted I'm sure cases like the one above will be cited to try and increase the severity of his sentence. It would be unreal to see a former President in a federal prison camp.

You can't innocently take classified documents home.

Can you innocently store them with your Corvette?

When I got my clearance, it was made very clear to me: If I take them home or store them with my Corvette or have them on my email server, I'm going to jail.

If you're POTUS or authorized by the POTUS things are different since they are the classification authority.

There is still process you have to follow. Being president doesn't magically make you immune to rules and process. No, trump could not just "think they are declassified and they are", and that's not how it works, and he knew that.

Well, it really does work that way. The classification stems from a series of executive orders [1] which long post-date things such as the Espionage Act.

The thing is that Biden is the president not Trump so Biden could declassify everything at Mar-a-lago but Trump can't.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classified_information_in_the_...

Politicians don't sign any NDAs to get their clearances; they have a separate process.

This is why they're so willing to leak things as they don't actually suffer any repercussions (besides electability).

Except you can?

Have you never taken personal notes on a piece of paper near your desk only to notice that you wrote down some work information on it elsewhere?

Granted TFA is not about an accident but you can accidentally take documents home just like you can accidentally walk into a SCIF with a wireless microphone (your cellphone).

By innocent I mean lawful, not benign, since it is unlawful to take them home.

No, you can't. You could accidentally take classified documents/information out of a SCIF, but not innocently. This is a strict liability offense, so it being an accident doesn't make you innocent.

If it weren't so, then every spy trying to exfiltrate documents would do it 'accidentally'. "Oops, I accidentally put the wrong documents into my bag. Oops, I accidentally left the bag on a bus where, completely unknown to me, that Russian agent with a diplomatic passport picked it up. Terrible mistake, but you can't prove I meant for this to happen." It doesn't work like that; even if it was a genuine accident that doesn't get you out of trouble.

You are trying to inject uncertainty where there is none for the purposes of a prosecution like this.

It doesn’t matter the purpose of taking secret documents. Only that the defendant knew that they were secret and removed them from a secure facility. And since they were an FBI agent, there is documentation of when they were given access to secret documents, so the defense can’t argue they didn’t know the rules around control Those documents. Every person who is granted legal access to secret or better signs a legally binding contract that explains these things.

You're right as far as it comes to the prosecution itself. But there's additional value both to the FBI and to the public at large to determine the more general nature of the infractions. The FBI likely has enough information to infer if this was malicious or just acting outside of regulation out of carelessness/complacency/convenience.

The rest of us are left to conjecture and reading the tea leaves.

I expect that an FBI agent knows very well that they cannot remove the documents from the secure facility, for any purpose. For me it raises the question of why they believed otherwise - did leadership or other people's behavior lead them to think it was ok?

Trump also allegedly misled officials about it and refused to return documents when requested.

>it could also be completely innocent and the person just wanted to work from home

That isn’t completely innocent. If this were a case where they accidentally brought classified home, that is “innocent” and being careless. Intentionally removing it to “work from home” is intentionally and knowingly stealing classified information, regardless of what you plan to do with it. This type sentence is in line with knowingly taking classified material [1][2], as opposed to accidentally removing it, or unknowingly hainv it in your possession (like if you are emailed classified information).

[1] https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sacramento/news...

[2] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-nsa-employee-sentenced...

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