US Government IT contractor could face death penalty over espionage charges | Hacker News Reader

US Government IT contractor could face death penalty over espionage charges

itpro.com

47 pointsBeggers196051 comments

Deeply fucking hate these kinds of headlines.

It is always the maximum punishable by the law and they never, ever cite the actual sentencing guidelines or look at prior comparable cases.

Comparative facts don't bleed—journalism's broken.

Journalism click baiting and sensationalism at its finest.

Well, they want to maximize the "deterrent" aspect of the law.

This guy is probably going to get designated as a spy, I doubt he's executed. He's a chip in negotiations with the Ethiopians over something, maybe something with Tigray. If a Russian became a US citizen and got busted doing this, he'd be considered a Russian spy and swapped for something or someone.

Considering we haven't executed anyone for espionage or treason since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, I seriously doubt that's a likely outcome for him, especially since someone you're going to execute has little incentive to cooperate with the counter-intelligence response.

He'll get a few decades if he cooperates, and life if not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_imprisoned_spies

if they go public with the charge, cooperation was not possible/finished.

A spy hanged in 2006:

https://archive.globalpolicy.org/iraq-conflict-the-historica...

That event did not occur within the US judicial system.

Though it did occur within a territory unlawfully invaded by, and occupied at the time by, the United States.

Will we be seeing this for Menendez too?

"At one point in 2018, prosecutors said, Mr. Menendez texted “highly sensitive” information from the State Department about employees at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to Ms. Menendez. She forwarded it to Mr. Hana, who forwarded it to an Egyptian government official."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/24/nyregion/robert-menendez-...

One would hope that he is not above the law -- the evidence publicly shared is quite damning.

Which evidence? Pictures of money, gold bars and a car? Everything I’ve read so far is tabloid like. The precedence has already been set. You can have an email server in a basement bathroom and share “highly sensitive” information with whomever you’d like and “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges.

Menendez is falling on the sword for someone else. It’s nothing more than a distraction. Ask yourself “why now, instead of 11 months ago?”

https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/state/2022/10/28/bob-...

right, so another innocent citizen ...

It just doesn’t make sense. One would think that someone under federal investigation isn’t going to leave out ill gotten money and gold bars… but here we are. Smart enough for global bribes but dumb enough not to cover up evidence of said crimes. Make it make sense. Just piss poor OPSEC?

Argument from personal incredulity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity

Criminals are dumb.

> Everything I’ve read so far is tabloid like.

If it hadn't been... would you have ever heard about it?

There's a kind of survivorship bias going on here, not just in terms of which criminals get caught, but which allegations get public visibility.

Who was the last spy executed? The Rosenbergs? Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen are considered the two most damaging spies in history, and both of them got sentenced to life in prison. Times like this, I'm reminded of Ken White's (aka Popehat's) comment about how federal sentencing guidelines actually work.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/beware-the-flood-of-trump-sen...

The important thing to note about federal sentencing guidelines is that they are, like the Pirate Cose, more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.

Departures in both directions are permitted, so particularly sui generis cases, like Trump, might end up anywhere in the range permitted by law independent of the guidelines, without a lot of clear indication of where.

I could easily find this guy's LinkedIn profile, a profile which includes his past government-related jobs, and I'm wondering why would people make that stuff public?

Or maybe I asked the wrong question and the correct one should have been: Why would the U.S. Department of State or the U.S Department of Justice allow their employees/contractors to make that contractual information public to the world, including to state entities that are adversarial to the US Government?

Are the people who allowed all of this to happen getting the same treatment though? Because how the hell was this person able to modify documents, and exfiltrate them from secured facilities? At best, this is a level of incompetence that requires a staff rotation with dishonorable discharge for everyone involved, and at worst these folks were complicit.

they probably should have better security on document storage but if an agent that's trusted stays later than others in his dept, how would the others be liable the system if securing docs sure, but even Donald Trump made it out with boxes of top secret docs, negligence isn't complicity either.

it could be they used camera in the guys glasses that nobody would even realize he's taking pictures. all he has to do is read a document to snap a pic, it's not necessarily like he had to use a smartphone all conspicuous like.

By having a process in place where a single person can't ever be in a position where they can walk out with top secret documents. Clearance is not the same as trust.

So is Dalke not also charged with espionage? He attempted to transmit messages to a foreign agent (who happened to actually be FBI). So maybe his incompetence makes his crimes less severe? I was under the impression that he also sent documents to a Discord group, and that there were foreigners in that group.

He could face the death penalty, the title and article say the same with respect to this. It hasn't been determined whether he will face the death penalty. It could go the same way as with Dalke.

This article appears to be a summary of https://www.cbsnews.com/news/state-dept-it-contractor-espion...

Interesting: the article states he used "an encrypted application" but follows that with contents of the communication from that app.

Did they break the encryption or access the communications through device exploits (once in plaintext).

They likely got direct access to his phone and just read the messages.

Or from the person which they were in communication with.

Or perhaps they just gained physical access to the device he used after arresting him.

Dec 22 through Aug 23

That's a long time, I would love to know the breakdown on that. How long was he operating undetected vs how long was he operating after detection (while being monitoring/investigated)

NSA seems to have a major problem vetting people.

The article says he worked for the State Department and DOJ, not the NSA.

That's the DSS, not the NSA.

But espionage is a Federal charge, which is currently under a execution stay, as has been for the past 2 non-trump decades.

Will Biden ever follow through on his promise of abolishing the penalty? Possible campaign topic again.

Add it to the list of "things presidential candidates promise, but that the president doesn't have the capacity to implement". The death penalty is authorized by Congress; POTUS can tell the Justice Department not to do it or push for it in sentencing, but barring a legislative patch release the successor can always issue a new policy.

I agree and know this, it's more about how they are making promises they cannot keep. If Democrats ever get a majority in Congress again, and don't do it, however...

this isn't worth their time until they get through the big shit like poverty, healthcare reform, housing crisis / nimbyism, climate, homelessness, automation, etc.... world is on fire, I think a law like this is like what you tackle when you've solved poverty, climate change. world hunger, and homelessness

They aren't not trying [0]; it isn't the Democratic party that is blocking this.

On the other hand (and granted that the death penalty is a barbaric atrocity) I'm inclined to prefer the US federal government focus most of its reform efforts (even those contained to the justice system) on issues whose death rates average more than 0.25 people/year[1].

[0] https://pressley.house.gov/2023/07/13/pressley-durbin-reintr...

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

Really, an Ethiopian?

No, an American. First generation, but fully American and acknowledged as such by the US government itself.

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