Whether or not you think he should be jailed for leaking CIA secrets, the dude had child porn. He deserved a serious sentence because he expressed zero remorse for that. Along those lines he couldn’t even fucking pretend to have leaked the state secrets for any other reason than the CIA was a shitty place to work. You gotta play the fucking game if you’re gonna fuck with the government. You can’t just be a crusty old coder.
Ex-CIA computer engineer gets 40 years in prison for giving spy agency hacking secrets to WikiLeaks
Submitted 9 months ago by ZeroCool@slrpnk.net to technology@lemmy.world
https://apnews.com/article/joshua-schulte-cia-secrets-80a18020c9f1801b299aff2b61b450e8
Comments
thesmokingman@programming.dev 9 months ago
S410@kbin.social 9 months ago
"Furman said Schulte continued his crimes from behind bars ... by creating a hidden file on his computer that contained 2,400 images of child sexual abuse that he continued to view from jail."
How do you get 2.4k images on a jail computer? Manifest it out of thin air?
Considering CIA is involved, which is known for torture, human experimentation, poisonings, planted evidence, etc. I'd not be too surprised if that file was straight up planted as an extra "fuck you" to the guy.
thesmokingman@programming.dev 9 months ago
That was never part of his defense. Do you think the CIA colluded with him and his lawyer to accept responsibility for the material the CIA planted to sandbag his sentence? I feel like an innocent person would be screaming that. Hell, even possibly innocent/possibly guilty folks do.
themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I think one of the things that inflate image counts like that is that if there is a video of child porn, each individual frame of the video is counted as a single image. If he downloaded a 40 second, 60 FPS video, that’s 2.4k images right there.
This is why it’s more interesting when they mention total size in gigabytes of whatever, because image data has a maximum compression size but “raw number of images” is completely made up and could be a single file even when in the tens ouf thousands (still bad of course but you get my point)
BlackSkinnedJew@lemmynsfw.com 9 months ago
CIA: “yeah let’s put this 2.4k images of child porn at his computer and he will be fucked muahahahaha” 😈😈
nolefan33@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Holy shit, they really buried the lede with that headline. For sure, throw away the key.
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 9 months ago
I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t really trust the word of the CIA on those things. Or anything, really.
PatFussy@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Why does the CIA have a trove of child porn?
grayman@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Leverage.
Drugs -> Money Sex -> Control the Powerful Plumbers protect the CIA.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
To prove the charges. There have been enough cases of “she looks too young to be 18” where they were, in fact, 18. This database (which I thought was actually run by the FBI, but whatever) let’s them show that the images were of Jane Roe, born May 5 1996, and the images/material were produced between 2008-2010.
IOW, to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt that they were underage.
Carvex@lemmy.world 9 months ago
They take the man’s entire life away because he revealed us terrible things our non-elected leaders are doing to us. Who was hurt by his actions?
puchaczyk@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 months ago
They take the man’s entire life away because he revealed us terrible things our non-elected leaders are doing to us.
And for possessing child porn…
jonne@infosec.pub 9 months ago
Furman said Schulte continued his crimes from behind bars by trying to leak more classified materials and by creating a hidden file on his computer that contained 2,400 images of child sexual abuse that he continued to view from jail.
Holy crap, dude was even watching child porn in prison. Clearly the CIA is hiring the cream of the crop.
Sagifurius@lemm.ee 9 months ago
And if you’ll buy that, I’ll throw the Golden Gate in free
Kalkaline@leminal.space 9 months ago
Giving away methods for hacking/spying ensures your country is at a disadvantage.
Deceptichum@kbin.social 9 months ago
It also enables innocent people to be protected from foreign governments.
S410@kbin.social 9 months ago
Disclosing found exploits allows developers to patch them out and improve security of everyone, which includes all the other alphabet boys and regular citizens.
There's no way to know that you're the only one who found any given exploit. Letting an exploit stay unpatched opens up an attack vector for everyone, not just you.linearchaos@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Tune extent yes, but it also makes us all more secure. Even if you think our own government is doing a good job all the other governments have these holes too.
theodewere@kbin.social 9 months ago
must be nice not having to understand things
glowie@h4x0r.host 9 months ago
Please add citations where people were killed as a direct result
birthday_attack@lemm.ee 9 months ago
When people claim that leaks “get people killed,” they’re referring to when undercover agents are identified while they’re in the field. The only secrets exposed in these leaks are the computer hacking techniques used by the US to spy remotely through compromised devices.
The so-called Vault 7 leak revealed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices.
You could maybe say that closing off those surveillance channels prevented the CIA from learning about some attack, but that’s really tenuous. It alap assumes that the CIA isn’t constantly developing new zero-day exploits so that they can continue to spy on just about everyone on the planet.
rockSlayer@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Did Edward Snowden kill people too?
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 9 months ago
What happened to the guy who staged a coup to overthrow the government? Remember where all those psychos with guns wailed on cops with flagpoles and shit on the walls and stuff, and that lady planted bombs by the RNC office? Remember that? What happened to that guy?
Oh nothing?
Oh.
Huh.
slaacaa@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I wouldn’t say nothing, as he might become the next US president
(if the world is unlucky)
Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 9 months ago
He chilled with Epstein and raped some kids just like many Democrats. Part of the elite pedo ring.
What was your point again?
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 9 months ago
We get it, that’s why you like him.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I wonder how many of the gaping security holes in softwares and systems he reported have since been patched that otherwise would have left to doors wide open for hackers?
As long as governments hoard security vulnerabilities, they are endangering security, safety, life and property of millions of people.
mlg@lemmy.world 9 months ago
NSA accidentally leaking eternal blue lol
THEDAEMON@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
Everyone acting like the CIA couldn’t have had leverage over that guy and made him admit to the cp charge . Unless i have proof i ain’t believing shit . And also if that is true indeed i think 40 years is fair enough for that charge alone . Or am i missing something ?
autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] 9 months ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The bulk of the sentence imposed on Joshua Schulte, 35, in Manhattan federal court came for an embarrassing public release of a trove of CIA secrets by WikiLeaks in 2017.
The so-called Vault 7 leak revealed how the CIA hacked Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, and efforts to turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices.
In requesting a life sentence, Assistant U.S. Attorney David William Denton Jr. said Schulte was responsible for “the most damaging disclosures of classified information in American history.”
The judge said Schulte was “not driven by any sense of altruism,” but instead was “motivated by anger, spite and perceived grievance” against others at the agency who he believed had ignored his complaints about the work environment.
A mistrial was declared at Schulte’s original 2020 trial after jurors deadlocked on the most serious counts, including illegal gathering and transmission of national defense information.
In a statement afterward, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Schulte “betrayed his country by committing some of the most brazen, heinous crimes of espionage in American history.”
The original article contains 694 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
danc4498@lemmy.world 9 months ago
So, was he really just angry? Or is that a convenient lie?
nodsocket@lemmy.world 9 months ago
We haven’t heard his side. So definitely a lie
snownyte@kbin.social 9 months ago
Should've done what Snowden did. If you know what you're going to do, will lead to these consequences? Get the hell out of the country.
Because this is EXACTLY the kind of thing the American Government would've done to Snowden if he stayed. Snowden was right that he knew they wouldn't give him a fair trial.
jonne@infosec.pub 9 months ago
Eh, even if he did get a fair trial, what he did was clearly illegal and was definitely going to land him in prison. It was the right thing to do, but unless you have full faith that you’re going to get a presidential pardon, you’re right that you should be prepared to leave the country and never come back.
Radicaldog@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Whistleblower laws need strengthening. Snowden’s leaks, for example, were clearly in the public interest and needed to be leaked. It’s an unjust country that can’t see that and spare him.
mydude@lemmy.world 9 months ago
When you’re going against the permanent state, there’s no such thing as a fair trial.
GuidoMancipioni@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Bro, Snowden literally got people killed. That guy isn’t the hero people like to pretend he is.
snooggums@kbin.social 9 months ago
What people did he get killed?
Grimy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
If the gov didn’t want its secrets out in the open, they shouldn’t of been spying on their citizens. Maybe there would be less sympathy if the leaks didn’t bring to light the bombing of Bagdad full of civilians in the middle of the night and how the military hid it.
Maybe it was all for the money and Snowden is just a dick, but I’m glad he did it.
Eggyhead@kbin.social 9 months ago
Maybe, just maybe, if the government hadn’t been doing something worth whistleblowing about, those people would still be alive.
n3m37h@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Evidence? I couldn’t find anything that would indicate anyone died.
On the otherhand he did expose the government (NSA) spying program
Patriot Act was the worst thing to happen to America
snownyte@kbin.social 9 months ago
Bruh, stop pretending you care about something as people dying. There's no evidence to the contrary or anything. You're happily talking out of your ass to sound important. Kindly go fuck yourself.
sugarfree@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Being a spy is dangerous.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 9 months ago
When he first leaked the information out, I really felt bad for the guy and I followed him pretty closely. He knowingly through his life away to let people know that XY and z were happening. But then as he started getting passed around slowly from journalist to journalist, They started asking him questions. It became more and more obvious that he was just some kind of average dude, that saw something wanted to say something and needed to make sure that he could cover his ass.
I honestly think that the US handled it poorly. I was a whistleblower, guy cared, guy was in the public eye It had at least a decent trove of data.
They should have brought him back in giving him some conditional amnesty and had him help them dismantle the leak as much as possible. Then they could have give him a cushy job gag ordered him and had him come out of the public eye immediately.
Once he was seeking asylum the only way he’s going to be able to pay for that asylum is with the information he has. Once he is out in no man’s land and stuck the decisions that he makes are not all going to be his own. Even the ones that are going to be made in resentment.
I truly believe his initial act was absolutely made with good intentions, but he got trapped and was drawn down into things that were bigger than he was capable of sorting out.
In the end the US government allowed him to owe a debt to the Russian government. And that was never going to play out well.
cm0002@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Pfft, I say this about every article about someone getting arrested for committing a major crime.
“Oh no I’ve murdered someone, let me just hide the body reallllly good and call it a day” LMAO