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New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7
- mindslight 8y agoProsecute the messenger; leave the criminal conspiracy untouched.
- jonhendry18 8y agoWhat criminality? Unless the CIA was using the tools against targets in the US, there's no US law broken. Every country does it.
- mindslight 8y agoI'm pretty sure that criminal conspiracies generally don't get out of investigation by arguing their latest activities haven't been proven to be criminal.
- anonymous5133 8y agoYup which is one reason why trump is pushing so hard on tariffs. The chinese have an army of hackers committing war fare against the usa and its trade secrets. Governments should not be hacking each other. They should be engaging in diplomacy like any civilized country.
- rhizome 8y agoWar by another name, it seems like an admission that it's a war we are losing, or perhaps have already lost. It's also a bit rich to imply the USA is engaging in (or has any reason to expect) civilized diplomacy in any way.
- jonhendry18 8y agoI dunno, I think Trump is pushing so hard on tariffs because he doesn't understand what trade imbalances mean.
- notveryrational 8y agoCommon misconception. CIA is allowed to target Americans, and does on a regular basis. Targeting Americans for political purposes is illegal. Targeting Americans for National Security reasons is perfectly within National Security Law.
- jonhendry18 8y agoNote I said "in the US", which I believe is a geographical restriction that applies, not "Americans".
- DmenshunlAnlsis 8y agoThe same restrictions apply to the NSA, and we all know how much that mattered to them. Why do you think the CIA is different?
- notveryrational 8y agoThat's the thing, if you look at the NSA, they were and still are absolutely empowered to do what they did. The only person who got in trouble for the domestic surveillance disclosures were the person who blew the whistle. That's because what he did was illegal and what they did wasn't.
- notveryrational 8y agoAhh same deal. Geographical restrictions are for civilian law and political purposes. National Security follows different standards.
- pietroglyph 8y ago> In a previous statement, WikiLeaks said the source of the damaging disclosure had hoped to “initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.” That didn't really work out... I wonder if that was the real motivation; it seems a little naive.
- acct1771 8y agoWhat other method is there? Put the info out there, hope it gets traction, hope we who care spread it. You can't force people to care.
- jessaustin 8y agoFor one thing, it completely hollowed out a previously common claim of attribution for the alleged DNC "hack": "We have some evidence of tools that only Russian state employees use!" "These CIA documents indicate that CIA and other parties also use those tools..." "Why do you hate America?"
- rando444 8y agoWhile I won't justify anything this person allegedly did.. it seems open to speculation whether the child pornography stuff was actually legitimate, or some sort of targeted attack. (whether to destroy his character/career or keep him under judicial watch / within the country)
- influx 8y agoI read the IRC logs, and I'm skeptical that anyone not deeply versed in the lingo, tone, and character of that scene could fake them. It's not impossible, but it was pretty convincing to me.
- zeth___ 8y agoSo you're saying you're "deeply versed in the lingo, tone, and character of that scene"? Reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYkbqzWVHZI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYkbqzWVHZI
- jessaustin 8y agoMaybe I'm missing something here, but ISTM the question isn't really whether the logs are of a genuine conversation about CP, but rather whether the accused really was a part of that conversation? After all, if he really took part in a conversation about procuring such material, it wouldn't have mattered if he talked like a newb. Likewise, if he wasn't in on it, it doesn't matter that everyone who was in on it got "the lingo" right. ps. How would one know enough about the scene to motivate such skepticism?
- influx 8y agoRead the transcript and decide for yourself, I'm referring strictly to how I've seen people speak on IRC. Warning, there is disturbing text in there. https://dd80b675424c132b90b3-e48385e382d2e5d17821a5e1d8e4c86b.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/external/joshua-a-schulte-fbi-warrant.pdf https://dd80b675424c132b90b3-e48385e382d2e5d17821a5e1d8e4c86...
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- salimmadjd 8y agoMr. Schulte had been charged last year in New York with possession of child pornography Very interesting! It almost seems like the pornography charges against him was a way to punish him but without prosecuting him for the actual leakage. Perhaps the government wanted to still point the fingers at someone else or avoid embarrassment?
- dexterdog 8y agoAnd you can color me skeptical of any evidence that the government provided in that case.
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- Cacti 8y agoYou should read the indictment. That porn was not planted. https://www.scribd.com/document/379346745/Joshua-Adam-Schulte https://www.scribd.com/document/379346745/Joshua-Adam-Schult...
- djsumdog 8y agoeh, you should still be skeptical. This is a CIA contractor/employee we're talking about here. Child pornography is an interesting situation because no one outside of the justice department and a few key people can even legally examine the evidence. It shouldn't be beyond the realm of believeability to this bad actors created these charges in retaliation.
- cortesoft 8y agoHow would an indictment prove or disprove whether it was planted?
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- jscipione 8y ago"Government investigators suspect that he provided WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, with a stolen archive of documents detailing the C.I.A.’s hacking operations, but they had not initially charged him in that crime." Wikileaks is a news organization, not an anti-secrecy organization who's First Amendment Right to Freedom of the Press has been illegally infringed upon by the US Government.
- wyldfire 8y agoOr option C: a propaganda arm of the Russian Government. EDIT: downvoters aren't offering a response, so I'll just hope or assume that they want evidence: [1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses-panama-papers-as-an-attempt-to-destabilise-russia https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses... [3] http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771716 http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771716 [4] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/cambridge-analytica-julian-assange-wikileaks-clinton-emails/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/cambridge-analyti... [5] https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/on-weaponized-transparency/ https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/on-weaponized-tran... [6] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-secret-correspondence-between-donald-trump-jr-and-wikileaks/545738/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...
- Chris_Chambers 8y agoMUH RUSSIA
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- DINKDINK 8y agoDo you mind enlightening us how Wikileaks was a propaganda arm of the Russian government when they released video of US war crimes (murder of journalists in the Collateral Murder video)? If another news organization received the DNC leaks and chose to not publish them, do you think that would have been ethical? Is your position that, one cannot be a US citizen and oppose the US government and if you do you're a Russian agent?
- staunch 8y ago> Mr. Schulte had been charged last year in New York with possession of child pornography. The fact that they found child porn on his computer is the scariest part. Almost any technical person could frame almost anyone else with CP possession. It's just a matter of putting some files on a computer and/or faking some logs, browser history, etc. It would be incredibly trivial for the CIA to put CP on his computer and then use that as a method of getting him into custody. A rogue agent could do it without anyone else knowing. The frightening aspect of CP possession is that there's basically no one willing to even hear out a person charged with the crime. It's the perfect thing to frame someone with precisely because it's so revolting and hard to disprove. CP possession laws should be changed to put much more onus on the state. It possibly should not even be a felony to merely posses simply because of how hard it is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Production of CP is clearly the main problem and far easier to be confident in prosecuting.
- acct1771 8y agoOne of the leaks describes methods for doing just this. I was afraid to open the comments here. Very happy I was wrong.
- anonymous5133 8y agoIf i recall correctly there was a virus that did that. If you got infected it would visit sites that had cp on it and would download cp to the infected computer. Even if you deleted the virus the cp would still remain.
- Cacti 8y agoThe indictment goes into some detail on this: https://www.scribd.com/document/379346745/Joshua-Adam-Schulte https://www.scribd.com/document/379346745/Joshua-Adam-Schult... The guy is clearly guilty.
- gowld 8y agoThat's not how justice works. The indictment is the prosecutor's claims, not established facts that have survived subject to cross-examinations. The listed evidence could be fake, could be real but linked to the accused, or could be real and linked.
- StanislavPetrov 8y agoCrickets from all of the "news" outlets that pointed to this incident as more "proof" of a Russia-Wikileaks partership. Very much like the Sony hack, which was widely attributed to North Korea (again, without a shred of evidence), you can be sure that there will be very few, if any, mea-culpas issued by those media organizations that uncritically swallowed DC/CIA misinformation and reported that misinformation as fact. Hopefully this episode will serve as an important reminder to everyone that they should always remains skeptical, of everything, until presented with proof they can independently verify, instead of mindlessly accepting basless claims that happen to agree with popular narratives.
- rubbingalcohol 8y agoI researched your claim. For the Sony hack, no actual evidence was ever provided implicating North Korea - just unsupported allegations. [Independent researchers](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/30/sony-hack-researchers-claim-sacked-employees-could-be-to-blame https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/30/sony-hack-resea...) found it was much more likely to have been disgruntled employees. However, for the Vault 7 leak, almost no major news organizations cited Russia as a likely culprit for this. I agree with your sentiment that basically any official information that comes out of the IC is suspect, but in this case, unless you can cite specific examples, I'm pretty sure the IC never publicly blamed Russia.
- StanislavPetrov 8y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/07/wikileaks-cia-documents-us-russia-conflict https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/07/wikileaks-cia-... >no actual evidence was ever provided implicating North Korea - just unsupported allegations. No actual evidence has been provided implicating Wikileaks received anything from Russia either - just unsupported allegations. If you disagree, I welcome you to link below actual evidence that has been provided. Despite the exhorations of many, claims made by spooks, spies, employees of think tanks and 3-letter agencies is not proof of anything, in any context, ever. Its extremely troubling, and very revealing, that this simple fact is an anathema to so many.
- hsienmaneja 8y agoDidn’t Snowden encourage people to leak? At least on the surface it seems like he may have been role model for this particular actor.
- anonymous5133 8y agoThe american people have a right to know what its government is doing.
- mmjaa 8y agoNot any more they don't.
- empath75 8y agoIt’s amazing how many people on hacker news jump to the defense of a traitor, let alone someone that’s involved in child abuse.
- nkurz 8y agoPerhaps they put greater emphasis than you on the difference between "is" and "is accused of being"? At least on the child abuse side, I'm pretty sure that most defenders are doubting the evidence rather than condoning the behavior.
- 0xbear 8y agoYeah, I’m not a CIA employee, but even I use different passwords for everything and don’t store them in the clear. This smells like a government hit job from a mile away, much like Assange’s “rape” case. Snowden would have no doubt attracted the same kind of “attention” had he not moved to one of the very few countries where CIA, FBI, and NSA can’t operate.
- notveryrational 8y agoI remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. When a friend got in trouble for stealing and publishing data from our school, the state police went around scaring all of the parents and media with accusations of suspected child porn (completely made up, and never part of any actual investigation). Just uttering the words turned parents who had been closed lipped into law abiding, pre-judgemental, and supportive accolades. In his case, there was never any plant (thank god), but honestly - I've watched this tactic used again and again to destroy reputations. If the State Police feel empowered to use it at will, it's entirely believable for me to believe the _CIA_ would go so far as to plant - especially given the extra-legal authority of impunity they are empowered by.
- austinheap 8y agoI remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. I don't remember the part where the police -- who were involved -- manufactured or planted child pornography accusations. As you pointed out, that also isn't the case here either. Hat tip for the accurate username though.
- notveryrational 8y agoChip on your shoulder? So the State Police (NY State for me) did manufacture child pornography allegations. I am glad your experience was different. I believe that in this case, the CIA planted this evidence. I love my username, one could even say irrationally so.
- bearofgod 8y agoInstead of saying searched, perhaps we should say "planted." These are the same people who told us Trump was conspiring with the Russians, who used a doctored dossier to get a FISA. Until we know a lot more it should take it with a grain of salt, but if he is a pedophile I hope he rots in hell.