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A $230k debt and a LinkedIn message led an ex-CIA officer to spy for China
- un_montagnard 8y agoThe page is unavailable.
- 0xDEFC0DE 8y agoWorking link: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/how-230-000-debt-linkedin-message-led-ex-cia-officer-n990691 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/how-230-0...
- whoevercares 8y agoConsidering the low wage level of Chinese (execution level) officer, CIA should be much easier to recruit in China
- trpc 8y agoA yet another reason to recognize that life is so pathetic, so here is a guy who spent his entire youth supposedly serving his country (or actually serving his bosses agendas and ambitions?) for peanuts and he is now an old jobless man with thousands of dollars in debt that he has to become a spy to pay off his debt
- CryptoPunk 8y agoJust because someone ends up in dire straits, doesn't mean they are good. He could have spent less to avoid debt. He could have gotten a job in the private sector. In a country like the US, there is no excuse for resorting to treason to get a pay check.
- trpc 8y ago>He could have spent less to avoid debt Easier said than done in most cases, not all people are 20 or 30 something above average IQs and can write some app or website and by the end of the year he would raise a couple of million from investors or get a job in some fancy startup, most lives are just pathetic and the need for money can make people do unimaginable things, the guy is 61 years old and he is jobless and in debt >no excuse for resorting to treason of course there is no excuse and it's totally a treason, I am just noting that how pathetic life can be
- neilv 8y agoYou might want to edit to clarify. It sounds like you're saying that most people who are not startup techbros have pathetic lives.
- iliketosleep 8y agoYou're right that there's no excuse per se, but one must acknowledge that desperate people will resort to desperate measures - especially those who have a family to support. It's easy to take the moral high ground until you find yourself in the sort of situation where the future of your family is on the line. History has proven that people who are normaly good can be capable of terrible things when faced with perceived threats to their survival.
- np_tedious 8y agoIt's not really about individual morality though. It's about the system, incentives, and aggregates. Take 100 people in a situation comparable to his and given the same opportunity, maybe 10 partake in treason. We should aim to lower the total amount, the rate willing to partake, or both.
- adrr 8y agoHe was probably making $100k when he left the CIA. If he worked 20 years, he probably has a nice pension. Most career federal employees make decent money, both my parents worked their careers for the government and live debt free.
- Scoundreller 8y agoDivorce?
- andonisus 8y agoWhy does it seem like you are giving him a pass for treason? Everyone has struggles. This does not give you a pass to become a spy for a hostile foreign nation and endanger the lives of your countrymen.
- rjf72 8y agoAt what point of poverty would you start attacking people you know to be innocent, to sustain yourself? For many people, as the number of homeless testify to, that point does not exist. It's obvious that a multi millionaire would not become a spy for $25k (as this man did), but would he for $50 million? If our multi-millionaire is this person, I'd expect the answer would likely be a resounding yes. And this guy did something much worse than just attacking people. He allegedly gave information on undercover operatives to China. Them going "missing" after extensive "questioning" would be hardly surprising, and this blood would be on his hands. But hey, now he has $25k... I think peoples actions generally reflect their character, not their condition. It's why you'll find penny pinching billionaires, or people who can barely afford a loaf of bread insistent on sharing it with you. But spies... if somebody wants to go join an enemy force and fight against their home country - that's fine - though they should never expect to be treated as anything besides an enemy. But a spy, by contrast, exploits good will to try to hurt the people giving it to him. As the article mentions he was pressing former colleagues for information, with the aim of giving it to people that would likely use it to hurt them with. Spies are the scum of this earth and in no way whatsoever does this individual deserve even the slightest grain of sympathy. Whatever punishment he receives will be far too lenient.
- iliketosleep 8y agoNear the end of the article: After a preliminary forensic investigation, the thumb drive was found to contain "malicious malware," according to the affidavit. Isn't malware, by definition, malicious??
- bryanrasmussen 8y agoYeah, you'd think malmalware was good.
- anonymous5133 8y agoIt is not necessarily malicious. Some malware is purely designed as a prank type of stuff or to do something funny to the computer.
- prankWare 8y agoThen, not only is it not malicious malware, but it's also not malware.
- calimac 8y agoNBC took the page down.
- MichailP 8y agoHow come shortsighted thinking became so popular? Cut jobs, close factories for short term gain of the elites, but in the long term? There may be no one left to rule...
- philipov 8y agoThat's because once they're done looting, the elites can now just move to New Zealand or somewhere.
- lostlogin 8y agoThat shameful episode with Peter Thiel is the prime example. https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/88843382/peter-thiel-citizenship-details-revealed https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/88843382/peter-thiel-citizens...
- HillaryBriss 8y agoeconomists do not factor these risks and costs into their assessments. globalized free trade and labor are generally always assessed as win-win by economists.
- Waterluvian 8y agoTo me this is a story about how financial security impacts national security. It gets me wondering about the mortgage he couldn't pay. What were the terms? How out on a limb did he get with his finances? I doubt this is a fresh argument but it makes me more inclined to see things like mortgage regulations as a national security issue.
- supertrope 8y agoThe Servicemembers Civil Relief Act is probably motivated by debt motivated espionage in addition to being a general benefit for military personnel.
- FakeComments 8y agoHaving a healthy society has always been a national security issue: there’s literally millennia of documents on how governments collapsed because outsiders funded dissidents. These morality lessons we see aimed at societies aren’t mere moralizing — they’re an evolved code of conduct designed to keep a vibrant whole in the face of genuine adversarial conditions. People have forgotten the value of a strong national identity in many Western nations, largely because of the activity of groups funded by outside nations.
- mikeash 8y agoMy understanding is that personal finances are a major consideration when evaluating people for security clearances.
- dx87 8y agoThey are. An officer in charge of me in the military couldn't get his clearance renewed because after the housing bubble popped, he was forced to move to a new duty station. He couldn't afford to pay two mortgages, and couldn't sell his first home for what he owed, so he fell behind on payments and had to do a short sale. The military now provides assisstance where they'll make up the difference in situations like his, but it effectively ended his career in the military since no support system was in place at the time.
- save_ferris 8y agoThis was the big fear that came out of the OPM hack back in 2015[0], that the exfiltrated data could be used to mine for targets of coercion by foreign governments. With all of the personal data floating around the web and government systems clearly unable to keep up with modern security best-practices, we can almost guarantee this is going to get worse. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...
- creaghpatr 8y ago>It has been described by federal officials as among the largest breaches of government data in the history of the United States. Huh, that sounds like a pretty big scandal but I’d never heard of this until you posted it.
- uneasy-sausage 8y agoOP was incorrect about the year - it was 2013. The OPM breach included ANYONE who filled out/submitted an SF86 form to the USG. I believe fingerprint data was compromised at all - our (US) government flopped real hard on this issue and put millions of people's personal information into the wild.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- fredgrott 8y agoaside note folks....there has been a very severe increase in spurious attempts to hack email accounts if you by accident email any person in China ...I recently had to stop sending any email comments to Chinese developers via email.. Not sure if its widespread but there was a significant uptick recently. This not legal advice or even security advice..but take care
- anonymous5133 8y agoYup. For anyone who is a security type IT person at your company, make sure you send out bogus phising emails to employees to see who falls for it and what type of data they give away. At my work if you fall for it the first time then you get training not to do it again. If you fall for it a second time, terminated. They just consider it to be too high of a security risk to keep you around if you fall for it a second time.
- 1024core 8y agoIf he was ex-CIA, how did he have classified files to sell?
- Scoundreller 8y agoStored a lot in between his ears? Or he knows which civilian resources they considered reliable and pointed them in that direction.
- DevX101 8y agoIf you are involved in a secret affair without your partner's knowledge or if you're closeted non-hetero sexually, you shouldn't apply for high level security clearances or run for politics. Competing states can find this information out and potentially blackmail you. U.S. is currently pressuring a Chinese company to sell Grindr, presumably because of potential security risks like these. I know of people who've gone through the clearance process and it's VERY thorough and personally invasive to minimize the risks of government employees being compromised due to their personal lives.
- couldveBeenYou 8y agoAwwww, why not? Won't get to play those reindeer games? Why? My nose glows to bright of a bright, bright red? Uh ohhhhhhhhh! Oh no! How exclusive! Important secrets! Watch out!
- 0xDEFC0DE 8y agoI thought it was only TS/SCI that was that thorough?
- caymanjim 8y agoThose things would exclude you from a basic secret clearance as well, but the investigation isn't quite as thorough, so they might not turn up. For secret, there's a questionnaire, and they check public records, and make a few phone calls. Unless you're doing something egregiously bad, it's unlikely to surface. If something like an ongoing concealed marital affair does come up, though, it'll exclude you.
- GVIrish 8y agoThe thoroughness just increases through the clearance levels. So in a secret clearance investigation they do a cursory check of references, dates, addresses, relatives, etc. but as you go up the ladder to TS and getting cleared for particular programs the investigations become more extensive.
- tssci 8y agoIt doesn't really matter what the conversation is about because you've got two spooks leading the conversation, to the point that every thread in this discussion is sock puppeting and astro turf. Hey guys, can you be a little less obvious in planting your subject matter? It's kind of pathetic watching the two of you run around, trying to stamp out fires and control the conversation. Like, here you are talking to yourselves like it's a staged fireside chat about all the bugaboos of getting bribed... but this time on linkedin!!! Wuh-ohhhhhhh!!!
- thinkloop 8y agoThe US obviously spies on China like crazy but we never hear about it, is this Western bias censorship? Is it possible that China spies much more than the US?
- DGAP 8y agoWe do hear about it, and in the Western press primarily: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spie... The difference is that when US-run agents get burned, they get publicly executed by the Chinese government, as opposed to put on trial for imprisonment.
- satokema 8y agoI have no major debts and gave up smoking, where do I sign up?
- timingMyDeath 8y agoDon't bother. Just plan a slow suicide instead. If slow suicide's not your thing, then be sure pick out a more conventional fast suicide for yourself. Find something that will definitely work. Preferably something that looks accidental. If possible, organize your exit so that it looks like a disappearance. Add an air of mystery to it all. Because why bother anymore. The economy is fixed. Geopolitics aren't real in the sense that we understand according to open, freely available information. A peek behind the curtains? What does that get you? Sneers and condescension anyway. Intellectual tough guys are tedious. And then, of course there's the gossipy whisper networks of the other half. Cut to the chase. Avoid the headaches. Just commit suicide.
- gberger 8y ago> The "defendant, who was entrusted with our nation’s critical secrets, put our country and human lives — including the lives of assets — at risk for financial gain," prosecutors said in their sentencing memo. What does "lives of assets" mean?
- iaw 8y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_(intelligence) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_(intelligence)
- prankWare 8y agoThe people we have doing the same thing in other places. Duh. Oh, wait. Was this a walrus question? You were probably being rhetorical, in an effort to spike the conversation, weren't you?
- sellllout 8y agoYes, that's great. CIA, China. Wow. Amazing. Gimmie a million bucks so I can sellout the United States to China. I've got secrets. Help me sell them.
- recruitment 8y agoYou keep trying to recruit me, so recruit me already.
- ddgcd1 8y agoCCP lead by XiJinPing now is the new NAZI. It is the enemy of the whole world.