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Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

144 points by jbegley 7y ago

neonate 7y ago
https://archive.md/MP5s9 https://archive.md/MP5s9
undreren 7y ago
I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but it seems awfully convenient that a guy that knows how to nuke his hard disk to protect himself from the CIA, only nukes the the hard disk he downloaded the WikiLeaks transfer program on, and then forgets to nuke the hard disk riddled with child porn.
- staticautomatic 7y ago
  I have to agree, with the usual caveats about anecdotal evidence, that it's awfully strange how often it seems that people accused of exfiltrating sensitive information are later discovered (I'm really tempted to write "discovered") to have child porn on their computers.
  - Scapeghost 7y ago
    "Rule By Law" This is sorta what all the mass surveillance and tracking is about, or at least enables: To ruin the life of any potential dissident. If they can't dig up any dirt from your history, they'll inject it.
    - undreren 7y ago
      Mass surveillance is a nightmare for political activists, key figures in grass root movements, journalists and political opponents. And that's what makes it a nightmare for the rest of us.
    - newen 7y ago
      Isn't it a known CIA or FBI technique to imply people are "weird" in some fashion, so that the public doesn't look into cases too much. Like it used to be people accused by them were implied to be homosexual, transexual, furries, weird sex things, etc. Now it's child porn, so that no one would want to look into it too much or want to defend the accused person too much.
      - dekken_ 7y ago
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liV5wKAihh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liV5wKAihh8
    - tedunangst 7y ago
      Why would they need mass surveillance to plant a hard drive full of false evidence?
    - gxon 7y ago
      But has it ever been any different? Planting illegal items on people has always been a tactic that the law could use to ruin otherwise clean people they don't like. Talking about mass surveillance being the source of the problem kind of distracts from the fact that we need a solution to this form of abuse of power in general. Part of the answer is probably constant counter-surveillance of law enforcement themselves (body cams, software logging, etc) stored in an immutable or at least tamper evident data store. Of course, you'd still have a "who watches the watchmen" problem.
      - sjg007 7y ago
        Sprinkle some crack on ya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-9P_CnNZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-9P_CnNZg
    - badrabbit 7y ago
      Speculation or do you have empirical data to back that up?
      - srean 7y ago
        A lot was speculation until Snowden happened.
  - meowface 7y ago
    How often is it? What are the statistics?
- meowface 7y ago
  Certainly seems odd, but it's not like the guy's dead or something. First, it was stored in a VeraCrypt encrypted container; if he believed only he had the keys, he may have thought it was safe. If he believes he was being framed for child pornography, I imagine he would shout it from the rooftops. Or at least try to shout it to the extent he could, to the point that there would probably be at least a little coverage of the framing allegation. Second, they found plenty of other things, too, (for example, the keys to various VeraCrypt volumes on his phone), so he clearly wasn't a total pro at wiping data. For the record, the original allegation [0]: >investigators discovered a single classified document as well as over 10,000 images and videos depicting child pornography including "sadistic and masochistic images and videos of children as young as a few years old who had been brutally sexually assaulted." The government found that Schulte had "neatly organized" this material "according to his preferences, and stored it for a period of years." More details here, including IRC chat logs: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183.1.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183... I'd recommend reading the whole criminal complaint. They'd really have to provide full, unedited chat logs in order to get a more holistic view, but from what they provided, it does seem somewhat ambiguous. Based on the chat logs and Google search results they found, it seems clear he did intentionally seek out and download child pornography. However, from the conversation snippets they posted, I could see the argument that it was a morbid curiosity for him rather than out of pedophilic urges. None of those conversations look anything like conversations between pedophiles or child porn distributors. One would think they would stick the worst stuff in the complaint, and if those are the worst logs they found, then it doesn't seem like a total open-and-shut case. You could definitely interpret those logs as Schulte slyly probing for where to find things, with some plausible deniability, so he could fulfill his sexual desires, but you could also possibly interpret it as young guys (he was around 21 at the time, talking to other young guys) being edgy and stupid. That interpretation is tough given the fact that he had 54 GB of it, in a folder named "CP Files", across over 10,000 images and videos, in neatly organized sub-folders. They also found a few Google searches up until 2012. [1] Though, if it were perhaps one large archive he had downloaded and extracted one time, rather than meticulously curating individual files over years, I could possibly see the argument that it was from when he was just researching about that horrible fascination. If so, and if it was done around 2009 - 2012, it's possible he could've even forgotten he had it when he got raided in 2017. And the Google searches look pretty bad, but, again, if those are the worst they found, I wouldn't say it's open-and-shut. Of course, I do think people should face consequences for having 10,000+ items of child pornography, regardless of their motives, but there could be mitigating factors here. Or there might not be. One would have to look at a lot more evidence, and we'll presumably get a look at that once he's separately tried for the child pornography charges. In an interesting twist, he actually did (briefly?) publicly claim he was framed, and there's an allegation that he planned to use two false identities and a document claiming inside knowledge that the child pornography was planted, written by him under one of these false identities (masquerading as a supposed internal FBI source), to be released by WikiLeaks. Basically, the government is accusing him of trying to frame a framing. This appears to not be denied by him (I think?), but could possibly be thrown out due to potential attorney client-privilege issues with the documents that contained the evidence. (Not sure if it was brought up in this trial.) In my opinion, the evidence is pretty damning that he did plan to spread this disinformation to cast doubt about the leak and the child pornography; though all of this doesn't necessarily lend more support to any of the original allegations. [2][3][4] I'm not a fan of this trend of HN comments skimming some headline or article snippet and then giving a hot take without actually looking into any of the facts or claims. I feel like it's been happening a lot more in the past few years; even reddit often isn't as bad. It takes about a minute to see the government's case against him and to consider a few possible defenses he may have, rather than knee-jerk pattern matching "alleged CIA leaker accused of CP possession" to "FBI/CIA possibly/likely planted evidence", with nothing to support that. If you were to sow some seeds of doubt in the veracity of the logs or any other government claims, it'd be different. Just because it's a plausible story from a motive perspective doesn't mean the onus still isn't on you to support the suspicion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Schulte#Sex_crimes_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Schulte#Sex_crimes_alle... [1] (Paraphrased slightly) (i) April 9, 2011, Google Search for "child pornography" on at least three occasions; (ii) October 15, 2011, Google Searches for "movie where father videos daughter and friend sex" and "movie where father videos child porn"; and (iii) May 15, 2012, Google Search for "female teenage body by year." [2] https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/06/19/accused-vault-7-leaker-planned-to-have-wikileaks-publish-disinformation-to-help-his-defense/ https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/06/19/accused-vault-7-leaker... [3] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183.96.0_1.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183... [4] Excerpts: >“So who’s responsible for Vault 7? The CIA’s own version of the FBI’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page” >in the Fake FBI Document in the Schulte Cell Documents, a purported FBI “whistleblower” claimed that the FBI had placed child pornography on Schulte’s computer after its initial searches of the device were unsuccessful in recovering evidence.
- AtHeartEngineer 7y ago
  Ya it seems a lot of cases have child porn and I just don't believe it's that prolific, seems real shady
  - meowface 7y ago
    How many cases? What are the statistics? Or could you link a few cases, anecdotally?
- bilekas 7y ago
  I don't think it's a stretch to be honest, the thing is, while he might be completely guilty of leaking and the CIA know just can't prove. He wen't up against the CIA. This is a body who has the ability (allegedly of course) to restructure other governments. If it is a bogus charge.. Would anyone here really be surprised ? I mean really ? I don't think the people who would say : 'Nah wouldn't surprise me' are tinfoil hat wearers. EDIT: That's really not to say that the CIA is not important.. It's just not out of the realm of possibility that someones ego/butt would be hurt about the leaks.
  - meowface 7y ago
    Would I be surprised some people in the CIA would want to do such a thing? No. Would I be surprised they'd do something so stupid as to plant child pornography on a suspect's computer and ruin their already pretty soiled reputation to such an extent that all future prosecutions of whistleblowers and leakers will come under heavy doubt, in addition to their ethics around abused children, and that this would be signed off by the top leadership and accepted organizationally? Kind of.
    - strbean 7y ago
      At what point to you revert from "their reputation is already so terrible they wouldn't sully it more" to "we should really just assume the worst 100% of the time"?
      - meowface 7y ago
        I would say the public exposure of a truly shocking and confirmed scandal that took place within the past 10 - 20 years and which goes all the way to the top of the organization. Especially if a lot of people are in the know. Something along the lines of MKULTRA or COINTELPRO. (I would argue that even in the era where those programs were rampant, planting child pornography would still seem unlikely. Though certainly a lot more likely.)
    - bilekas 7y ago
      Why not? They claim end-to-encryption is protecting pedophiles... And it's their selling point. That trench of absolute human shit is their marketing. - For impact, they need to sell it over the value of e2e for the citizen. Planting that shit seems a perfect candidate to get a no questions asked lock up. And lets be honest, if its true, we would all burn his balls attached to him and than let him go to prison. But I agree with other posters, he is capable enough to clean his leaking, but not his kiddie shit ? Also he was never recognised for the kiddie stuff before ? My tinfoil hat is not on, but its in that region.
- crowtoe76 7y ago
  To contemplate the actions of the CIA is to be a "conspiracy theorist". What does the CIA do all day, every day, besides "conspire"?
  - meowface 7y ago
    To speak of conveniences and "cui bono?" instead of disinterested analysis of the evidence is to be a conspiracy theorist. Of course they conspire all day, because any covert action can be called a conspiracy. It doesn't necessarily lead one to think they're conspiracies in the sense of planting child pornography on a US citizen suspect's computer. One can't rule anything out when you're dealing with intelligence agencies, but in this case, is there a single known instance of the US government ever doing such a thing? Planting child pornography on a defendant's computer? Imagine dealing with the optics from that fallout; not only seeking out and spreading content of children being raped, but also using it to falsely imprison someone. I suspect nearly all CIA agents are far more comfortable with assassinating foreign adversaries than doing that. Of course it could happen, but such a claim requires evidence, or at least some attempt at refuting the prosecution's claimed evidence, not just "well, you can't trust the CIA, you know".
    - craftinator 7y ago
      > One can't rule anything out when you're dealing with intelligence agencies, but in this case, is there a single known instance of the US government ever doing such a thing? Planting child pornography on a defendant's computer? Imagine dealing with the optics from that fallout; not only seeking out and spreading content of children being raped, but also using it to falsely imprison someone. I suspect nearly all CIA agents are far more comfortable with assassinating foreign adversaries than doing that. Imagine dealing with the optics of the other major illegal activities, such as Operation Mockingbird, or trafficking drugs for Contra, or more recently, trying to smuggle 1300 lbs. of cocaine across the boarder. There are bad people working in the CIA (there are bad people working in most major organizations; it is logically sound to think the power and rule-bending offered by the CIA attract more of these types than other organizations). They had ample access, they have huge collections of child porn in evidence, and they had strong motive. Is it more believable that this guy circumvented their security, wiped his hard drive, but forgot about the life-sentence inducing child porn on his other hard drives? Or that is was planted by people who didn't like him, needed a scapegoat, needed a conviction, and had an easy way to do it. > Of course it could happen, but such a claim requires evidence, or at least some attempt at refuting the prosecution's claimed evidence, not just "well, you can't trust the CIA, you know". The US Intelligence Community has had some really massive screwups and straight up illegal operations become exposed over the last couple of decades (weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, COINTELPRO, PRISM, the list goes on...). They have lost the legitimacy required for blind trust in them.
- craftinator 7y ago
  Agreed. It is without doubt that the CIA has access to large amounts of child pornography, seized from hard drives, and they had both easy opportunity and strong motive to plant them. It really doesn't make sense at all that he would book a flight to Mexico just days before being arrested, wipe his hard drive, then leave other, more incriminating evidence on scene.
- lawnchair_larry 7y ago
  This is a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
- badrabbit 7y ago
  Maybe he forgot about it? Maybe he made an opsec mistake? it can happen. What you have is a conspiracy hypothesis not theory. "It is unlikely" is not enough, you gotta dig a bit deeper and find information that backs up motive ,methods and timeline after which you can try to independently corroborate that information to show it as fact
- ternaryoperator 7y ago
  > ...then forgets to nuke the hard disk riddled with child porn. He kept the porn in an encrypted partition with the password on his phone, which the Feds had access to. They also have transcripts of his messages with child porn forum members. It's detailed in this FBI affidavit: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183.1.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183... Strong warning: the details re the porn are extremely disturbing. IMHO, the CIA leak is the least of his troubles.
- imvetri 7y ago
  More we talk, more acts gets lost.
stevespang 7y ago
If they can't get him on the national intelligence charges they'll still get him on the porno, he's toast.
Dahoon 7y ago
The people named in the court documents[1] all have users on HN according to two minutes of searching on google. Shows how little it takes to dig up info on people. Kinda scary. 1. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183.1.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183...
RachelF 7y ago
The Register (as usual) has excellent coverage of this: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/09/cia_hacking_trial_verdict/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/09/cia_hacking_trial_v... It seems like the CIA's opsec was bad: "It didn’t help that during the course of the trial, the CIA was found to have appalling security measures in place: multiple people used the same admin username and password to access the critical servers. Not only that, but the passwords used were weak – 123ABCdef and mysweetsummer being the main two – and on top of that, they were published on the department’s intranet."
hacker_newz 7y ago
I can't read the article because it's behind a paywall, but searching his name leads to articles that indicate he leaked data from a CIA Confluence instance. After Snowden, this is just laughable.
ikeboy 7y ago
My favorite thing about the case is how he sued the government for $50 billion for violating his 2nd Amendment rights and preventing him from becoming the next Bill Gates while in prison, and also for missing out on teaching his little brother the true answer to the tabs v spaces debate. Every single word of that was true. https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1121882678725357570 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1121882678725357570 complaint at https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.513783/gov.uscourts.nysd.513783.2.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.513783... btw, the One True Answer is apparently: >I lost time mentoring and teaching my youngest brother programming as he attends college and most likely learns the wrong way to align braces and indent (the correct answer of tabs v. spaces is actually to use tabs but have the tabs insert spaces instead of \t).
- kelnos 7y ago
  > *... is actually to use tabs but have the tabs insert spaces instead of \t" So... spaces?
- leshenka 7y ago
  Oh no, not the tabs v spaces again
- waterhouse 7y ago
  Oh man. Page 11, form asks for "Prison Identification #", handwritten answer is "Slave #79471054". Page 12, defendants are Attorney General, DOJ, FBI, etc.: "Collectively, "The Federal Terrorists"". Page 13, says "There is no difference between pretrial detention for the legally innocent and federal incarceration for the legally guilty; pretrial detention is actually federal prison and is used to punish and coerce the innocent into pleading guilty—The government has legislated, through pretrial detention, that those who have not been found guilty beyond reasonable doubt can be sentenced to indefinite incarceration." He may have a point there. Page 15: "Current conditions of confinement are similar to conditions imposed under Nazi Germany by the SS and Gestapo to torture political prisoners with psychological punishment to inflict permanent damage including death." Well, let's not mince words here. Page 16 says "Total loss of income: $50,000,347,000". Grievances on page 16 include: "Exposure to 24/7 bright lights that cannot be turned off constitute torture and violate the 8th amendment". Page 20 (now it's typed rather than handwritten) says "No heat or A/C in cage" and "There was no heat in the building for a month from Thanksgiving to Christmas; resulted in sub 30s and formation of ice in the cell", and "Cells infested with rodents", and mentions sleep deprivation including the bright lights and "Every few hours at night COs come by with bright flash light to wake up plaintiff". Page 23 says "The United Nations considers 15 days of solitary confinement as torture—the plaintiff has spent 3 months and counting in solitary confinement, with no end date in sight". Page 23 also claims "Plaintiff is subjected to harsher conditions under "pretrial detention" than ALL convicted prisoners serving sentences under the BOP". Some of his complaints seem trollish, but others seem serious, and if that's being done to someone who hasn't been convicted of a crime, that seems worrying.
kelnos 7y ago
> He did so, prosecutors said, by reinstating his administrator-level access that the C.I.A. had removed after his workplace disputes. Er... what? How is that even possible? I'm assuming that the NYT got some details wrong here.
- dlgeek 7y ago
  Read it in a court document I am too lazy to look up - he separately had admin on the virtualization (VMSphere?) management plane and used it to rollback whatever server did access management for the system in question to a previous snapshot where he still had admin access to that system.
LatteLazy 7y ago
If a trial I was on a jury for involved the CIA, I'd just find innocent. Evidence is easy to fabricate with the time and expertise and that's a major part of what they do. Digital evidence is the flimsest kind generally and the easiest to fake...
- friendly_fren 7y ago
  Then they would boot you off the jury and replace you with someone else
  - magduf 7y ago
    I'm fairly sure they can't do that after the trial has started. Basically, yeah, if you admit to the attorneys at the beginning (during "jury selection") that you'd do this, then yes, they'd use this to make sure you don't get on the jury, because you're obviously biased. But if you lie or keep your mouth shut and get on the jury, and then during deliberations you bring this up only among other jury members that you don't believe anything the CIA says, I don't see how they can boot you from the jury at that point. Most likely, it would result in a mistrial due to hung jury.
  - windthrown 7y ago
    Prosecutors can't retroactively remove jurors based on the verdict. Jury selection happens at the beginning of the trial.
    - Rebles 7y ago
      The prosecutors would ask this question during jury selection. If you lied and it came out during the trial, the judge would replace you with an alternate.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

144 points by jbegley 7y ago

https://archive.md/MP5s9 https://archive.md/MP5s9

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist, but it seems awfully convenient that a guy that knows how to nuke his hard disk to protect himself from the CIA, only nukes the the hard disk he downloaded the WikiLeaks transfer program on, and then forgets to nuke the hard disk riddled with child porn.

staticautomatic 7y ago
I have to agree, with the usual caveats about anecdotal evidence, that it's awfully strange how often it seems that people accused of exfiltrating sensitive information are later discovered (I'm really tempted to write "discovered") to have child porn on their computers.
- Scapeghost 7y ago
  "Rule By Law" This is sorta what all the mass surveillance and tracking is about, or at least enables: To ruin the life of any potential dissident. If they can't dig up any dirt from your history, they'll inject it.
  - undreren 7y ago
    Mass surveillance is a nightmare for political activists, key figures in grass root movements, journalists and political opponents. And that's what makes it a nightmare for the rest of us.
  - newen 7y ago
    Isn't it a known CIA or FBI technique to imply people are "weird" in some fashion, so that the public doesn't look into cases too much. Like it used to be people accused by them were implied to be homosexual, transexual, furries, weird sex things, etc. Now it's child porn, so that no one would want to look into it too much or want to defend the accused person too much.
    - dekken_ 7y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liV5wKAihh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liV5wKAihh8
  - tedunangst 7y ago
    Why would they need mass surveillance to plant a hard drive full of false evidence?
  - gxon 7y ago
    But has it ever been any different? Planting illegal items on people has always been a tactic that the law could use to ruin otherwise clean people they don't like. Talking about mass surveillance being the source of the problem kind of distracts from the fact that we need a solution to this form of abuse of power in general. Part of the answer is probably constant counter-surveillance of law enforcement themselves (body cams, software logging, etc) stored in an immutable or at least tamper evident data store. Of course, you'd still have a "who watches the watchmen" problem.
    - sjg007 7y ago
      Sprinkle some crack on ya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-9P_CnNZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-9P_CnNZg
  - badrabbit 7y ago
    Speculation or do you have empirical data to back that up?
    - srean 7y ago
      A lot was speculation until Snowden happened.
- meowface 7y ago
  How often is it? What are the statistics?
meowface 7y ago
Certainly seems odd, but it's not like the guy's dead or something. First, it was stored in a VeraCrypt encrypted container; if he believed only he had the keys, he may have thought it was safe. If he believes he was being framed for child pornography, I imagine he would shout it from the rooftops. Or at least try to shout it to the extent he could, to the point that there would probably be at least a little coverage of the framing allegation. Second, they found plenty of other things, too, (for example, the keys to various VeraCrypt volumes on his phone), so he clearly wasn't a total pro at wiping data. For the record, the original allegation [0]: >investigators discovered a single classified document as well as over 10,000 images and videos depicting child pornography including "sadistic and masochistic images and videos of children as young as a few years old who had been brutally sexually assaulted." The government found that Schulte had "neatly organized" this material "according to his preferences, and stored it for a period of years." More details here, including IRC chat logs: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183.1.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183... I'd recommend reading the whole criminal complaint. They'd really have to provide full, unedited chat logs in order to get a more holistic view, but from what they provided, it does seem somewhat ambiguous. Based on the chat logs and Google search results they found, it seems clear he did intentionally seek out and download child pornography. However, from the conversation snippets they posted, I could see the argument that it was a morbid curiosity for him rather than out of pedophilic urges. None of those conversations look anything like conversations between pedophiles or child porn distributors. One would think they would stick the worst stuff in the complaint, and if those are the worst logs they found, then it doesn't seem like a total open-and-shut case. You could definitely interpret those logs as Schulte slyly probing for where to find things, with some plausible deniability, so he could fulfill his sexual desires, but you could also possibly interpret it as young guys (he was around 21 at the time, talking to other young guys) being edgy and stupid. That interpretation is tough given the fact that he had 54 GB of it, in a folder named "CP Files", across over 10,000 images and videos, in neatly organized sub-folders. They also found a few Google searches up until 2012. [1] Though, if it were perhaps one large archive he had downloaded and extracted one time, rather than meticulously curating individual files over years, I could possibly see the argument that it was from when he was just researching about that horrible fascination. If so, and if it was done around 2009 - 2012, it's possible he could've even forgotten he had it when he got raided in 2017. And the Google searches look pretty bad, but, again, if those are the worst they found, I wouldn't say it's open-and-shut. Of course, I do think people should face consequences for having 10,000+ items of child pornography, regardless of their motives, but there could be mitigating factors here. Or there might not be. One would have to look at a lot more evidence, and we'll presumably get a look at that once he's separately tried for the child pornography charges. In an interesting twist, he actually did (briefly?) publicly claim he was framed, and there's an allegation that he planned to use two false identities and a document claiming inside knowledge that the child pornography was planted, written by him under one of these false identities (masquerading as a supposed internal FBI source), to be released by WikiLeaks. Basically, the government is accusing him of trying to frame a framing. This appears to not be denied by him (I think?), but could possibly be thrown out due to potential attorney client-privilege issues with the documents that contained the evidence. (Not sure if it was brought up in this trial.) In my opinion, the evidence is pretty damning that he did plan to spread this disinformation to cast doubt about the leak and the child pornography; though all of this doesn't necessarily lend more support to any of the original allegations. [2][3][4] I'm not a fan of this trend of HN comments skimming some headline or article snippet and then giving a hot take without actually looking into any of the facts or claims. I feel like it's been happening a lot more in the past few years; even reddit often isn't as bad. It takes about a minute to see the government's case against him and to consider a few possible defenses he may have, rather than knee-jerk pattern matching "alleged CIA leaker accused of CP possession" to "FBI/CIA possibly/likely planted evidence", with nothing to support that. If you were to sow some seeds of doubt in the veracity of the logs or any other government claims, it'd be different. Just because it's a plausible story from a motive perspective doesn't mean the onus still isn't on you to support the suspicion. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Schulte#Sex_crimes_allegations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Schulte#Sex_crimes_alle... [1] (Paraphrased slightly) (i) April 9, 2011, Google Search for "child pornography" on at least three occasions; (ii) October 15, 2011, Google Searches for "movie where father videos daughter and friend sex" and "movie where father videos child porn"; and (iii) May 15, 2012, Google Search for "female teenage body by year." [2] https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/06/19/accused-vault-7-leaker-planned-to-have-wikileaks-publish-disinformation-to-help-his-defense/ https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/06/19/accused-vault-7-leaker... [3] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183.96.0_1.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183... [4] Excerpts: >“So who’s responsible for Vault 7? The CIA’s own version of the FBI’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page” >in the Fake FBI Document in the Schulte Cell Documents, a purported FBI “whistleblower” claimed that the FBI had placed child pornography on Schulte’s computer after its initial searches of the device were unsuccessful in recovering evidence.
AtHeartEngineer 7y ago
Ya it seems a lot of cases have child porn and I just don't believe it's that prolific, seems real shady
- meowface 7y ago
  How many cases? What are the statistics? Or could you link a few cases, anecdotally?
bilekas 7y ago
I don't think it's a stretch to be honest, the thing is, while he might be completely guilty of leaking and the CIA know just can't prove. He wen't up against the CIA. This is a body who has the ability (allegedly of course) to restructure other governments. If it is a bogus charge.. Would anyone here really be surprised ? I mean really ? I don't think the people who would say : 'Nah wouldn't surprise me' are tinfoil hat wearers. EDIT: That's really not to say that the CIA is not important.. It's just not out of the realm of possibility that someones ego/butt would be hurt about the leaks.
- meowface 7y ago
  Would I be surprised some people in the CIA would want to do such a thing? No. Would I be surprised they'd do something so stupid as to plant child pornography on a suspect's computer and ruin their already pretty soiled reputation to such an extent that all future prosecutions of whistleblowers and leakers will come under heavy doubt, in addition to their ethics around abused children, and that this would be signed off by the top leadership and accepted organizationally? Kind of.
  - strbean 7y ago
    At what point to you revert from "their reputation is already so terrible they wouldn't sully it more" to "we should really just assume the worst 100% of the time"?
    - meowface 7y ago
      I would say the public exposure of a truly shocking and confirmed scandal that took place within the past 10 - 20 years and which goes all the way to the top of the organization. Especially if a lot of people are in the know. Something along the lines of MKULTRA or COINTELPRO. (I would argue that even in the era where those programs were rampant, planting child pornography would still seem unlikely. Though certainly a lot more likely.)
  - bilekas 7y ago
    Why not? They claim end-to-encryption is protecting pedophiles... And it's their selling point. That trench of absolute human shit is their marketing. - For impact, they need to sell it over the value of e2e for the citizen. Planting that shit seems a perfect candidate to get a no questions asked lock up. And lets be honest, if its true, we would all burn his balls attached to him and than let him go to prison. But I agree with other posters, he is capable enough to clean his leaking, but not his kiddie shit ? Also he was never recognised for the kiddie stuff before ? My tinfoil hat is not on, but its in that region.
crowtoe76 7y ago
To contemplate the actions of the CIA is to be a "conspiracy theorist". What does the CIA do all day, every day, besides "conspire"?
- meowface 7y ago
  To speak of conveniences and "cui bono?" instead of disinterested analysis of the evidence is to be a conspiracy theorist. Of course they conspire all day, because any covert action can be called a conspiracy. It doesn't necessarily lead one to think they're conspiracies in the sense of planting child pornography on a US citizen suspect's computer. One can't rule anything out when you're dealing with intelligence agencies, but in this case, is there a single known instance of the US government ever doing such a thing? Planting child pornography on a defendant's computer? Imagine dealing with the optics from that fallout; not only seeking out and spreading content of children being raped, but also using it to falsely imprison someone. I suspect nearly all CIA agents are far more comfortable with assassinating foreign adversaries than doing that. Of course it could happen, but such a claim requires evidence, or at least some attempt at refuting the prosecution's claimed evidence, not just "well, you can't trust the CIA, you know".
  - craftinator 7y ago
    > One can't rule anything out when you're dealing with intelligence agencies, but in this case, is there a single known instance of the US government ever doing such a thing? Planting child pornography on a defendant's computer? Imagine dealing with the optics from that fallout; not only seeking out and spreading content of children being raped, but also using it to falsely imprison someone. I suspect nearly all CIA agents are far more comfortable with assassinating foreign adversaries than doing that. Imagine dealing with the optics of the other major illegal activities, such as Operation Mockingbird, or trafficking drugs for Contra, or more recently, trying to smuggle 1300 lbs. of cocaine across the boarder. There are bad people working in the CIA (there are bad people working in most major organizations; it is logically sound to think the power and rule-bending offered by the CIA attract more of these types than other organizations). They had ample access, they have huge collections of child porn in evidence, and they had strong motive. Is it more believable that this guy circumvented their security, wiped his hard drive, but forgot about the life-sentence inducing child porn on his other hard drives? Or that is was planted by people who didn't like him, needed a scapegoat, needed a conviction, and had an easy way to do it. > Of course it could happen, but such a claim requires evidence, or at least some attempt at refuting the prosecution's claimed evidence, not just "well, you can't trust the CIA, you know". The US Intelligence Community has had some really massive screwups and straight up illegal operations become exposed over the last couple of decades (weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, COINTELPRO, PRISM, the list goes on...). They have lost the legitimacy required for blind trust in them.
craftinator 7y ago
Agreed. It is without doubt that the CIA has access to large amounts of child pornography, seized from hard drives, and they had both easy opportunity and strong motive to plant them. It really doesn't make sense at all that he would book a flight to Mexico just days before being arrested, wipe his hard drive, then leave other, more incriminating evidence on scene.
lawnchair_larry 7y ago
This is a ridiculous conspiracy theory.
badrabbit 7y ago
Maybe he forgot about it? Maybe he made an opsec mistake? it can happen. What you have is a conspiracy hypothesis not theory. "It is unlikely" is not enough, you gotta dig a bit deeper and find information that backs up motive ,methods and timeline after which you can try to independently corroborate that information to show it as fact
ternaryoperator 7y ago
> ...then forgets to nuke the hard disk riddled with child porn. He kept the porn in an encrypted partition with the password on his phone, which the Feds had access to. They also have transcripts of his messages with child porn forum members. It's detailed in this FBI affidavit: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183.1.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183... Strong warning: the details re the porn are extremely disturbing. IMHO, the CIA leak is the least of his troubles.
imvetri 7y ago
More we talk, more acts gets lost.

stevespang 7y ago

If they can't get him on the national intelligence charges they'll still get him on the porno, he's toast.

Dahoon 7y ago

The people named in the court documents[1] all have users on HN according to two minutes of searching on google. Shows how little it takes to dig up info on people. Kinda scary. 1. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183.1.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183...

RachelF 7y ago

The Register (as usual) has excellent coverage of this: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/09/cia_hacking_trial_verdict/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/09/cia_hacking_trial_v... It seems like the CIA's opsec was bad: "It didn’t help that during the course of the trial, the CIA was found to have appalling security measures in place: multiple people used the same admin username and password to access the critical servers. Not only that, but the passwords used were weak – 123ABCdef and mysweetsummer being the main two – and on top of that, they were published on the department’s intranet."

hacker_newz 7y ago

I can't read the article because it's behind a paywall, but searching his name leads to articles that indicate he leaked data from a CIA Confluence instance. After Snowden, this is just laughable.

ikeboy 7y ago

My favorite thing about the case is how he sued the government for $50 billion for violating his 2nd Amendment rights and preventing him from becoming the next Bill Gates while in prison, and also for missing out on teaching his little brother the true answer to the tabs v spaces debate. Every single word of that was true. https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1121882678725357570 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1121882678725357570 complaint at https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.513783/gov.uscourts.nysd.513783.2.0.pdf https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.513783... btw, the One True Answer is apparently: >I lost time mentoring and teaching my youngest brother programming as he attends college and most likely learns the wrong way to align braces and indent (the correct answer of tabs v. spaces is actually to use tabs but have the tabs insert spaces instead of \t).

kelnos 7y ago
> *... is actually to use tabs but have the tabs insert spaces instead of \t" So... spaces?
leshenka 7y ago
Oh no, not the tabs v spaces again
waterhouse 7y ago
Oh man. Page 11, form asks for "Prison Identification #", handwritten answer is "Slave #79471054". Page 12, defendants are Attorney General, DOJ, FBI, etc.: "Collectively, "The Federal Terrorists"". Page 13, says "There is no difference between pretrial detention for the legally innocent and federal incarceration for the legally guilty; pretrial detention is actually federal prison and is used to punish and coerce the innocent into pleading guilty—The government has legislated, through pretrial detention, that those who have not been found guilty beyond reasonable doubt can be sentenced to indefinite incarceration." He may have a point there. Page 15: "Current conditions of confinement are similar to conditions imposed under Nazi Germany by the SS and Gestapo to torture political prisoners with psychological punishment to inflict permanent damage including death." Well, let's not mince words here. Page 16 says "Total loss of income: $50,000,347,000". Grievances on page 16 include: "Exposure to 24/7 bright lights that cannot be turned off constitute torture and violate the 8th amendment". Page 20 (now it's typed rather than handwritten) says "No heat or A/C in cage" and "There was no heat in the building for a month from Thanksgiving to Christmas; resulted in sub 30s and formation of ice in the cell", and "Cells infested with rodents", and mentions sleep deprivation including the bright lights and "Every few hours at night COs come by with bright flash light to wake up plaintiff". Page 23 says "The United Nations considers 15 days of solitary confinement as torture—the plaintiff has spent 3 months and counting in solitary confinement, with no end date in sight". Page 23 also claims "Plaintiff is subjected to harsher conditions under "pretrial detention" than ALL convicted prisoners serving sentences under the BOP". Some of his complaints seem trollish, but others seem serious, and if that's being done to someone who hasn't been convicted of a crime, that seems worrying.

kelnos 7y ago

> He did so, prosecutors said, by reinstating his administrator-level access that the C.I.A. had removed after his workplace disputes. Er... what? How is that even possible? I'm assuming that the NYT got some details wrong here.

dlgeek 7y ago
Read it in a court document I am too lazy to look up - he separately had admin on the virtualization (VMSphere?) management plane and used it to rollback whatever server did access management for the system in question to a previous snapshot where he still had admin access to that system.

LatteLazy 7y ago

If a trial I was on a jury for involved the CIA, I'd just find innocent. Evidence is easy to fabricate with the time and expertise and that's a major part of what they do. Digital evidence is the flimsest kind generally and the easiest to fake...

friendly_fren 7y ago
Then they would boot you off the jury and replace you with someone else
- magduf 7y ago
  I'm fairly sure they can't do that after the trial has started. Basically, yeah, if you admit to the attorneys at the beginning (during "jury selection") that you'd do this, then yes, they'd use this to make sure you don't get on the jury, because you're obviously biased. But if you lie or keep your mouth shut and get on the jury, and then during deliberations you bring this up only among other jury members that you don't believe anything the CIA says, I don't see how they can boot you from the jury at that point. Most likely, it would result in a mistrial due to hung jury.
- windthrown 7y ago
  Prosecutors can't retroactively remove jurors based on the verdict. Jury selection happens at the beginning of the trial.
  - Rebles 7y ago
    The prosecutors would ask this question during jury selection. If you lied and it came out during the trial, the judge would replace you with an alternate.
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