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NYT/Bellingcat investigators find Pentagon leaker through Instagram photo
- 9999px 3y agoPsyop to increase internet surveillance.
- brucethemoose2 3y agoLeaking classified documents and posting your life on Instagram... a match made in heaven, like peanut butter and jelly.
- r721 3y ago>Teixeira used his real name and home address in North Dighton, Massachusetts, for the billing information associated with his Discord account, according to the affidavit. (CNN live blog https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35570705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35570705)
- TacticalCoder 3y agoI call parallel construction.
- newZWhoDis 3y agoAlternatively, the “leak” is a controlled disclosure of realistic misinformation. The “leaker”‘s real life identity then “goes to jail” for 30 years and they work for the government in clandestine services under a new identity. This tactic confuses the enemy, and has the side benefit of scaring your own into being more careful with real classified docs. If I was unethical enough to work for the security apparatus, the above is definitely something I would do.
- Yoric 3y agoIf you haven't watched the TV series _The Bureau_, you should. That's the kind of plots they're using.
- flavius29663 3y agoI was thinking like that too. Many many "leaks" are intentional. For this one to work, you would have to convince the Russian secret services, a pretty high bar. Usually, leaks just have to pass a sniff test, or not even that, people can just glance over the factual basis for the leak if it's convenient for their world view (e.g. FBI leaking photos from Trump's raid)
- photoGrant 3y agoNone of the way any of this has played out has told me it’s nothing more than major, major chess.
- evol262 3y agoThe vast majority of intelligence assets are analysts or sigint, not James Bond-ish operators who can discard identities and their family/friend/etc like a Scooby Doo mask. This is not a plausible thing.
- dragonwriter 3y agoYeah, what they actually did was probably follow WaPo's investigation, which found and publicly announced who it was first, and worked back from that very quickly. (This is mostly a joke, but...)
- kube-system 3y agoDiscord gave the FBI his home address.
- ahahahahah 3y ago[flagged]
- bmmayer1 3y agoGood. I am actively working on the front lines of the Ukraine war in a humanitarian capacity.[1] The danger posed to civilians and soldiers by stolen intelligence is real, and the cavalier sharing of such documents without regard to the consequences is, and should be, a serious crime punishable to the fullest extent of the law. [1]https://ukraineaidinternational.org https://ukraineaidinternational.org
- newZWhoDis 3y agoWell the good news is, from everything I’ve seen in this leak, the info has been harmless. Lamest “leak” of all time tbh.
- ericd 3y agoSomeone on NPR mentioned that it included locations running low on ammo in Ukraine, and they were discussing how this wasn’t good timing for an upcoming spring offensive.
- flavius29663 3y agouff, that's big if true, it could jeopardize the entire plan. But then again, Ukraine has been saying only 5 people know of the true plan, so maybe it won't matter (surely more people know which depos are running low).
- eganist 3y agoDo you have other charity or non-profit recommendations aside from your own personal one? Only asking because I have no measure[1] of how effective yours has been, and I figure in your capacity, you likely don't mind who the intermediary is just so long as it gets to the right place. [1] https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/881848788 https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/881848788
- bmmayer1 3y agoYes, we're only a year old, and haven't even filed our first tax return yet! The key with us is that we're not an intermediary, we do the sourcing and delivering of aid ourselves. We're one of the few that do -- most NGOs you would have heard of outsource their deliveries to us. Obviously, I think we're incredibly effective, and if you'd like to hear more details, I'd love to share: shoot me an email brian [at] ukraineaidinternational.org
- londons_explore 3y agoAre these documents actually leaked...? It seems lots of journalists have them, and none of the public. And none of the journalists will just publish the actual complete documents.
- londons_explore 3y agoAlmost looks like one of those 'leaked to the media, but please let us review any article before you publish it' type leaks...
- kube-system 3y agoJournalists have a responsibility to make sure people are not killed (including their own colleagues who might be there) as a result of their reporting.
- United857 3y agoBut previously with the Snowden and Manning leaks, journalists still published the leaked docs (with selective redactions for truly sensitive content). In this case, I've not seen any actual docs linked or published, even though they claim "they're on Twitter"
- newZWhoDis 3y agoI’ve seen ~40 images of realistic looking gov docs on 4chan and Twitter back when this broke. Most of it was pretty boring stuff, and indicated Ukraine has a lot more hardware than Russia in-theater. Seems pretty suspect.
- coffeebeqn 3y agoI do wonder how does a national guard “intelligence” grunt have access to decisive foreign intelligence. Maybe the docs they have access to are fuzzed/not that secret.
- croes 3y ago
- stametseater 3y agoShould I be surprised that a 21-year-old member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, in the intelligence wing, had access to these sort of documents? Or is this expected? Was this part of a larger organizational failure, or just one man's betrayal?
- droopyEyelids 3y agoAs someone who works in a MUCH smaller organization that deals with 'sensitive' data, it is extremely difficult to maintain the policy of least privilege. The system almost can not be maintained from the outside, because administrators don't see every individual document, and not all sensitive forms of data can be targeted by automation/scanners. This means the actual people doing the business processes with the data must take personal responsibly for keeping it properly maintained. And aside from that nebulous property of 'personal responsibility' they must also have an accurate ability to classify it. Aside from that, workers who deal with the data have a bunch of conflicting incentives, like working with people in other teams, working efficiently, and maintaining the policy of least privilege. The problems I've seen dealing with keeping information secure in a small environment make me feel like it'd actually be impossible to do at the scale of The US Government. So yeah, my money is on 'organizational failure' but also 'inherent complexity'
- ABeeSea 3y agoApparently he was a network tech for the classified network. The real scandal here is there weren’t alarm bells ringing somewhere that a low level network tech was printing and viewing top secret documents.
- elliekelly 3y agoI do think it’s kind of odd that we, as a country, have decided people are not mentally mature enough to use alcohol or tobacco and yet we’re apparently willing to just hand these junior adults stacks and stacks of sensitive intelligence information. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be held responsible for his actions but I do think part of the blame is also on the system that allowed him access. Anyone who has been in their early 20s knows the false sense of invincibility that comes with finally being an adult. The simple fact that he did this (and apparently just to impress a chat room of teenagers? yikes!) tells me he lacked the emotional maturity to understand what was being asked/expected of him. And since the leak doesn’t appear to be malicious or “whistleblower” in nature it seems he totally and completely failed to understand the consequences of his actions.
- croes 3y agoThose leaks are a proof that agencies can't or unwilling to protect the data they are collecting. If even crucial war information isn't really protected you can imagine the lack of protection for less important data. Most of the last big leaks came from contractors or minor ranks with access.
- seanhunter 3y agoMore than a million people have top secret clearance in the US[1]. It's very difficult to ensure security in that context. [1] https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/15/politics/classified-information-what-matters/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/15/politics/classified-infor...
- croes 3y agoThat's my point, top secret isn't the right term if more than a million people have access. It's not enough to call it top secret, it has to be handled as such.
- seanhunter 3y agoYup I was agreeing with you. It's interesting that in this sense scale harms the objective. As you increase the apparatus of the intelligence machine, you inevitably reduce its ability to be genuinely clandestine just because you have to allow more and more people behind the curtain.
- yellowapple 3y agoAs one of the Twitter replies points out (https://twitter.com/dirtturd/status/1646618532950450176 https://twitter.com/dirtturd/status/1646618532950450176), there's no way that the pattern on the granite countertop is actually a match, given that in the Instagram photo the match is on the edge of the counter - whereas in the leak, the match is clearly not on the edge of the counter. The floor is also an entirely different color in the leaks v. the Instagram photo. Someone else then raised the point of "well maybe there are duplicate splotches", in which case there would surely be duplicates across many countertops in many homes - probably one with a floor color that actually matches the one shown in the leaks. A couple other folks in that thread seem to assume "well the splotch sample was clearly rotated so the paper could've been on the counter", in which case you'd think some of the leak photos would've shown the edge on which the splotch exists and would've shown more matching splotches. Still flimsy, at best. Assuming the suspect really is guilty, I highly doubt this was how the suspect got caught; it reeks of parallel construction. If this is really the only evidence anyone has of the suspect's guilt, then a conviction in spite of the "evidence" being blatantly non-evidence would be yet another damning condemnation of my country's already-damningly-condemned "justice" system.
- bagels 3y agoThe tweet doesn't even present the granite as the link the used to identify (that was the steam account) but to verify where the photos were taken.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- seanhunter 3y agoThis is the sort of crowd-sourced investigative thinking like when Reddit "Got The Boston Bomber"[1]. Investigators aren't looking at patterns on granite countertops or splotches etc as primary evidence. They may well use that to confirm something but that's not the way the found the guy. They will have found him because the photo was geotagged to his house, or he's on Discord - his personal credit card has probably paid for nitro or the account is linked to his personal phone for 2fa or something. Everyone on the internet goes full CSI but most of the ways people get caught are really mundane. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/1iv343/the_boston_bombing_debacle/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/1iv343/the_...
- jacknews 3y agoLOL this is almost insulting in level of BS, but all's forgiven for a good belly-laugh. Clearly they had other sources, and this is a laughable attempt to divert from that.
- eigenvalue 3y agoYes, reminds me of this: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark-28812484/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propagand...
- ahahahahah 3y agoSure. The NYTimes is actually part of a global cabal and needs to divert your attention from their true sources.
- jacknews 3y agoOh so you think the NYT team of super-sleuths dug this up all by themselves, rather than being led to it? Well now they know how the leaker was unmasked, they don't need to poke around asking that question any more do they? lol.
- thewildginger 3y agoI have never seen so much paranoia and conspiratorial thinking from Hacker news than with this story unfolding. Many comments saying "it can't be this easy and dumb, can it?" Ask any government worker who works in classified spaces, and the answer is overwhelmingly yes.
- photochemsyn 3y agoI bet any documents relating to planning for the Nordstream pipeline explosion were a lot more carefully controlled. These war planning documents were clearly distributed to a much wider audience, so leaks become much more likely. It does also point towards a certain degree of disillusionment within military circles, the rank and file ar probably not thrilled about the idea of being sent overseas for another Iraq/Afghanistan style disaster, only in eastern Europe this time.
- RC_ITR 3y agoPlease don't talk about hypothetical conspiracies as though they are fact on here. The rest of the Internet has enough of that. We don't have any evidence around your claims other than speculation and that's not the point of this forum (in fact, the Discord where these docs were leaked seems like the exact kind of place for that comment).
- thewildginger 3y agoI mentioned conspiratorial thinking, and they doubled down! It's scary. Thank you for being a voice of rationality. You put it better than me.
- tennisflyi 3y agoI’ve been there and I agree.
- ruthie_cohen 3y agoPeople who haven’t worked in areas with classified/sensitive information don’t seem to appreciate that once you have the appropriate clearances, you’re considered trustworthy. You are treated as one of the gang, and people will often willingly share information with you that may even fall outside of what you need to know. If someone is motivated to then collect/disseminate that information, it is exceedingly simple. It is always going to be difficult to stop these sorts of leaks.
- rdtsc 3y agoIt's probably a parallel construction. They might have found him using other sources or methods which they might not want to reveal. The should already be embarrassed some 20 year old kid had access to all this stuff, so any further embarrassment would be nice to avoid. Once they had him, they sifted through the stuff until they found some plausible confirmation and the pattern just looked a fun enough one for the media to report on.
- mind-blight 3y agoIt's actually pretty common for folks in their 20s to have access to this within government work. Getting a clearance isn't particularly hard, so long as you have a job that sponsors you. That would include military work
- rdtsc 3y agoI can see having access to information about some particular technology they may be using in the military. But he was working as a network administrator or tech support of some sort. It's odd they'd have someone who isn't trusted enough to rent a car or buy a drink in most state to get close to that high level of intelligence.
- mind-blight 3y agoYeah, but that's the same disparity that makes it illegal for a soldier to buy alcohol, but perfectly acceptable to hand them an assault weapon and put them in a war zone. Network admins generally require a higher level of clearance since they have lower level access to systems that are harder to apply access controls to
- woodruffw 3y agoThe title is an editorialization: no government source (to my knowledge) has claimed that the IG photo was used to find the leaker, only that it served as a piece of data singling this suspect out among several. It’s much more likely that other, officially undisclosed, evidence led them to the suspect in the first place.
- r721 3y ago"Investigation" in the tweet means NYT investigation (it was posted by NYT journalist).
- jjulius 3y agoNYT/Bellingcat investigators*, not the actual team of investigators in the government who tracked the leaker and ultimately arrested him. Just in case there's any confusion.
- hrunt 3y agoThanks for noting that. I've updated the title since so many people (not unreasonably) seemed to jump to the inclusion that "investigators" meant "police".
- ogurechny 3y agoYou are calling the public relations arm of intelligence services that publishes “accidentally found public information” leaks like a shower an entity independent from government.
- jjulius 3y agoOkay.
- 1024core 3y agoI'm surprised they don't do (steganography-style) watermarking when a TS doc is printed. Put random little dots on the page just like they do on currency bills. Color them in a manner that it looks like imperfections on the paper. Or change the spacing between words ever so slightly.
- kube-system 3y agoNo need, many printers do this right out of the box from the store. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code