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Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

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Re: Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the CIA doesn’t need to seek out such content. There is a giant repository of it at FBI headquarters, used to create the hash database that they scan people’s computers with in order to convict them. This database is decades old. The government has people clearly capable of torturing actual living children in Guantanamo Bay, so I doubt they will have trouble finding someone capable of planting a picture t…

>To be fair, the CIA doesn’t need to seek out such content. There is a giant repository of it at FBI headquarters, used to create the hash database that they scan people’s computers with in order to convict them. Could you show how you know they're still storing the photos, and not just the hashes? >The government has people clearly capable of torturing actual living children in Guantanamo Bay, so I doubt they will h…

[deleted]

Re: Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any comment on the truth of the factual assertions. And I don't know how common it is for feds to actually plant evidence these days or in these kinds of cases, but in my experience it is relatively common for federal prosecutors to over-charge suspects, make shit up outright, lob salacious accusations that they know perfectly well aren't supported by evidence, conceal evidence from grand juries which th…

What mechanisms lead to this? Do prosecutors have to win cases for promotions and be tough on crime for later political careers?

I suspect there are a number of reasons. They need to be understood in the context of the criminal justice system's goals. It is not principally concerned with "doing justice" in any holistic political-philosophical sense. That is evident from its favoring of certain aspects of justice like punishment, retribution, and deterrence over things like procedural fairness and proportionality. That is to say its primary aim is punishing wrongdoers and making examples of them. Accordingly, any means or outcome which satisfies these goals is assumed to be "just". Any alternative-- even one in the cannon of "justice"-- is understood to be a failing or at best reckless.

One reason this happens is that police and prosecutors alike put a lot of work into investigating crimes, and they do not like working in vain. They are especially bothered by the prospect of not apprehending anyone, and much more so by the prospect of being unable to convict someone they believe is guilty. It would be fair to say that they have at least some bias toward convicting someone-- anyone. It's also the case that they are sometimes wrong but very much don't want to believe they are. People easily find ways of justifying things they want to believe.

Another reason is that trial lawyers tend to develop a preoccupation with winning. Consider that, for a prosecutor, the only way to win is to get a conviction. This can lead them down the path to all sorts of hell and is probably the biggest contributor to grand juries being shams and evidence being withheld.

It is true that there are career benefits to winning a lot of cases, but for your average ADA that's typically just the privilege of being given more serious cases to prosecute. Plenty of ADA's lose a lot of trials with few ill consequences. Where this is more of a problem is with elected prosecutors, the actual District Attorneys. They are the ones who benefit most from high profile investigations, indictments, and convictions. It's very much in their political self-interest to get convictions.

Lastly, the courts (judges) generally let prosecutors get away with all sorts of shenanigans for a variety of reasons. It may be that they themselves are "tough on crime", or prefer to give prosecutors the benefit of the doubt, or simply that they're lazy. Any trial lawyer will tell you it happens with shocking regularity that judges allow evidence into trial that they really shouldn't under the guise of the questionable rationale that they should just "let the jury decide." Let us not forget that one of Alexander Hamilton's main arguments in favor of the jury system was as a safeguard against corrupt judges.

In short, little stops them from doing these things other than their own consciences, a handful of weakly observed procedural safeguards, and some extremely vigilant defense attorneys who fight back hard.

Re: Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

#54
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

complaint at 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).

Re: Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

#56
post #54

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 complaint at https://www.courtlistene…

> *... is actually to use tabs but have the tabs insert spaces instead of \t"

So... spaces?

Re: Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the CIA doesn’t need to seek out such content. There is a giant repository of it at FBI headquarters, used to create the hash database that they scan people’s computers with in order to convict them. This database is decades old. The government has people clearly capable of torturing actual living children in Guantanamo Bay, so I doubt they will have trouble finding someone capable of planting a picture t…

>To be fair, the CIA doesn’t need to seek out such content. There is a giant repository of it at FBI headquarters, used to create the hash database that they scan people’s computers with in order to convict them. Could you show how you know they're still storing the photos, and not just the hashes? >The government has people clearly capable of torturing actual living children in Guantanamo Bay, so I doubt they will h…

> I think there are millions of people who wouldn't lose a wink of sleep over assassinating someone in cold blood, but wouldn't be able to live with themselves if forced to acquire and plant images and videos of children being raped so that a political prisoner could be falsely convicted.

Even supposing what you say is true, why does it become unlikely that there's a disjoint set of people (sizeable enough to assume that some work for some law enforcement agency) who wouldn't blink an eye at doing the latter thing, if they truly believed it was for the good and safety of their country? I think there are absolutely people like that, and suggesting that there aren't feels incredibly naive.

Re: Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

#58
post #55

> 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.

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.

Re: Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>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. Neither, because they're both contrived strawman scenarios. >The US Intelligence Community has had some really massive screwup…

>> 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.

> Neither, because they're both contrived strawman scenarios

Except that the first scenario isn't a strawman, or even contrived: it's exactly what the CIA/FBI/prosecution is telling us to believe.

While the second scenario certainly smacks of "conspiracy theory", it's trivially doable by the agencies in question, who have motive to do so, and incredibly difficult for the defense to even allege, let alone gather evidence to support. I absolutely agree with and am sympathetic to the idea that this is just conspiracy theory nonsense, but... would anyone really be surprised if it were true? I certainly wouldn't be.

Re: Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is CIA really scared of fallout? This is the same agency that lies to congress, has blown up a plane full civilians (Cubana de Aviación Flight 455) and tortured people that later turned out to be innocent. Which part of that indicates they respect due process?

Yes, because some fallout is much worse than others, and some breaches of due process are much worse than others. I could list things that I consider just as bad or worse, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they will do literally anything and everything imaginable to achieve their objectives, especially when many decades have passed since many of these things. Also, is torturing any better if the people are guilt…

I don’t understand your reasoning. It seems like either astonishing naivety or arguing in bad faith...

Do you really believe that a huge organisation that has plenty of people that are fine with illegally assassinating people, kidnapping people and torturing them, lying to Congress, etc. would have any moral issue with planting some images on a suspect’s hard drive?

These are very much “ends justify the means” kinds of people.

There is plenty of precedent too. One of the largest child abuse web sites on the dark web was confiscated by Australian police and then they continued to run it for another year [1]. But not only that, they did indeed post additional content (that they had confiscated elsewhere I assume) to keep the site’s users believing it was running as normal!

I guarantee agencies like the CIA would have no qualms doing the same thing, or using some of those images to “help” get somebody they felt was guilty but didn’t have evidence to convict.

That’s not to say that it’s necessarily happening in this case, but I would be surprised if they hadn’t don’t it multiple times before.

1. https://www.vg.no/nyheter/utenriks/i/L8ly4/unicef-clear-viol...

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