Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 99 posts

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

#61

Post by _8j50 »

Scapeghost wrote: post #5
staticautomatic wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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.

Speculation or do you have empirical data to back that up?

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

#62

Post by parsimo2010 »

crowtoe76 wrote: post #12
undreren wrote: post #3

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.

To contemplate the actions of the CIA is to be a "conspiracy theorist". What does the CIA do all day, every day, besides "conspire"?

I get what you're saying, but there is a difference between discussing conspiracies that we know the CIA participated in, such as the overthrow of various governments, vs. theorizing about things such as framing someone with child porn. Both actions meet the definition of conspiracy, but we can discuss the facts of CIA conspiracies to overthrow governments without theorizing- the historians that wrote books about this aren't conspiracy theorists (well, not all of them). The second is actually being a conspiracy theorist- it's awful convenient to find child porn on someone's hard drive but we don't have any facts to support the idea.

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

#63

Post by _8j50 »

undreren wrote: post #3

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.

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

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

#64

Post by AmericanChopper »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #62
crowtoe76 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To contemplate the actions of the CIA is to be a "conspiracy theorist". What does the CIA do all day, every day, besides "conspire"?

I get what you're saying, but there is a difference between discussing conspiracies that we know the CIA participated in, such as the overthrow of various governments, vs. theorizing about things such as framing someone with child porn. Both actions meet the definition of conspiracy, but we can discuss the facts of CIA conspiracies to overthrow governments without theorizing- the historians that wrote books about thi…

We can also discuss the trustworthiness of the CIA when deciding whether to believe anything they claim to be true.

They have the power to do that sort of thing. They would have a clear motive to do it. It’s not any different from the regular business-as-usual sort of thing they get up to. What reason would I have trust this?

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

#65

Post by leshenka »

ikeboy wrote: 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…

Oh no, not the tabs v spaces again

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

#66

Post by sjg007 »

gxon wrote: post #41
Scapeghost wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

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 (…

Sprinkle some crack on ya: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OY-9P_CnNZg

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

#67

Post by sjg007 »

meowface wrote: post #17
crowtoe76 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To contemplate the actions of the CIA is to be a "conspiracy theorist". What does the CIA do all day, every day, besides "conspire"?

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 age…

There will be no fallout. Even if it is true the records would be destroyed if they ever existed. If the FBI or location police uncovered said operation there would be no action taken. Why? Because all operations today are joint operations.

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

#68

Post by scarejunba »

meowface wrote: post #43
true_religion wrote: post #36

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…

You know you have the bad guy. He knows he's bad. But the system is going to let him get away. He's not a child pornographer but you and I both know we don't put other people away the way we did Al Capone. He knows he's the bad guy and he laughs in my face just because some lawyer will get him off. I'm the good guy, man. If I let this guy off who knows how many lives he'll ruin.

Society is peaceful because rough men stand ready to do violence in the night in its name. They can judge me, but I did the right thing.

Plant the drive, Dave.

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

#69

Post by waterhouse »

ikeboy wrote: 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…

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.

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

#70

Post by alasdair_ »

meowface wrote: post #43
true_religion wrote: post #36

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…

The same people are content to have a drone blow up a house full of children to kill a single target.
Post reply on HN