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Trial of programmer accused in CIA leak ends in hung jury

nytimes.com

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

#91

Post by meowface »

kelnos wrote: post #59
meowface wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 contri…

>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.

No, it isn't. It is if you were to quickly skim the NYT article, perhaps, but that's not the actual story. The real story is in the court documents.

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

#92

Post by meowface »

sjg007 wrote: post #67
meowface wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If this is true, then how can one dispute any conspiracy theory? If one believes that all of law enforcement and intelligence is in on every conspiracy, will never leak, and that all evidence of every conspiracy is destroyed before it can ever be discovered, then you can justify any belief.

I think if the FBI or police covered up a conspiracy theory of planted child pornography evidence, and this were found out, it would be a massive scandal that would dominate the news for months or years.

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

#93

Post by meowface »

akiselev wrote: post #49
meowface wrote: post #43

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. 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. Why? I think if there are millions of people who can justify assassination for their country/ideology, they'll be able to justify…

It's certainly possible, but I just disagree that assassinations are as psychologically weighty, personally. Killing someone who's killed other people or contributed to their deaths vs. rigging the justice system and planting child pornography on someone who leaked some of your secrets are really different things.

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

#94

Post by meowface »

kelnos wrote: post #57
meowface wrote: post #43

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. 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…

I'm sure there are some people who would be doing that. I'm just saying that there are a lot of people who are okay with the former but not the latter, so I disagree with the suggestion that most or all of the CIA or FBIA would be okay with it. That leads me to think the probability of this happening at an organizational level (i.e. the director orders it) is low.

The probability of a few people acting independently is a lot higher, but I think still low. And whether it's low or high, you still need evidence. Any evidence. For example, evidence that they may have doctored chat logs.

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

#95

Post by meowface »

harikb wrote: post #50
meowface wrote: post #43

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. 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 fail to see how planting evidence crosses a higher moral barrier than killing someone. By the way, in both cases, the person who makes the decision genuinely believes, probably on wrong information, that the person they are entrapping is evil and they just lack the right evidence So I don’t buy the argument that they would lose they sleep over what they did.

Because there are different kinds of "evil". Killing an individual who they believe is responsible for the deaths of many people is different from framing a US citizen and going around the justice system by planting child pornography evidence, because they leaked secrets. These are not apples-to-apples situations.

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

#96

Post by meowface »

alasdair_ wrote: post #70
meowface wrote: post #43

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. 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.

From an objective morality standpoint, you're probably right that that is worse. But subjectively and psychologically, I think most of them put them in different boxes.

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

#97

Post by meowface »

dkersten wrote: post #74
meowface wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> is there a single known instance of the US government ever doing such a thing? Not that I’m aware of, but they’ve done a lot worse in the past (arming opposition to democratically elected governments, then turning against them later; drugging people without their consent or knowledge; etc) so its not particularly crazy to think that they’re willing or capable to do such things.

I completely agree. I just think the other repliers aren't assigning the probabilities correctly. Also, separately from the incentive and capability issue, there's the fact that people seem comfortable casting suspicion without any evidence or other empirical basis, while lazily including misinformation like "convenient that this happens so often, huh" despite not mentioning a single other case of it happening (leaker charged with possessing child pornography).

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

#98

Post by greenyoda »

waterhouse wrote: post #69
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 th…

> if that's being done to someone who hasn't been convicted of a crime, that seems worrying

If that's being done to someone who has been convicted of a crime, it would still be horrible. The U.S. has a constitutional prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment" (8th Amendment), and we claim to be a country that upholds basic human rights. This is the kind of abuse our government would complain about if some other country subjected our citizens to it.

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

#99

Post by Rebles »

windthrown wrote: post #87
friendly_fren wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they would boot you off the jury and replace you with someone else

Prosecutors can't retroactively remove jurors based on the verdict. Jury selection happens at the beginning of the trial.

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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