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

Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 99 posts

Re: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

#51

Post by TurkishPoptart »

ChumpGPT wrote: post #11

Would a guy in his position even have access to these documents? I'm thinking that there has to be someone who shared them or at least shared a way to gain access to them. I'm sure the FBI will be following the trail of bread crumbs to the original source. Now if it turns out he is the original source, we're in huge trouble. Because a 21 year old kid working night shift in some remote Cape Cod office for the Massachu…

It's not even so much as database access as it was more likely a leak from on premises. AFAIK the leaked documents were photographs of physical printouts (they had visible creases in them).

Re: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

#52

Post by 2022-11-07 »

nobody9999 wrote: post #44
2022-11-07 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your link is a about a bitcoin case, so unless I missed something this guy wasn't doing it for money (I don't condone it, but money is a reasonable motive for committing a crime). And I said based on his last name he doesn't appear to be ethnically Russian. Why are you going on about foreign nationals?

>Your link is a about a bitcoin case, so unless I missed something this guy wasn't doing it for money (I don't condone it, but money is a reasonable motive for committing a crime). My point was that they were both kids when they did these stupid things (with Zhong, I'm not talking about stealing bitcoin -- he thought that it would "cool" to have a suitcase full of cash and that it might impress some college coed to f…

> suitcase full of cash and that it might impress some college coed to fuck

I think the sex in that story is a red herring. If you have a suitcase full of 700 grand you don't need to impressive anyone to have sex. If you have a bunch of illicit bitcoins converting that into cash also makes sense without bringing sex into it. Money makes sense as a motive.

> What does your assessment as to what's reasonable have to do with what Jack Teixeira thought was a good idea?

A crime like this needs a motive.

> this guy isn't a spook/source for any foreign government

We're on the same page. What I'm saying is if this guy was a spook the story would start to make sense. But it doesn't look like he is.

> what does his name have to do with it?

I'll go out on a limb and say the average person who's last name is Putin has more loyalty to the Russian government than someone who's last name is Teixeira.

> Actual spies [...] didn't have "russian" names

It's funny. In a parallel thread I'm being accused of thinking Cold War spy stories are real, and here's two men whose entire Wikipedia articles read like spy thrillers.

I'm not checking if this guy is a spy, just that some sort of evidence of Russian sympathies would make this all easier to swallow.

Re: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

#53

Post by TurkishPoptart »

ChumpGPT wrote: post #11

Would a guy in his position even have access to these documents? I'm thinking that there has to be someone who shared them or at least shared a way to gain access to them. I'm sure the FBI will be following the trail of bread crumbs to the original source. Now if it turns out he is the original source, we're in huge trouble. Because a 21 year old kid working night shift in some remote Cape Cod office for the Massachu…

Is it significant that the leaks were allegedly of photographs of printouts, with visible creases, as oppposed to being straight file-dumps? Maybe photographic a printout is better for opsec as opposed to files with some sort of DLP.

Re: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

#54

Post by ericmay »

pocketsand wrote: post #22
ChumpGPT wrote: post #11

Would a guy in his position even have access to these documents? I'm thinking that there has to be someone who shared them or at least shared a way to gain access to them. I'm sure the FBI will be following the trail of bread crumbs to the original source. Now if it turns out he is the original source, we're in huge trouble. Because a 21 year old kid working night shift in some remote Cape Cod office for the Massachu…

The dirty not-so-secret about national defense apparatus in this country is that there are thousands of people in these various sub-sub-wings of our military along side mediocre contractors cashing in on defense contracts who go through rudimentary security clearance checks and have access to all this information. I grew up outside DC and every so often you hear of the security clearance spooks interviewing you or so…

> The other half make 200,000 dollars a year from a subcontractor of a subcontractor of Northrop Grumman pushing paper at a desk all year.

That's what happens when you don't want the government to spend money actually hiring skilled employees. Instead we waste money trying to not waste money. The government could pay a very skilled developer $150k/year + benefits. But certain people think that the government only wastes money. So we can't have public sector employees making comparable wages. Instead we pay a "contractor"[1] $200k/year where the contractor gets $110k of that and the employer takes the other $90k.

[1] They are de facto public employees

Re: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

#55

Post by bink »

lkjdlkjfkljv2 wrote: post #35

Manning got 35 years, although her sentence was commuted by Obama because she was arguably a "whistleblower." Makes you wonder if Russian agents somehow got in his head. Impressionable 21 year old kids with access to the boss's computer to update IE will do stupdi things for the "100" reaction emoji on Discord.

If you read the Washington Post article it's pretty clear he was showing off for some online friends. He was even getting mad that they weren't paying attention.

Re: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

#56

Post by tmpz22 »

lkjdlkjfkljv2 wrote: post #35

Manning got 35 years, although her sentence was commuted by Obama because she was arguably a "whistleblower." Makes you wonder if Russian agents somehow got in his head. Impressionable 21 year old kids with access to the boss's computer to update IE will do stupdi things for the "100" reaction emoji on Discord.

It doesn't take a dedicated agent to impact an impressionable 21 year old. Just the right sequence of Youtube Shorts and TikTok clips.

Re: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

#57

Post by refulgentis »

TurkishPoptart wrote: post #53
ChumpGPT wrote: post #11

Would a guy in his position even have access to these documents? I'm thinking that there has to be someone who shared them or at least shared a way to gain access to them. I'm sure the FBI will be following the trail of bread crumbs to the original source. Now if it turns out he is the original source, we're in huge trouble. Because a 21 year old kid working night shift in some remote Cape Cod office for the Massachu…

Is it significant that the leaks were allegedly of photographs of printouts, with visible creases, as oppposed to being straight file-dumps? Maybe photographic a printout is better for opsec as opposed to files with some sort of DLP.

nah, TL;DR: he got mad the teens on his Discord weren't reading his typeouts of them and started posting photos because it was more titillating to see it in all its glory, with markings etc. (also, saved him time in his weird little god simulation, why should someone as wise and talented as him A) be mostly ignored B) waste a ton of time trying to help these fools?)

Re: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

#58

Post by refulgentis »

ifyoubuildit wrote: post #21
ChumpGPT wrote: post #11

Would a guy in his position even have access to these documents? I'm thinking that there has to be someone who shared them or at least shared a way to gain access to them. I'm sure the FBI will be following the trail of bread crumbs to the original source. Now if it turns out he is the original source, we're in huge trouble. Because a 21 year old kid working night shift in some remote Cape Cod office for the Massachu…

It's not clear to me that he is confirmed to be the actual leaker and not just the owner of the group where the files were leaked.

owner == leaker, multiple sources on that, then we see his family's reaction. Still not 100% clear its 100% confirmed but shy of him admitting it, probably best we'll get.

Re: Leader of Online Group Where Secret Documents Leaked Is Air National Guardsman

#60

Post by refulgentis »

lsh123 wrote: post #38
etimberg wrote: post #5

Likely going to go away for a long while

I am sure FBI will find that "Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case." as it usually does in cases of leaking classified info :) :) :)

Yeah secretary of state having IT set up a server for her blackberry in 2006 is the same as a 22 year old forcing 16 year olds on his discord to read top secret docs
Post reply on HN