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N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

nytimes.com

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Re: N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

#81

Post by optimuspaul »

lettergram wrote: post #54
bdavisx wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to downplay the NSA issues -- but it's a lot scarier for a black/brown person to realize their life can be ended when they get stopped for having a tail light out.

I do agree that people will think that way, but it's actually not scarier. Giving the government the power it has, implies the government can basically do what ever it want. It has secret courts, secret arrests, and secret police. That is way more horrifying than the very small risk of being shot - which the numbers don't even fully support that it's getting worse, unjustified, or even preventable. I recommend the Th…

I don't think you can say what is scarier for another person.

Re: N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

#82

Post by rdtsc »

roywiggins wrote: post #52
matheweis wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst trying to remain as politically neutral as possible, isn't this basically what Clinton did?

Nobody has managed to find any documents that passed through Clinton's email server that were labeled as classified, let alone Top Secret. (One or two documents had classified sections, which were labeled with small (c) marks. The document should have had big CLASSIFIED marks, but since it didn't, missing a (c) next to a paragraph is not an arrestable offense)

> Nobody has managed to find any documents labeled as classified, let alone Top Secret.

Really? So you can just delete all the classification labels and send the document to a yahoo account. Look no labels, so it is fine? You better ask your friendly Security Officer about that (actually don't you'll be highly suspicious doing that).

She had 10 or so TS/SCI satellite images in there. Other people would go to jail for that...

She deliberately set up her own separate server, that wasn't an oops I slipped, one doesn't accidentally stumble and end up with a separate email server. Then classified documents up to TS/SCI were found on that server. Imagine an NSA or NRO employee doing that.

"So yeah, Jim, I just set up my own work email server at my house, just send work email there". "Oh, you found some satellite images there? You think you got me, however, see, classification markings are not there so it's fine"

Re: N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

#83

Post by jwtadvice »

matt_wulfeck wrote: post #8

I ask myself what I should be more upset about: that someone walked away with government hacking tools, or that our government knew about existing exploits in critical American company technologies and kept them a secret?

More than this. They work with and infiltrate companies in order to insert vulnerabilities and backdoors in otherwise correctly designed products so that they can be exported and exploited overseas.

Re: N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

#84

Post by SEJeff »

nickff wrote: post #60
SEJeff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's to say $FOREIGN_INFOSEC_ACTORS don't try to target employees like him? Maybe he did "take his work home" and a FSB operative stole it from his home or hacked his home computer? I'm saying this as if this was Russia and he was a Russian infosec guy, I wouldn't put it past the NSA TAO to go do just that.

Yes, this is dangerous; people shouldn't be allowed to bring government secrets home with them... unless they are cabinet level officials?

Exactly! They should go to jail as well, but well you can't win them all... Clinton should be in jail.

Re: N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

#85

Post by filoeleven »

chx wrote: post #67
flubert wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you'll enjoy: The Myth of the Rule of Law... http://faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm

While it's great to harp on the inconsistency of the body of law, the importance of rule of law is how powerful people equally get prosecuted and sentenced and cases are not determined by who can pay a bigger bribe to the judge. Both happen in the negative in, say, Hungary.

> the importance of rule of law is how powerful people equally get prosecuted and sentenced and cases are not determined by who can pay a bigger bribe to the judge

But the law is not equally applied in the US, though it's more often here a case of being powerful than being rich. See how General Petraeus was treated (for retaining eight notebooks full of "highly sensitive information" and giving them to his biographer/paramour) compared to Stephen Kim (who discussed one classified report about North Korea with a reporter): the former was fined, the latter was jailed.[0]

Now, Kim has since been released due to the outcry over the disparity of the sentences, so in this case the subversion of the rule of law coupled with public pressure ended up working out. But that is not an inspiring system. It did little for instance to help Jeffrey Sterling[1] (charged with espionage, in part for doing something that sounds a lot like what Hillary Clinton did with her emails).

This is to say nothing of things that have gone the other way, such as a complete lack of prosecution for those behind the 2008 financial crisis, retroactive telecom immunity, etc. The message that this sends is, "The rule of law applies to you unless you are close enough or important enough to whoever is in power." Which is not really the rule of law at all.

[0]https://theintercept.com/2015/03/03/petraeus-plea-deal-revea...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Alexander_Sterling#Con...

Re: N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

#86

Post by Someone1234 »

roywiggins wrote: post #75
ethanbond wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop pushing this myth. I want Hillary to win as much as the next reasonable person, but that doesn't mean she didn't mess up. There were dozens of classified emails that were in fact classified at the time they were sent. Some of which were Top Secret. Some of which were even Special Access Programs. Whether something is marked or not is actually irrelevant. Part of her responsibility and this contractor's responsib…

Point taken. You're correct on all points. Discussing classified matters through an insecure method is a far cry from physically taking documents home, not least because it's clear the discussions were being undertaken as part of her official duties. Taking documents home is a lot more ambiguous as to intent.

> Discussing classified matters through an insecure method is a far cry from physically taking documents home

It is identical. He is being accused of moving classified information to unauthorised locations. She moved information to unauthorised locations. She literally had people send classified information to the basement of her home.

Plus I'd argue that sending classified information to an insecure server is a far bigger threat to national security. Even if he got robbed on the way home the overall scope is lower than if the server gets broken into by foreign entities.

Re: N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

#87

Post by Someone1234 »

comex wrote: post #57
cvwright wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spilling the beans on classified information is still illegal, even if it's not properly portion marked in big capital letters.

Yes, but the presence of three or so poorly marked emails among tens of thousands of them over four years does not do a great job of establishing intent - as opposed to this case, where the Booz employee was found with tons of presumably clearly marked classified documents.

Even the destruction of evidence is illegal. The State Department ordered her to return all emails, she had staff (incidentally without security clearance) delete tens of thousands of them.

The state department has recovered emails sent and received to her (for official functions) which she failed to turn over. This is in the FBI's report and also in the private lawsuit filed by the Republican group.

Re: N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

#88

Post by elif »

jbapple wrote: post #4

What constitutes a "secret arrest", as mentioned in this article? Jose Padilla was arrested and initially held without notice to his family or attorney. Is that what this arrest is like? What proportion of the arrests in the US are "secret"? When the families of the prisoners are told, are they sometimes bound by court orders not to disclose the arrests?

It is legally an indefinite detention pending formal charges, but due to the nature of "indefinite," those charges never have to actually exist.

It performed under section 1021 of the original National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA 2012), which has been upheld as constitutional by an appellate court, a ruling which the supreme court declined to subsequently hear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedges_v._Obama

Re: N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets

#89

Post by dopamean »

redthrowaway wrote: post #66

John Schindler (former NSA counterintelligence officer) called this back in August: http://observer.com/2016/08/the-real-russian-mole-inside-nsa... This would explain how the Russians ended up with the source code for TAO's toys.

He is one of the worst personalities on twitter. For someone who could perhaps add a lot to the discussion his contributions frequently boils down to "I know better than [you or some other person] and so I don't have to explain [some insulting thing he said about someone]."
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