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Man Caught Trying To Sell Plans For New Aircraft Carrier
New submitter cyberjock1980 tips news that an engineer has been caught trying to deliver schematics for an aircraft carrier to the Egyptian government. The 35-year-old civilian received security clearance four months ago after working for the U.S. Navy since February. FBI agents made contact with him, pretending to be with the Egyptian government. They struck a deal to buy documents about the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, the first in a new line of improved, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. The man sold four CAD drawings for the carrier, and was later seen photographing another set of schematics. A bond hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.
I mean, what?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Plans sold to the Middle East?
The naval architects are now really going to regret putting in that big funnel that leads directly to the main reactor of the carrier.
So, the moron gets access to classified documents and tries to sell them to the Egyptians?
What was the thought process behind that brilliant idea?
"Hmm, no, the Russians or the Chinese wouldn't want these schematics... The Ehyptians, on the other hand... They're *totally* planning on building some aircraft carriers!"
Stolen carrier plans + 3D printer = death
Come back when they find someone actually doing something wrong without FBI grooming.
He should have sold them to Switzerland
Everything in it is true! Or people might just have ideas from the episodes..
Presumably if one were a corrupt government contractor, one would start with China and Russia and work your way down until you find a government who doesn't already have a copy of the plans? ...on the other hand TFS says "FBI agents made contact with him, pretending to be with the Egyptian government" so maybe he was just going to sell them to whoever bothered to ask.
After a clandestine meeting at a Hampton park, FBI agents say engineer Mostafa Ahmed Awwad provided four computer-aided design drawings of the Ford and described where to strike the vessel with a missile to sink it.
The chances of a foreign government contacting a random security cleared employee and asking to buy information is likely to be incredibly low per lifetime of each employee. Also consider that the Egyptians are both not in the market for an aircraft carrier and have enough relations with the US that they would never endanger them by doing something so obvious as building a copy of a US aircraft carrier. This "sting" is just a case of going looking for someone guilty of being stupid and greedy instead of the more difficult operation of trying to catch a real criminal.
It's just some dangerously ambitious prick deciding to shoot fish in a barrel to get a list of achievements - that's the one with the "thought process behind that brilliant idea" - present a stupid get rich quick scheme to catch the stupid.
Is tearing the world appart. And to a certain extent justifies espionage efforts, such as the FBI and CIA. It makes things MISERABLE.
Throw the book at him!
Better yet, throw the book on a 3.5 and use a Gauss.
Whenever you get a security contract or position, always expect some strange call (or two) from a Mr. Slugworth.
It was a non-violent crime so he doesn't deserve to be locked up with violent offenders. He didn't steal the plans, he just infringed the copyright on them. The US still has the plans so no harm is done if he sells a few copies. Egypt can't afford to buy an aircraft carrier from the US so why shouldn't they have the plans for free? The US don't pay engineers enough so they deserved to have the plans liberated. And just about every other bullshit pro-piracy argument.
Pssst, wanna buy a nuke?
Table-ized A.I.
Really. The Eqyptians?
Surely there're countries that'll pay far more for this information than Egypt? And be able to do far more interesting things with it.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
Not the sort of hearing you want to attend. The spectre of something bad will be hanging over you.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
... caught trying to deliver schematics for an aircraft carrier to the Egyptian government.
No, he was caught trying to deliver schematics for an aircraft carrier to the FBI. Since he thought he was trying to deliver them to the Egyptian government, that makes him a scumbag, but let's not pretend an actual crime that would have occurred without the FBI's action has been thwarted here. They didn't step in and stop something bad from happening, they just found some guy who likes money more than ethics and made a good headline out of him. Arguably doing so maybe has some deterrent effect, but don't misrepresent what happened or blow it out of proportion.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
How bout it?
Wouldn't this be the definition of entrapment?
| 0 | days without an accident.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
This is like a weird case of the Darwin awards; i.e., being so stupid you don't know that Egypt is not going to be interested in replicating the latest state of the art in nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
I never feel anyone's actually committed a crime when an FBI agent is to some extent an instigator
SURELY NOT!!!!!
The "bozo" wasn't doing the contacting. He was contacted. Contacted by a lazy agent who wanted to lock people up for being greedy and gullible instead of doing their job and keeping foreign powers from getting to the many greedy and gullible people that are going to be in the system whether you like it or not.
Did he really think he'd get away with that after Edward Snowden's recent whistle blowing? More than anything the U.S. government would ensure the security of it's military vessels. He should have assumed - like the prince from zimbabwe offer - that it was just a scam.
RIP TRICERATOPS, YOU NEVER EXISTED
He-Man ( http://www.mattycollector.com/... ) is a celebrity.
Egypt has the largest navy in the Middle East and Africa, and is the seventh largest in the world. They were the first to successfully deploy missiles against other ships.
He should have sold the CAD drawings to the guy who 3D printed the handgun. "Print your own aircraft carrier!" Second amendment! woot!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'd have you over for dinner, and you'd be welcome to bring your friend from China.
Also, I regularly deal with cyber attacks from China. I know the Chinese government is attacking us and seeking new and better ways to attack us. I know they have. Chinese students and businessmen working for them do intelligence, so while they're welcome to come to dinner, there's no reason to show top secret stuff to anyone from China. The risk each time may be small, just as the risk of not wearing a seatbelt once is small, but if you get in the habit of risking disaster you'll eventually have a disaster. There's no need to; there are plenty of Americans to handle the classified stuff, and that's lower risk. Sorry. Please do stay for tea.
You can want the plans for an aircraft carrier for more than one reason than just building a copy. For example, looking at vulnerabilities or selling them on to other interested parties.
Since aircraft carriers are useless in any major war anyway (will be at the bottom of the sea 15 minutes after conflict started) who cares?
Aircraft carriers are the weapons used by white people to subjugate brown people. Their usefulness in wars against other 1st world nations are the same as that of the trebuchet. If the USA actually stood for all the feel-good bullshit we claim to stand for then it would be a national law that Egypt has plans for how they are built. But then, we would not be supporting military dictatorship in countries like Egypt either.
I want a copy. Not that i could ever build it, but knowledge is power. And its interesting.
"He also described a detailed plan to circumvent Navy computer security by installing a "bug" on his restricted computer that would allow him to copy documents without drawing attention.
According to the affidavit, Awwad provided the undercover agent four computer-aided design drawings of the Ford and told him where to strike the vessel with a missile to sink it.
The two men later arranged for Awwad to make a drop on Oct. 23 in Hampton. The affidavit said Awwad removed $3,000 in cash from a camouflaged hole and put in its place a 1-terabyte external hard drive and two passport photos he thought the Egyptians would use to make a fraudulent passport. Agents found six more drawings of the Ford on the hard drive.
10 drawings and a plan to get a lot more data.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The plans are just the McGuffin. They do not matter. Nobody was buying the plans apart from the lazy sting to catch someone who is greedy.
You've been fooled into equating this with catching the agent of a foreign power who is going around looking for people who have access to aircraft carrier plans. Nothing so useful has happened, they've only caught some guy that will sell out in very specific circumstances. With the right circumstances they could probably lock up half of Virginia, all without preventing or punishing a single real crime.
They were probably also the first to have a navy at all.
Look at it another way - what if he thought "these guys want to give me money for some secret they can never use?" Doesn't sound like betrayal in those terms, after all Egypt is a major non-NATO ally (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93United_States_relations#Military_cooperation). I'm sure the sting was deliberately intended that way.
I'm also sure that most posters here work with people that would fall for similar things. There's no shortage of greedy people out there that can twist things enough that they can convince themselves that it's OK to take the money in similar circumstances. It's not China or Russia they'd say, we give them $19billion in military aid, so it's not going to hurt if I profit a bit? It's a complete waste of time to catch such people since something like that sting is not likely to happen to them in reality.
It's just a carefully crafted fantasy designed to show progress by increasing arrest figures. The Soviets did that sort of thing a lot. Why are we doing it?
Most Civil Engineers I know aren't looking to go all "Jack Bauer" toting a .45 around with secrets on a thumb drive... This guy is clearly the "bottom half" of the spy training program.
D+ A-wad.
It didn't take long for their kind to hammer that post down to a -1.
"Their kind"? What, do you mean Democrats?
Yes, the guy had a security clearance, so I suppose entrapping him can be considered part of the quality control process, but it's still ridiculous; Egypt would get much more effective military use from a dirt airstrip in the Sinai than an aircraft carrier. But hey, the FBI gets to put out a press release claiming they caught a spy! And it's less ridiculous than the time they entrapped half a dozen drunken bums in Chicago into a "plot to bomb the Sears tower", and less dangerous than the time they helped half a dozen Al-Qaeda plotters mix fertilizer explosive for the first World Trade Center bombing.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
keep thinking that ;-)
The guy might not be as dumb as you might be. Lots of espionage in world history has involved levels of indirection. It's perfectly possible that the Egyptians (in this example) might want information which they could, in turn, trade to the Chinese or Russians. Many nations gather information, or assets and then trade them to others for what they REALLY want. In the 80's the US got Israel to transfer some old Hawk missiles to one of their enemies as part of a deal that they were then repaid for and it would have worked brilliantly (NOBODY would have unravelled it from the mideast-end of the chain) had the whole thing not been exposed on the other side of the planet with the end of the complex deal in Nicaragua (the downside to added complexity is the addition of risks of exposure). The benefit to indirect stuff like this is that it draws less attention because the parties involved are trading in things eberybody assumes they'd have no interest in with people everybody assumes they'd never trade with.
THIS particular instance might well involve an idiot who was easily entrapped, BUT the idea that it's obviously nuts because it involves the "wrong" country is very simple-minded and not valid.
Indeed, we know the Egyptians engaged in sea battles at least 3000 years ago.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...
They may have had a navy 5000 years ago, that we don't know.
Since I haven't seen anyone point this out:
1. According to the article, the Awwad idiot actually went through with delivering classified info at the 2nd "meeting." That means he successfully stole classified from the secure facility in which it was kept.
Now, just because he sold N files to the agents, doesn't mean he only removed N files from the secure facility. Furthermore, he delivered them to agents at a hotel. Which means "out there" in the wild! So before he was arrested he could have actually had >N files copied onto an indeterminate number of his personal net connected computing gadgets, where the info could have wound up stolen by real enemies by malware bots looking for just this sort of thing, or perhaps he sent backup copies to some place where we will never know but someone else does.
In other words, the FBI agents instigated an ACTUAL breach of classified info into the wild, which is a REAL threat to national security. The info could very well already be in the hands of the Russia, China, etc.
It is the FBI fuckers who should be sent up the river!
It is the purpose of counterintelligence to protect ACTUAL national security above all else, which means not allowing classified out into the wild. They could have simply revoked Awwad's security clearance and fired him when they found him willing to commit an act of espionage, but before he actually went through with it. This would have actually protected national security, by preventing the disclosure of classified which is the whole point.
Instead they risked and caused an uncontrollable leak of classified, just to bag some idiot so he'd go to prison and the agents would get good performance reviews. These people are unethical sociopaths. It is immoral to not seek to PREVENT someone from committing a crime if you know they are willing and considering it. A sting like this should be a felony. Not to mention that now each one of us is going to have to pay a share of our life's work just to imprison the Awwad dimwit for a very long time.
2. There is something very wrong with the Navy's handling of classified, if Awwad was able to get it out at all.
In my experience, fortunately not with actual classified which I want nothing to do with since I have ADHD-like forgetfullness and work "outside the fence", but I've been trained about its handling at a national lab, it would be or should have been exceedingly difficult to steal classified in the first place.
Awwad should have never been alone with classified. It should have been on computers which, if they are networked at all, are connected to only a fully air-gapped restricted network. Even the fucking fibers can't be within like 6 feet of those from another network! The USB and other ports should be sealed off with epoxy. Swapping of classified containing hard drives to/from vault and workstation is done under direct supervision by some classified accountant. It might even be that the workers must be at least in a team of 2 or more, I'm not certain though. Workstations which process classified live in a "vault-like room." Stealing this stuff is not easy! Unless their security is very broken, it should be nearly impossible without getting caught.
Look at it this way: If the guy was stupid enough to try to sell the info yet smart enough to actually succeed at stealing some, then the Navy's security is a joke. How many have stolen information that didn't get caught?
Allowing classified to get out of it's secure facility was a collosal fuckup!
If this type of sting, resulting in the actual removal of classified from secure facilities is common practice, then the people guarding our nation are at a minimum incompetent, and at worst they are the actual traitors for being willing to risk causing actual harm to national security for the sake of their personal careers.
There is little doubt that the enemy we should truly fear is within.
In the comments I read, noone mentions the fact that *the clearance procedure* is at fault in the first place. Had they made sure that during the process something like this was 'rolled in' (eg you will get fake security clearance and someone will approach you) he would not have gotten access to sensitive docs in the first place, and you save the community on criminal prosecution costs. So much to learn...
It's hard to think of analogies which reflect the danger, the reputational damage and the material gain of this kind of betrayal. Murder doesn't have the element of reputational damage and material gain.
I mean, you signed a contract with the U.S., you were vetted, they did background checks, you had history together and built a battleship together, then you sold the schematics of that battleship.
If we're using human analogies, this is like selling the diary, identity information and naked photos of your overaccomplished olympian niece... and providing some genetic material to clone her.
There's no way to entrap somebody with that kind of betrayal. Regardless of money, they should actively protect and defend her from this kind of abuse. Out of a sense of decency and loyalty, protecting it even with their own life.
But really, analogies suck.
If you want the plans for something it's not necessarily because you want to recreate it. Have you not seen Star Wars?
"The documents do not describe why Awwad was targeted."
I'll be interested to see this if it ever comes out, too many of our federal law enforcement services don't really bother trying to find criminals these days, they are generated to provide the illusion that they're actually doing something. How many "terrorists" have been caught in the past decade who have had an paid FBI "informant" alongside the entire time giving them ideas, motivation, money, and equipment in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars.
... would he have done ANY of it had the FBI not goaded him into it in their attempt to create a terrorist from whole cloth?
Show me where I do instead of your imagined strawman doing it. Or is the mere fantasy of thinking I suggested it enough?
Oh that's right, your entire objection is based on "but what if it WAS real?" and completely misses the entire fucking point that it was not - it's a sting based on fantasy that is never going to happen and so will catch people that may never become real criminals.
Did I make that obvious enough for you yet?
Do you get that I haven't even touched on real espionage one way or another yet?
I really don't get why some people here build elaborate houses of cards just to have their strawmen utter them in the name of others instead of very simple statements like mine way above which should not need extra explanation. It looks like pointless dishonesty.
like Jonathan Pollard
or *not*.....
You keep on going on about what about if the fantasy is real. It's not real. That is the problem. This isn't fucking minority report, this is the fucking FBI and they should be expected to act like professionals and not like cartoon characters. Am I getting through yet? How clear do I have to make it?
He was led by the nose into a fucking fantasy world peopled by FBI agents playing roles to a very unlikely script. What the guy did was what he was told to do. There was no crime until he was given instructions and followed them.
Don't take this personally, but this may illustrate the situation better if empathy is the problem. It appears a sting on you would work if someone told you they were working for the FBI or similar agency and wanted you to take something from your workplace for them. If you do it you are proved "untrustworthy" to your workplace, but it's an entirely pointless exercise unless someone has a quota of people to catch. That sort of stupid loyalty test was very frequent in the early Soviet Union.