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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.
Two differences from standard criminal charge of entrapment. First, counter intelligence personnel (CIA, FBI, DOD--whatever) are allowed to set up operations like this when government issued security clearances are involved. Second, entrapment is specifically when the entrapper targets a person and convinces that person to do something he would not normally have done. If there were suspicions about this person, I'm guessing he had raised flags already, thus negating that aspect of entrapment.
I'm a big support of Snowden. Much less so of Manning. This guy deserves whatever he gets.
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 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.
Entrapment is a really tricky defense. The Founding Father's didn't actually recognize it as a defense at all. The first case where it was used Federally did not happen until Prohibition hit. In pop culture it's usefulness is greatly exaggerated. Most people start thinking "entrapment" when a government agent says "hey let's do a crime" and somebody goes along with it, but entire categories of case simply could not be filed if that was all that mattered. For example, pretty much the only way to arrest Johns is to have a cop dress up as a hooker and offer to sell sex.
Entrapment only happens legally if there's some reason to believe the entrapee would not have even considered the possibility of committing the crime absent the government's actions. In the hooker stings they generally happen in areas where people troll for hookers, so the Courts rule that either a) this particular defendant clearly had a predisposition to commit the crime or he wouldn't have been driving through that neighborhood slowly at that time of night, or b) the governments actions were not likely to entice law-abiding citizens to stop and give a hooker money because law-abiding citizens don't drive through that neighborhood slow at that time; depending on whether that particular court system uses the "subjective" or objective" tests.
In this case the defendant can't really use the defense very effectively because in the Federal system they use method a), which means he'd have to prove he was highly unlikely to take money to sell plans in the absence of a government dude offering money. He was very hands-on once they offered the money, doing numerous things that one would do if one really really wanted to sell national security information to a foreign government (such as creating "an elaborate cyber security system which included several one-time use electronic mail boxes with phantom names").
It's not entrapment if they just ask you to do it and you do it without any resistance. If they went to the guy and then begged and pleaded with him telling him some sad story about why they need it and convinced him to do it after he said no, then that would be entrapment.
Really good guide to what entrapment is
All the guy had to do was say "no".
Failure to report the contact would also get him in trouble.
This base canard again? To anyone paying attention, the only civilians on scene were the guys in the van. Which the guys in the chopper had no way of knowing they weren't connected to the guys carrying AKs and RPGs towards the marine component several blocks away.