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Former DoE Employee Ensnared By Secret-Selling Sting Pleads Guilty (washingtonpost.com)
mdsolar writes: A former Energy Department employee accused of attempting to infiltrate the agency's computer system to steal nuclear secrets and sell them to a foreign government pleaded guilty Tuesday to a reduced charge of attempting to damage protected government computers in an email "spear-phishing attack." Charles Harvey Eccleston, a former employee at the department and at the independent Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), was arrested March 27 by Philippine authorities after an undercover FBI sting operation. Eccleston, 62, a U.S. citizen who had been living in the Philippines since 2011, was "terminated" from his job at the NRC in 2010, according to the Justice Department. In January 2015, the department said, he targeted more than 80 Energy Department employees in Washington at four national nuclear labs with emails containing what he thought were links to malicious websites that, if activated, could infect and damage computers.
Non paywalled version
Not only that the story seems to have bypassed the firehose. Didn't we already chat about this yesterday whipslash?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
So the FBI finds a disgruntled former employee, incites him to steal secrets for them and gives him the fake tools to do so. Arrests him and gives him a 50 year sentence. Seems the moral thing to do...
Is this the SOP for the FBI these days? They can't find terrorists so they create them?
Wasn't this a NCIS episode?
What is timothy?
dark matters for sure.. where did they come from? do we really need them? are there seeds in adams apples?
The NRC has regulated the nuclear energy industry out of existence so what's their purpose now anyways?
Most nuclear weapons proliferation occurs through espionage. Soviet Union, China, Israel, Pakistan all used spies to get started.
Such a sell-out. Should have stuck to the music, rather than getting in bed with the Feds.
Expect teams to approach a lot of people who have just left or have changed jobs from work with a security clearance.
A preemptive chat down to see how a person responds when contacted by a stranger, press, authors, peace activist, historians, random charming foreigner, fake diplomat with heavy accent or just a "new" "friend" in the area.
Holidays or travel really seem to get a person of interest to the top of a watch list.
When in another nation be careful of a honey trap or the friendly stranger approach. A few different teams will have that on record and will play that approach back in full.
Report any such contact as you would have when working with notes, events, logs any other details as quickly as possible as required. Always make a big fuss, contact law enforcement who have the ability to work with such reports, your gov, mil, company or contractor's security teams.
The main thrust of such efforts is to induce a fear that every approach by member of the press, authors, peace activist, historians is always gov team.
Very chilling for any academics, authors or press looking for comment, background or context.
Freedom of the press and freedom of association is now replaced by reporting every call, email, talk over decades by millions of workers and contractors.
By default a huge number of unofficial informants ready to report on any emerging press story.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Isnt allow nuclear info out a death sentence?
He should have simply removed the markings from any documents containing classified information. Then he could say "they weren't marked classified when I sent them."
What's that, intentionally altering the markings for illicit purposes is another, separate felony?
This is Slashdot, we like science here. Free Republic and the Fox News comments are that way ------------------->
(Way, way that way. Look for the sign that says "Welcome to the Realm of the Batshit Insane.")
Why does a coin toss have more credibility than an economist? Same reason.
Mostly random stuff.
"...in a plea deal with prosecutors both sides said a term of 24 to 30 months is appropriate..."
AYFKM?
Did the prosecutors not comprehend what the hell he was doing?
So this is what's going on. When I got spam from real, mostly old, people, I've always assumed their Outlook is infected or they leaked their contacts through Facebook or whatever. But apparently they're doing it as a job.
So $19,000 will get you someone to try to steal nuclear weapons secrets, how much do you think the government's (if they get their way) backdoor keys for encryption will cost?
damn, i like that equally
BLM is often rocked by scandal as their employees accept bribes from mining and oil industry. Does NRC also attract the corruptible because of its regulatory role?
He tried to sell publicly available information? Thank God he was an idiot.
"Unnamed". So, Russia most likely, longer shot would be North Korea.