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Suspect Identified In CIA 'Vault 7' Leak (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: In weekly online posts last year, WikiLeaks released a stolen archive of secret documents about the Central Intelligence Agency's hacking operations, including software exploits designed to take over iPhones and turn smart television sets into surveillance devices. It was the largest loss of classified documents in the agency's history and a huge embarrassment for C.I.A. officials. Now, The New York Times has learned the identity of the prime suspect in the breach (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): a 29-year-old former C.I.A. software engineer who had designed malware used to break into the computers of terrorism suspects and other targets.
F.B.I. agents searched the Manhattan apartment of the suspect, Joshua A. Schulte, one week after WikiLeaks released the first of the C.I.A. documents in March last year, and then stopped him from flying to Mexico on vacation, taking his passport, according to court records and family members. The search warrant application said Mr. Schulte was suspected of "distribution of national defense information," and agents told the court they had retrieved "N.S.A. and C.I.A. paperwork" in addition to a computer, tablet, phone and other electronics. But instead of charging Mr. Schulte in the breach, referred to as the Vault 7 leak, prosecutors charged him last August with possessing child pornography, saying agents had found the material on a server he created as a business in 2009 while he was a student at the University of Texas.
F.B.I. agents searched the Manhattan apartment of the suspect, Joshua A. Schulte, one week after WikiLeaks released the first of the C.I.A. documents in March last year, and then stopped him from flying to Mexico on vacation, taking his passport, according to court records and family members. The search warrant application said Mr. Schulte was suspected of "distribution of national defense information," and agents told the court they had retrieved "N.S.A. and C.I.A. paperwork" in addition to a computer, tablet, phone and other electronics. But instead of charging Mr. Schulte in the breach, referred to as the Vault 7 leak, prosecutors charged him last August with possessing child pornography, saying agents had found the material on a server he created as a business in 2009 while he was a student at the University of Texas.
In the world of electronic data, nothing worse than taking from the CIA and NSA.
Well, there is something worse...kiddie porn.
That takes away all sympathy he may get from people.
Hold him for the smut, but send him to a dark hole for the rest of it.
No reason to lie.
Fpmitap!
Yeah, cuz it's not like they wouldn't PLANT child porn on his computer to incriminate him, would they?
That's the most likely explanation.
He deserves a medal for degrating the government's ability to perpetrate more inside jobs. Giving aid and comfort to the feds make you an accessory to mass murder.
Rules are rules are rules are rules.
AE911Truth org
I bet the kiddie porn was the reason he was working for the CIA NSA
probably found it a long time ago
Linux modi 2.6.26-2-parisc
He's just a patsy.
The whole Vault 7 leak was engineered to create plausible deniability for why and how the DNC got those tools to use to spy on the Trump campaign.
In reality, the clown deep state provided them to help "their girl." When she lost, they had to know eventually things would come out and started covering tracks. (Look at the date of the original leak, weeks after the inauguration, time enough to think up a plan and get it going.)
Now that there are investigations into that stuff, they need to close off the possible link and sacrifice this guy at the alter of clinton.
"Shut up kid, we'll put you in jail with rapists for 50 years, plea to this and keep your mouth shut and you'll be out in 10"
Go look into a thing called Q and decide for yourself. It's entirely obvious that's what is going on.
That certainly could be. Also, he says that he gave 50-100 people access to his server, so they could share files. Any of those people could have dumped alt.binaries.porn.lolita there. His legal liability would be questionable.
Or it could have been something like The Fappening and included pictures of people like McKayla Maroney or Liz Lee, who were under 18 at the time. There are a lot of ways a computer nerd could end up with a big stash of porn, possibly downloaded by a script, and have that large stash include a number of under 18 images, even if they didn't intend to.
Published reports from early in the investigation also mention that he used Tor. Surfing around on Tor one might encounter illegal material without actively looking for it.
One, that the victim remembers the night in question.It was one of the few nights that she passed out and didn't remember what occurred.
Is the CP even his? If it was being stored by a server customer, he should be covered by Safe Harbor provisions.
It's amazingly easy to "find" something if you put it there in the first place to frame someone.
How about employing the people who have more to lose, and possibly a gray beard? Surely some of them still can or want to learn to write malware for smart TVs filled with apps, apps, appity apps?
Let's make something up, to avoid a public outcry. Wouldn't want another Snowden on our hands, now, would we?
But instead of charging Mr. Schulte in the breach, referred to as the Vault 7 leak, prosecutors charged him last August with possessing child pornography, saying agents had found the material on a server he created as a business in 2009 while he was a student at the University of Texas.
And if you believe this, I got a bridge for sale. Bullshit. I don't believe this even for an instant. And this is yet another use-case for encryption. It protects you from having evidence planted, as well! This is very obviously a planting of evidence when they couldn't build a real case against the guy. Despicable.
So... a traitor AND a nonce?
These are the morals of Putin, of Chekists, of Russia's ruling elite -- and their dupes and sympathisers in the West. People who would rape children, would also be selfish, sick and depraved enough to betray their homeland and people.
Death is too good for these people.
I would not be surprised if a lot of "materials" were generated by secret services as well.
There is always that one crime in the state that is the favorite of the government to make up charges.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
... Manning, Snowden, Winner, and now this.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The CIA must be about the most evil organisation on the planet. There are really just quasi government thugs working primarily for very big business: arranging overthrows of governments to ensure good trade deals and that the petro dollar is maintained.
46137
He did things in the wrong order. You go to a non-extradition country, and THEN you leak what you need to leak. Assuming he leaked anything and isn't just a fall guy for piss-poor security at the CIA.
All for the wikileaks. I think that they have been accruing a lot of phone tap. The issue is - that no matter whose tap that is, or who has the prow-prow to be at the top of it, the damages will hit when the tap is found. Try a TV tap - maybe all phones tapped, and then think that it is time to hack that console. All for the security required to be a Seven-Eleven.
...I NEVER consider taking SBIR or ATP money. The posting says OSD or Air Force but the telephone area code and prefix say "NSA". Stay safe. If you want to release security products or do security work contract with a sympathetic German or English company and release your work over there. Steer clear of doing any work that puts you in a compromising position. Of course, don't steal classified information while you're at it, or be near anyone who does. Which puts us right back at "don't work for agencies like that."
What do the Feds have?
This kid at 20 while a CS student at UT of A sets up a web server in college and give unmonitored access. Some assholes post encrypted (how was that decrypted) porn on the server. That is what the feds are holding him on. They don't have shit. It wasn't his porn and they know it. Add another $10k to his student loans to teach him a lesson.
What happened?
CIA was hacked and spectacularly. Got it. I would think it would take a team to accomplish this. How could you get this stuff out the door. One kid walks out with even code snippets after Snowden !? That is really hard to believe. I would have thought the doors were shut. Instead I would have expected a North Korean team pierced the security. They can't brag, so they post.
CIA investigators need to show progress, they find a kid who left CIA employment (with animosity for poor management, [imagine that]). They raid his place search all his stuff and find nothing. He was locked up and release on bail with instructions not to touch a computer. Give me a break. How can a millennial who makes a living on a computer, live without one. Busted for touching a computer and back in jail. His family is broke trying to defend their son.
Nothings moving so they sell him to the media as their prime suspect.
The Feds have nothing, so they are going to ruin another human being to protect their jobs. We wait another 45 days for charges and I bet you there will be no charges. They don't have squat and this kid rots.
I don't know the the guy, I have no connection to federal cyberspace, but if the entire weight of the federal prosecution system can't find anything but someone else's kiddy porn after holding him for a year, then the entire case is chick shit and Joshua Schulte is going to be burned at the stake by public opinion. My American Citizenship feels stained.
If anyone puts up a legit website to defend this kid and linked to his parents, they can have my $50.
machinator omnis sine licentia
From The Washington Post: ..." ..."
"... child pornography on a server that was maintained by Schulte
"... from 50 to 100 people had access to that server
"... prosecutors waited six months to bring the child pornography charges."
This sounds like a fishing expedition. It will be interesting to see what responsibility Schulte had for a file-sharing server. There's massive pressure for Facebook and Google to censor 'sensitive' images and I suspect that Schulte will be held to the same duty of care, particularly when someone committed a crime. That raises a question: Will the FBI be seeking the uploader of that child pornography?
Literally right out of 1984.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Sure, your crackpot conspiracy theory is plausible. However, Occam's razor suggests that they found kiddie porn and are prosecuting for that. That requires no conspiracy theory, is consistent with the facts in evidence, and requires no leap of imagination, no conspiracy,, and no independent thought from any individual. It requires neither an assumption of guilt nor innocence of the kid with regard to the Vault 7 leaks, and requires no bureaucrat to take any risk of getting blamed for everything, and trust me, very, very few bureaucrats are loyal to anything other than keeping their paycheck.
Cant have another Snowden or Manning. Sprinkle child porn in.
They didn't even need to go with the already-so-tired goto of planting/claiming child porn!
Oh, but they did need it, we don't need another hero ... of the masses, sticking it to The Man.
We want to show that such nefarious things are done only by some sleazy sweaty, greasy weirdos, being rightfully thrown into a black hole of the system after that, not for what they've done, but for what they ARE, and what they are never ever changes as long as they live.
None will ever trust him that TLA's framed him ... just in case, you can never be sure.
Even if this does almost nothing to make spooks look better in the eyes of the public, it sure sends a strong what-if to future would-be leakers:
"Don't mess with them, you will not have a martyr moment, you'll end up loathed and forgotten, and your punishment will never end."
The gift that keeps on giving ... power to government.
Nothing at all suspicious about charges that never need to be proven because the public is forbidden from seeing the evidence. Nothing at all suspicious about a crime where, if evidence were needed, it could easily be faked.
Move along, nothing to see here. Unless you want to go to jail, that is?
Even if the CIA did frame him, legally it makes no difference. The charge is for possession. How one came into possession, or whether one is even aware of that possession, is irrelevant to the court.