The Spy News Thread

[Isgrimnur]

The Age (AU)

AN ALLEGED Canadian spy has compromised Australian intelligence information in an international espionage case that has sent shock waves through Western security agencies.

Jeffrey Paul Delisle, a naval officer, is alleged to have disclosed a vast trove of classified information to Russian agents on a scale comparable to the alleged handover to WikiLeaks of United States military and diplomatic reports by US Army private Bradley Manning.
...
Much of the information allegedly sold to the Russians was more highly classified than the disclosures attributed to private Manning, and included signals intelligence collected by the ''Five Eyes'' intelligence community of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Australian security sources have privately acknowledged that the security breach compromised intelligence information and capabilities across Western intelligence agencies, especially in the US and Canada but also including Australia's top secret Defence Signals Directorate and the Defence Intelligence Organisation.
...
Delisle worked at the Royal Canadian Navy's Trinity intelligence and communications centre at Halifax, Nova Scotia. He previously worked at defence intelligence headquarters in Ottawa. He was arrested after the Canadian Security Intelligence Service concluded he was passing classified information to Russian operatives.

Although Canada has for diplomatic reasons avoided publicly identifying Russia as the foreign power involved in the case, several Russian diplomats in Canada were recalled to Moscow before completing their postings.

Delisle is accused of communicating classified information to an unnamed foreign entity between July 2007 and January 2012. He faces possible life imprisonment.

His information access reportedly covered signals intelligence produced by the US National Security Agency, the UK's Government Communications Headquarters, Canada's Communications Security Establishment, Australia's Defence Signals and NZ's Communications Security Bureau.

An Australian security source told The Age that Delisle's access was ''apparently very wide'' and that ''Australian reporting was inevitably compromised''.

Sheesh. I'll be interested to see what information comes out about what his price was and the fallout.

[GreenGoo]

On the plus side, he got a very good price for it.

Actually this has been an ongoing news item up here for quite awhile. Fun.

[Isgrimnur]

Repurposing the thread:

The Vietnamese are after the Australians and there's a German NATO employee after the secrets in Ramstein

A HIGH-RANKING Australian embassy official had a secret affair with a Vietnamese spy colonel accused of receiving up to $20 million in suspected bribes from a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia.
Senior trade commissioner Elizabeth Masamune, who held a top-secret Australian security clearance, met Colonel Anh Ngoc Luong, a top official in Vietnam's state intelligence network, in the early 2000s when she was based in Hanoi.
At the time, Colonel Luong was working with RBA firm Securency to win a huge plastic banknote contract with Vietnam's central bank. Last year Colonel Luong was accused in court by Australian prosecutors and federal police of receiving up to $20 million in suspected bribes from Securency.
...
As Australia's most senior trade official in Vietnam, Ms Masamune would have regularly received classified Australian government briefings.

A senior diplomatic source said Colonel Luong is listed by Australian agencies as a colonel in Vietnam's spy agency, the Ministry of Public Security.
He is known to be part of the inner circle of Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung and a "bagman" for top Vietnamese officials.

Pics of the players at the link.

German police have arrested a civilian employee of Nato on suspicion of espionage at the US air base at Ramstein in the west of the country, federal prosecutors said Tuesday. The prosecutor's office in the south-western city of Karlsruhe said the 60-year-old German national identified only as Manfred K. was believed to have stolen "state secrets" for unidentified "third parties".

"He is believed to have illegally acquired, as a Nato civilian employee, classified data belonging to his employer at the US armed forces' air base at Ramstein and to have copied it onto his personal computer," it said in a statement. "It is suspected that this was done with the intention of passing the obtained data on to unauthorised third parties." A judge ordered the suspect remanded in pre-trial detention Monday and the state criminal investigations office in Rhineland-Palatinate will supervise the ongoing probe, it added.

[Isgrimnur]

Canadian Delisle pleads guilty:

Delisle, 41, pleaded guilty in a Halifax court Wednesday to breach of trust and two counts of passing information to a foreign entity between July 2007 and Jan. 13, 2011, in Ottawa and Kingston, Ont., and Halifax and Bedford, N.S., where he lived.

According to previously unpublished material from a bail hearing, Delisle walked into the embassy wearing a red ball cap and civilian clothes. He flashed his Canadian military identification and asked to meet with someone from GRU, the Russian military intelligence.
...
In 2009, when Delisle wanted to stop dealing with the Russians, they sent him a picture of his daughter walking to school in Halifax.
...
After Delisle entered his plea, it was determined that his sentencing hearing will be Jan. 10 and 11.
...
The Criminal Code charge can net a five-year prison sentence, and convictions under the Security of Information Act can lead to life in prison.

[Isgrimnur]

Don't British millionaires have better things to do?

British millionaire Christopher Tappin pleaded guilty in federal court in Texas on Thursday to charges of attempting to sell missile parts to Iran, prosecutors said.

Tappin, 66, from Orpington, Kent, who had previously pleaded not guilty, reversed that stance in federal court in El Paso as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors that calls for a sentence of 33 months in prison and a fine of more than $11,000, according to U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman.

Federal prosecutors say Tappin, a retired shipping magnate, and two other men sought to ship zinc/silver oxide batteries for Hawk Air Defense Missiles to Iran via the Netherlands.

One of the middlemen turned out to be an undercover U.S. customs agent.
...
Tappin was extradited to the U.S. earlier this year following a two-year legal battle. He is free on bond pending his sentencing, which is scheduled for January 9.

Prosecutors have said they will not object to Tappin's sentence being served in England so he can be close to his ill wife and other family members. He had faced up to 35 years in prison.

[Isgrimnur]

CSM

A former cryptologic technician in the US Navy was arrested Thursday on attempted espionage charges after he allegedly tried to provide individuals he believed to be Russian intelligence officers with secret information about how to track US submarines.

Robert Patrick Hoffman II was taken into custody by federal agents in Norfolk, Va., on charges that he tried to pass a secret document to a foreign government not authorized to receive it.

According to the federal indictment, the secret document revealed “methods to track US submarines, including the technology and procedures required [to do so].”

Mr. Hoffman had served 20 years in the Navy and retired in November 2011 as a petty officer, first class. He had access to the highest levels of classified military secrets.

[tgb]

A former cryptologic technician in the US Navy was arrested Thursday on attempted espionage charges after he allegedly tried to provide individuals he believed to be Russian intelligence officers with secret information about how to track US submarines.

Tell me please where can we find nuclear wessels.

[Isgrimnur]

Whatever Manning's final sentence, he's going to get 112 days knocked off the top:

A military judge overseeing pretrial hearings in the Bradley Manning case refused to dismiss the charges against the former Army intelligence analyst Tuesday, according to reports, but ordered that the accused WikiLeaker will be granted a 112-day sentencing credit for mistreatment he received by Marine guards while imprisoned in 2009 and 2010.
...
Manning has indicated an interest in pleading guilty to some of the charges against him. Last November the military judge accepted the terms under which Manning proposed to plead guilty to seven of the 22 charges he’s facing.

The seven offenses together carry a total maximum prison term of 16 years in prison. Manning didn’t formally submit a plea; he was simply seeking approval from the court that the terms under which he contemplated entering a plea were acceptable. Coombs explained the move by saying that his client was willing to accept responsibility for some of the lesser included offenses against him, but not the charges as they stand in whole.

[Isgrimnur]

Manning update:

The U.S. Army private accused of providing diplomatic cables and other secret documents to the WikiLeaks website pleaded guilty to misusing classified material on Thursday, but denied the most serious charge in the case, aiding the enemy.

Private First Class Bradley Manning, 25, entered the pleas prior to his court martial, which is set to begin on June 3, in a case that centers on the biggest leak of government secrets in U.S. history.

He was expected to testify later on Thursday.
...
He is prepared to take the witness stand to read aloud from a 35-page statement defending himself in the espionage case, but only after Lind rules on how much of it he will be allowed to read.

[Isgrimnur]

Apparently the Turks were so pissed with Israel that they decided to reveal a Mossad spy ring to the Iranians.

The Turkish-Israeli relationship became so poisonous early last year that the Turkish government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is said to have disclosed to Iranian intelligence the identities of up to 10 Iranians who had been meeting inside Turkey with their Mossad case officers.

Knowledgeable sources describe the Turkish action as a "significant" loss of intelligence and "an effort to slap the Israelis." The incident, disclosed here for the first time, illustrates the bitter, multidimensional spy wars that lie behind the current negotiations between Iran and Western nations over a deal to limit the Iranian nuclear program. A Turkish embassy spokesman had no comment.

[Isgrimnur]

Is it really spying if it's just business as usual?

Secret U.S. missile and electro-optics technology was transferred to China recently by Israel, prompting anger from the U.S. and causing a senior Israeli defense official to resign.

The head of defense exports for the Israeli Defense Ministry resigned after a U.S. investigation concluded that technology, including a miniature refrigeration system manufactured by Ricor and used for missiles and in electro-optic equipment, was sent to China, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

Another Israeli news site, Aretz Sheva, reports the U.S. is concerned the technology could ultimately find its way to Iran, which last year sought to buy military equipment from China for its nuclear program.
...
The Maariv report identified the Israeli defense official as Meir Shalit, and said he apologized to U.S. officials on a recent visit.

Israel has a long record of getting U.S. military technology to China.

In the early 1990s then-CIA Director James Woolsey told a Senate Government Affairs Committee that Israel had been selling U.S. secrets to China for about a decade. More than 12 years ago the U.S. demanded Israel cancel a contract to supply China with Python III missiles, which included technology developed by the U.S. for its Sidewinder missiles, The Associated Press reported in 2002.

[rshetts2]

Is it really spying if it's just business as usual?

Secret U.S. missile and electro-optics technology was transferred to China recently by Israel, prompting anger from the U.S. and causing a senior Israeli defense official to resign.

The head of defense exports for the Israeli Defense Ministry resigned after a U.S. investigation concluded that technology, including a miniature refrigeration system manufactured by Ricor and used for missiles and in electro-optic equipment, was sent to China, according to the Israeli newspaper Maariv.

Another Israeli news site, Aretz Sheva, reports the U.S. is concerned the technology could ultimately find its way to Iran, which last year sought to buy military equipment from China for its nuclear program.
...
The Maariv report identified the Israeli defense official as Meir Shalit, and said he apologized to U.S. officials on a recent visit.

Israel has a long record of getting U.S. military technology to China.

In the early 1990s then-CIA Director James Woolsey told a Senate Government Affairs Committee that Israel had been selling U.S. secrets to China for about a decade. More than 12 years ago the U.S. demanded Israel cancel a contract to supply China with Python III missiles, which included technology developed by the U.S. for its Sidewinder missiles, The Associated Press reported in 2002.

I have no idea why Israel gets our continued support, they lie to us, use us, sell our secrets to our enemies and cause serious strife in the middle east. Their moral code is anything goes as long as its good for Israel and if the US gets screwed in the process, its oops, were sorry. Its like being married to a whore.

[Drazzil]

I have no idea why Israel gets our continued support, they lie to us, use us, sell our secrets to our enemies and cause serious strife in the middle east. Their moral code is anything goes as long as its good for Israel and if the US gets screwed in the process, its oops, were sorry. Its like being married to a whore.

This. Hopefully the US transferred technology that was a couple of generations less then what we have now, or at least that we have countermeasures for.

[hepcat]

Name one country that DOESN'T do that to their allies.

[Daehawk]

I started reading this thread and 2 lines in Im thinking "Oh no not again" and then I think to check the date...sigh.

[Isgrimnur]

Iran gets all social networky and deep cover.

A three-year espionage campaign, believed to have originated in Iran, has used an elaborate scheme involving a fabricated news agency, fake social media accounts and bogus journalist identities to trick victims in the United States, Israel and elsewhere, according to iSight Partners, the company that uncovered the campaign.

Using fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Google+, the attackers have built an elaborate universe of fake personas bolstered by secondary accounts all for the purpose of garnering the trust of their targets, according to a report issued by the company.
...
The spies also created a fake news organization, NewsOnAir.org, owned and operated by a fake media mogul named Joseph Nillson, whom they illustrated using a photo of Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. The news site is populated with articles ripped off from CNN and the BBC appearing beneath the names of NewsOnAir “reporters.” Once those stories are published, Twitter and other social media accounts associated with the fake identities link to them, making the operation appear legitimate.
...
Although the enterprise could be a false-flag operation designed to implicate Iran, Jones and Hulquist say several clues point to Iran being responsible. The NewsOnAir domain is registered in Tehran and a malicious IRC bot the attackers use employed certain Persian words, such as parastoo. The stories posted to NewsOnAir tend to focus on Iranian issues. And a timeline of the group’s activity–such as when the attackers posted news stories to their portal or some of the false identities updated their social networks–suggests the attackers follow the typical work week and hours in Iran.

Whoever the attackers are, they show an intense interest in issues pertaining to Iran and to high-ranking people involved in nuclear nonproliferation issues and those associated with embargos and sanctions against Iran. They’re also interested in lobbying organizations focused on U.S.-Israeli alliances.
...
The attackers study the social connections of their targets and cast a wide net, reaching out to former colleagues, school chums and family members to establish connections, which they patiently leverage to get ever closer to their targets. The targets are then lured into visiting malicious sites–masquerading as a legitimate email account or company portal–where the attackers grab the credentials needed to access email accounts or gain a foothold within a network.

Although iSight can’t say how often or to what extent the attackers have succeeded at infiltrating networks, the fact the campaign has continued for three years and the attackers have invested so much time and effort in the operation indicates they’ve gleaned some useful information.

[Isgrimnur]

CIA

On September 16, 2015, the Agency released roughly 2,500 previously classified President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs) from the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations at a public symposium at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, TX, entitled The President’s Daily Brief: Delivering Intelligence to the First Customer. This 40-page color booklet describes the documents and the PDB process during this period.

The PDB contains intelligence analysis on key national security issues for the President and other senior policymakers. Only the President, the Vice President, and a select group of officials designated by the President receive the briefing, which represents the Intelligence Community’s best insights on issues the President must confront when dealing with threats as well as opportunities related to our national security.

For several years, CIA information management officers have worked with their counterparts at the National Security Council and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the review and declassification of these documents. Roughly 80 percent of the collection has been declassified and is being made available to the public.

[Rip]

CIA

On September 16, 2015, the Agency released roughly 2,500 previously classified President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs) from the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations at a public symposium at the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, TX, entitled The President’s Daily Brief: Delivering Intelligence to the First Customer. This 40-page color booklet describes the documents and the PDB process during this period.

The PDB contains intelligence analysis on key national security issues for the President and other senior policymakers. Only the President, the Vice President, and a select group of officials designated by the President receive the briefing, which represents the Intelligence Community’s best insights on issues the President must confront when dealing with threats as well as opportunities related to our national security.

For several years, CIA information management officers have worked with their counterparts at the National Security Council and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on the review and declassification of these documents. Roughly 80 percent of the collection has been declassified and is being made available to the public.

Three days after John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, U.S. intelligence officials told President Lyndon B. Johnson that they had confirmed that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had recently traveled to Mexico City to visit both the Cuban and Soviet embassies, according to a half-century old briefing memo declassified on Wednesday.

Oswald’s travel plans were revealed in an unprecedented declassification and release by the CIA of thousands of presidential daily briefings from the 1960s. Though the memos are decades old, about a fifth of their content was still redacted to protect sources and methods.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... iets-befo/

[Isgrimnur]

Defense Tech

A Chinese man has pleaded guilty in a “years-long” conspiracy to hack into U.S. networks to steal sensitive information, including data on the C-17 cargo plane and fighter jet aircraft, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Su Bin, also known as Stephen Su and Stephen Subin, 50, a citizen and resident of the People’s Republic of China, pleaded guilty to the crime in the United States District Court for the Central District of California, according to a press release from the department.

A China-based businessman who worked in the aviation and aerospace fields, Su is accused of playing a role “in the criminal conspiracy to steal military technical data, including data relating to the C-17 strategic transport aircraft and certain fighter jets produced for the U.S. military,” it states.

The release didn’t specify which type of fighter aircraft, though American officials have long pointed to similarities in China’s latest designs as evidence of its successful theft of technical data from the U.S.
...
As part of the plea deal, Su admitted to working with two people from China from October 2008 to March 2014 to gain unauthorized access to computers belonging to Boeing Co. in Orange County, California, to steal sensitive military information and illegally export it to China, according to the the Justice Department release.

Here’s how they did it, according to the document:

“As part of the conspiracy, Su would e-mail the co-conspirators with guidance regarding what persons, companies and technologies to target during their computer intrusions. One of Su’s co-conspirators would then gain access to information residing on computers of U.S. companies and email Su directory file listings and folders showing the data that the co-conspirator had been able to access. Su then directed his co-conspirator as to which files and folders his co-conspirator should steal. Once the co-conspirator stole the data, including by using techniques to avoid detection when hacking the victim computers, Su translated the contents of certain stolen data from English into Chinese. In addition, Su and his co-conspirators each wrote, revised and emailed reports about the information and technology they had acquired by their hacking activities, including its value, to the final beneficiaries of their hacking activities.”

Su was arrested in Canada in July 2014 and consented to be taken to the U.S. in February, the release states. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 or twice the amount he gained from the offense, whichever is greatest, it states. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 13, it states.

[Isgrimnur]

Navy

A Navy officer assigned to a patrol and reconnaissance group has been charged in military court with two counts of espionage, punishable by the death penalty under certain conditions.

The lieutenant commander is being held at the brig in Chesapeake and appeared at the military equivalent of a preliminary hearing at Norfolk Naval Station on Friday, according to the Navy. The officer’s identity has not been released and charge sheets detailing his alleged crimes were heavily redacted.

The charge sheets say the officer communicated secret information “relating to the national defense to representatives of a foreign government.” The documents do not specify what information was provided, when it was provided or which nation it was provided to.

The officer belongs to a unit that provides airborne anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface warfare, and maritime intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations from planes such as the P-8A Poseidon, P-3C Orion and unmanned MQ-4C Triton. The command is headquartered at Hampton Roads Naval Support Activity in Norfolk, although it’s not clear if he was stationed there.
...
The officer also is charged with three counts of attempted espionage, three counts of making false official statements, five counts of communicating defense information, prostitution-patronizing, adultery, and multiple violations of a lawful general order and failure to obey a lawful order.
...
The charge sheets say the officer wrongfully transported classified material, failed to properly store classified material and failed to report the compromise of information classified as secret. The officer also failed to report foreign contacts, according to the charge sheets.

The charges accuse the officer of failing to sign a record that included foreign travel and providing a false address for when he was on leave, “rather than the actual foreign destination.”

The information the officer provided was such that he had reason to believe it “could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation.”

[Isgrimnur]

Foxtrot Alpha

Last week the Department of Justice announced the conviction of Wenxia Man by a federal jury. The crime? Conspiring to export military jet engines and drones to China. Not plans. Not components. Entire jet engines and drones.

Wenxia Man, also known as Wency Man, was found guilty of “conspiring to export and cause the export of fighter jet engines, an unmanned aerial vehicle – commonly known as a drone – and related technical data to the People’s Republic of China, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act,” according to the release from the Department of Justice.
...
The defense equipment mentioned in the report included:

• Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engines used in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
• Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 turbofan engines used in the F-22 Raptor fighter jet
• General Electric F110-GE-132 engines designed for the F-16 fighter jet
• the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper/Predator B Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The conspiracy also included the technical data relating to the equipment involved.

[Max Peck]

Foxtrot Alpha

Last week the Department of Justice announced the conviction of Wenxia Man by a federal jury. The crime? Conspiring to export military jet engines and drones to China. Not plans. Not components. Entire jet engines and drones.

Wenxia Man, also known as Wency Man, was found guilty of “conspiring to export and cause the export of fighter jet engines, an unmanned aerial vehicle – commonly known as a drone – and related technical data to the People’s Republic of China, in violation of the Arms Export Control Act,” according to the release from the Department of Justice.
...
The defense equipment mentioned in the report included:

• Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engines used in the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter
• Pratt & Whitney F119-PW-100 turbofan engines used in the F-22 Raptor fighter jet
• General Electric F110-GE-132 engines designed for the F-16 fighter jet
• the General Atomics MQ-9 Reaper/Predator B Unmanned Aerial Vehicle

The conspiracy also included the technical data relating to the equipment involved.

What an amateur -- she just needed to be a bit more patient. Everyone knows that if Trump loses the election, Clinton will be outsourcing all the manufacturing jobs to China anyway.

[Isgrimnur]

FBI

An FBI employee has been arrested in New York for allegedly lying about secret work for Chinese businessmen and government officials, according to charging documents filed in the case unsealed today.

Kun Shan Chun -- or "Joey" Chun -- pleaded guilty in federal court today to one count of illegally acting as an agent of a foreign government. He had been working for the FBI's New York Field office as an electronics technician since 1997, but he was quietly arrested in March after his own office sent an undercover agent to meet with him and record their conversations, according to the charging documents.

Since at least 2006, according to the FBI, Chun and some of his family members maintained close ties with at least one person he "understood to be affiliated with the Chinese government" and multiple businessmen tied to Kolion, a manufacturer of printer products in China. These associates demanded Chun advise them on technology matters and conduct research for them -- in exchange for regular payments and, sometimes, even prostitutes, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in New York City.
...
In March, Chun was charged under seal with several federal offenses, most accusing him of lying to federal authorities and failing to disclose his relationships with certain Chinese nationals during a 2012 background investigation for a top security clearance.

In October 2015, he acknowledged in a recorded conversation with the undercover agent that he had broken the law, saying, "I lied, I reported certain people [but] not everybody."

Illegally acting as an agent of a foreign government, which Chun pleaded guilty to today, carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Chun was born in China in 1969, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1985, according to court documents.

[Isgrimnur]

NSA

The F.B.I. secretly arrested a National Security Agency contractor in recent weeks and is investigating whether he stole and disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack into the networks of foreign governments, according to several senior law enforcement and intelligence officials.
...
The contractor was identified as Harold T. Martin 3rd, 51, of Glen Burnie, Md., according to a criminal complaint filed in late August. He was charged with theft of government property, and unauthorized removal or retention of classified documents. During an F.B.I. raid of his house, agents seized documents and digital information stored on electronic devices. A large percentage of the materials found in his house and car contained highly classified information.

At the time, F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Martin, and he initially denied having taken the documents and digital files. The agency later said he had stated that he knew he was not authorized to have the materials. According to the complaint, he told the agency that “he knew what he had done was wrong and that he should not have done it because he knew it was unauthorized.”
...
The information believed stolen by Mr. Martin — who like Mr. Snowden worked for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, which is responsible for building and operating many of the agency’s most sensitive cyberoperations — appears to be different in nature from Mr. Snowden’s theft.

Mr. Martin is suspected of taking the highly classified “source code” developed by the agency to break into computer systems of adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Two officials said that some of the information the contractor is suspected of taking was dated.

Officials said Mr. Martin did not fit any of the usual profiles of an “insider threat,” and it is unclear whether he had political motives, as Mr. Snowden did when he exposed programs that he said violated the privacy of American citizens.
...
The official said that at the moment it did not look like an espionage case, but added the caveat that it is a continuing investigation. At the same time, the official said that investigators think Mr. Martin is not politically motivated — “not like a Snowden or someone who believes that what we were doing was illegal and wanted to publicize that.”

Motivation is one of many unanswered questions about the case. It is not clear when and how the authorities first learned the contractor’s identity, when they believe he began taking information, or whether he passed it to people outside the government. It is also not known whether he is believed to be responsible for a leak of classified N.S.A. code attributed to a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, or whether he had any role in a series of leaks of N.S.A. intercepts involving Japan, Germany and other countries that WikiLeaks has published since last year.

[Max Peck]

Government alleges former NSA contractor stole ‘astonishing quantity’ of classified material over 20 years

Federal prosecutors in Baltimore on Thursday said they will charge a former National Security Agency contractor with violating the Espionage Act, alleging that he made off with “an astonishing quantity” of classified digital and other data over 20 years in what is thought to be the largest theft of classified government material ever.

In a 12-page memo, U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein and two other prosecutors laid out a much more far-reaching case against Harold T. Martin III than was previously outlined. They say he took at least 50 terabytes of data and “six full banker’s boxes worth of documents,” with many lying open in his home office or kept on his car’s back seat and in the trunk. Other material was stored in a shed on his property.

One terabyte is the equivalent of 500 hours worth of movies.

Martin, who will appear at a detention hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Friday, also took personal information about government employees as well dozens of computers, thumb drives and other digital storage devices, the government memo said.

[Isgrimnur]

That's one weird type of hoarder.

[Max Peck]

Or one hell of a retirement plan. I wonder if the alleged Russian hackers who leaked the tools are now kicking themselves for putting the Feds on this guy's trail before they could tag him themselves (assuming that he didn't actually pass copies of any of his treasure hoard already).

[Max Peck]

That's one weird type of hoarder.

Good call. He's going with the hoarder defense.

A federal judge found Friday that a former National Security Agency contractor accused of carrying out what is thought to be the largest theft of classified secrets in U.S. history posed a flight risk and ordered that he continue to be held in jail.

U.S. Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite ruled that Harold T. Martin III should not be released pending trial, despite the impassioned arguments of his defense attorney that the computer technology expert is a patriot who intended no harm to his country and suffered from a “compulsive disorder” that led him to steal classified material over a 20-year period.

Defense attorney James Wyda conceded that Martin took the material, but he stressed that “there’s no evidence that Hal shared this information with anyone” or that he intended to pass it to a foreign government.

“There is nothing to indicate that Hal Martin is a traitor,” Wyda told the judge, as Martin, a heavy-set man wearing gray-striped jail garb, sat quietly at the defense table. “What we see is an individual who is a collector.”

[Rip]

Good luck to them on proving the new Clinton metric of bad intent.

[Max Peck]

Good luck to them on proving the new Clinton metric of bad intent.

Oh, man, you should really do stand-up.

[Rip]

Good luck to them on proving the new Clinton metric of bad intent.

Oh, man, you should really do stand-up.

At worst he is guilty of Sandy Berger messiness.

I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.

[Max Peck]

Good luck to them on proving the new Clinton metric of bad intent.

Oh, man, you should really do stand-up.

At worst he is guilty of Sandy Berger messiness.

I’ll be here all week. Try the veal.

Ah, I see you're scoring on a logarithmic curve rather than a normal distribution. But what's a few dozen of orders of magnitude between friends, eh?

[Isgrimnur]

Manning released

Chelsea Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst behind one of the largest leaks of classified information in history, was freed Wednesday morning and is looking forward to living openly as a woman for the first time in her life without government restrictions, her attorney says.
...
As a prisoner at the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, she had to conform to male grooming standards before her 3 a.m. ET release.
...
After her release, Manning said in a statement, "After another anxious four months of waiting, the day has finally arrived. I am looking forward to so much! Whatever is ahead of me is far more important than the past. I'm figuring things out right now -- which is exciting, awkward, fun, and all new for me."

She also tweeted a photo of her feet, clad in black, low-top Converse Chuck Taylors, with the caption, "First steps of freedom!!"

The Army says Manning will remain on unpaid, active-duty status as she continues to appeal her court-martial. This means she will maintain her access to military medical benefits, including for gender dysphoria and gender reassignment, but Strangio said his client has no interest because of the treatment she endured in prison.

[Isgrimnur]

That's one weird type of hoarder.

Good call. He's going with the hoarder defense.

A federal judge found Friday that a former National Security Agency contractor accused of carrying out what is thought to be the largest theft of classified secrets in U.S. history posed a flight risk and ordered that he continue to be held in jail.

U.S. Magistrate Judge A. David Copperthite ruled that Harold T. Martin III should not be released pending trial, despite the impassioned arguments of his defense attorney that the computer technology expert is a patriot who intended no harm to his country and suffered from a “compulsive disorder” that led him to steal classified material over a 20-year period.

Indicted in February:

Harold Thomas Martin III, 52, faces 20 counts of willful retention of national defense information.
...
The government said Martin had a document "regarding specific operational plans against a known enemy of the United States and its allies." That document was not only classified but marked need-to-know only, and Martin should not have been privy to that information, prosecutors said in court filings.

Also found were files containing personal information of government employees, and an email chain with "highly sensitive information" on the back of which were handwritten notes "describing the NSA's classified computer infrastructure and detailed descriptions of classified technical operations."

Among the documents the FBI believes Martin stole were some detailing a hacking tool that the NSA developed to break into computer systems in other countries, law enforcement sources said when he was arrested. Documents detailing the tools were posted on the Internet in recent months, though no connection to Martin has been offered.

[Isgrimnur]

Texas

Prosecutors say a North Texas man has pleaded guilty to federal charges that he smuggled circuits abroad for use by space programs in China and Russia.

Sixty-two-year-old Peter Zuccarelli of Plano, north of Dallas, pleaded guilty Thursday to charges that include conspiring to smuggle and illegally export from the U.S.

Prosecutors say that starting in 2015, Zuccarelli used his company to place orders with U.S. suppliers for the circuits, known as radiation-hardened integrated circuits. He repackaged them as "touch screen parts" and shipped them out of the U.S.

The circuits have space and military applications so their export is strictly controlled by federal law.

[Isgrimnur]

Telegraph

Sozens of American spies were killed in Iran and China after a flawed communications service that allowed foreign foes to see what the agents were up to using Google, official sources have claimed.

Between 2009 and 2013 the US Central Intelligence Agency suffered a “catastrophic” secret communications failure in a website used by officers and their field agents around the world to speak to each other, according to a report in Yahoo News, which heard from 11 former intelligence and government officials about the previously unreported disaster.
...
The internet-based communications platform was first used in the Middle East to communicate with soldiers in war zones and had not been intended for widespread use but due to its ease of use and efficacy, it was adopted by agents despite its lack of sophistication, the sources claimed.

Cracks only began to show when Iran, angered that the government under Barack Obama had discovered a secret Iranian nuclear weapon factory, went out with a fine tooth comb to find moles.

It discovered the existence of one of the websites used by US agents using Google. US officials believe that Iranian spies were able to use Google as a search tool to find secret CIA websites, unbeknown to those using them.

By 2011, Iran had infiltrated the CIA spy network and in May it announced that they had broken up a 30-strong ring of American spies.
...
This was corroborated by a report on ABC news at the time, which referred to a compromised communications system after a tip off from the CIA.

Meanwhile in China 30 agents working for the US were executed by the government after compromising the spy network using a similar means. Beijing had managed to break into a second temporary communications system, splintered from the initial platform and were able to see every single agent the CIA had placed in the country, the sources told Yahoo.
...
The government had already been warned about the hackability of the system by a defence contractor named John Reidy, whose job it was to hire human sources for the CIA in Iran. He alerted authorities in 2008. His official statement claimed that 70 percent of operations at the time may have been compromised already and that any agents using versions of the system were in danger. “The design and maintenance of the system is flawed,” he said.

Mr Reidy was later fired for “conflicts of interests”. According to Yahoo’s report, there is anger among the intelligence community that there has been no accountability for the failure, despite being discussed in a secret hearing at the House and Senate Intelligence committee. One former official claiming that “our biggest insider threat is our own institution”.

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

“On December 28, staff members of the Russian Federal Security Service detained U.S. citizen Paul Whelan in Moscow while on a spy mission,” the FSB said in a statement on its website. No other details were given.

By Russian law, foreigners found guilty of spying on Russia face between 10 and 20 years in prison.

The arrest of the U.S. citizen comes as tensions between Washington and Moscow continue to escalate over a range of issues from election meddling to the crises in Syria and Ukraine.
...
Russia’s Foreign Ministry notified the U.S. Embassy in Moscow of Whelan’s arrest in compliance with procedure, Interfax news agency cited officials there as saying. The ministry said his full name was Paul Nicholas Whelan, state-run media reported.

Earlier this month, Russian gun rights activist Maria Butina pleaded guilty to conspiring with a senior Russian official to infiltrate U.S. conservatives. Butina, 30, is the first Russian national to be convicted of seeking to influence U.S. policy in the run-up to the 2016 election by acting as a foreign agent.

Shortly before Butina pleaded guilty, Putin said she was not known to any of his spy agencies. The country’s Foreign Ministry has gone to great lengths to paint Butina as a political prisoner, notably by launching a wide-ranging social media campaign.

[Jaymann]

Just how tough could it be to infiltrate US conservatives? Just pull up to the rifle range in a pickup truck with a "Fuck Obama" bumper sticker.

[$iljanus]

Just how tough could it be to infiltrate US conservatives? Just pull up to the rifle range in a pickup truck with a "Fuck Obama" bumper sticker.

A red MAGA hat would do in a pinch.

[Isgrimnur]

WaPo

A former Air Force intelligence specialist who defected to Iran has been charged with conspiring to provide U.S. defense information to representatives of that country’s government, including the code name and mission of a highly classified program, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Monica Elfriede Witt, 39, a former counterintelligence officer, is accused of revealing the Defense Department program, the details of which are unclear, as well as helping Iranian intelligence services direct hacking and identity theft attempts at her military co-workers. She defected to Iran in 2013 and is believed to be abroad.

The Justice Department also charged four Iranian nationals with attempting to commit computer intrusion and aggravated identity theft in the case.