Mr. Schulte had been charged last year in New York with possession of child pornography
Very interesting! It almost seems like the pornography charges against him was a way to punish him but without prosecuting him for the actual leakage. Perhaps the government wanted to still point the fingers at someone else or avoid embarrassment?
States, even relatively benevolent ones, take any steps necessary to secure national secrets, even extra legal ones.
Take the likelihood that a leaky contractor coincidently is a pedophile. One who works in security yet encrypts stuff with the same cellphone password everywhere.
Balance that with the possibility that a motivated state actor could plant such files on a pc or alter logs on a server they are monitoring.
Coincidentally also, it is very much sufficient for a jury to convict yet the accusation is ambiguous/obvious enough to deter other would be leakers.
I have no idea whether this is a good way to do things but it's a pretty widespread set of coincidences that would also happen to have a particular effect.
Completely agree. The narrative being presented is simply not logical to believe. Based on the narrative, this guy works for the cia, highly likely he knows cp is illegal, obtains cp, knows how to use encryption but then uses a weak password.
Not using a weak password is like security 101 first 5 minutes of the first class type of knowledge.
The question we need to answer is: Was the incriminating data planted or not. Having a password manager on his phone is tangental to answer that question. After the computer and phone left his custody, either device could have had data modified. Unless he's got his data pinned into the Bitcoin blockchain, it's a pretty hard to show that it was planted. If it wasn't planted then it's really just about how the key was revealed.
P.S. The description does seem to describe a password manager:
"Specifically, the Cellphone Examination identified various passwords that had been input by the user of the Cellphone to, for example, access the phone, applications on the phone, and/or certain websites."
I think the level of security provided by passwords or password managers is probably of little import, when confronted by a nation-state actor, and indeed a top tier nation-state actor, with nigh unlimited resources, and an axe to grind over a serious grudge.
We have wi-fi routers being used to passively see through walls, with enough fidelity to read lips and record finger movement.
Put someone under a microscope long enough, and every single password they use will reveal itself. Whether locked behind a manager app (sooner or later you'll snag the master password for it) or directly entered.
> We have wi-fi routers being used to passively see through walls, with enough fidelity to read lips and record finger movement.
That’s terrifying. I had no idea that was possible despite it being published years ago and trying to keep track of technology like that: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7384744/
This is a big blank spot in the complaint, which tells me they broke or got around the encryption somehow. If it was in cleartext they would have said so because it would have added to their case.
I also wonder: if I was going to work for the CIA, wouldn't they triple check everything about what I do before hiring me? Whether the child porn evidence was real or planted, the agency doesn't seem to gain much credibility here.
1. Schulte agreed as a condition of his pretrial house arrest not to own, possess, or use a computer or any other form of internet access. Surveillance showed internet connections from his house, accessing his personal email as well as the TOR network.
His attorneys argue that these connections were Schulte’s cousin (who lives with him) checking his email (and TOR?) on his behalf, which after all the Court never said he couldn’t do.
2. At his bail hearing, the prosecutor mentioned a photograph (apparently recovered from Schulte’s phone) showing an unconscious person (apparently Schulte’s roommate) being sexually assaulted (apparently in their shared bathroom). The identity of the assailant having not being established, this wasn’t taken into consideration at pretrial. But...
Since that hearing, the cops in Virginia followed up and have a reasonable suspicion that the person seen in a photograph on Schulte’s phone, sexually assaulting Schulte’s unconscious roommate, in Schulte’s house, might indeed be Schulte himself. So it sounds like he’s facing sexual assault charges in Virginia, as soon as his federal child-porn-cum-treason prosecution gets sorted out.
So... well, even if these additional allegations don’t change your perspective on his character, they proooooobably cut against any presumption of doubt based on dude’s mastery of opsec.
This seems to happen remarkably often in cases like these. Remember the Assange rape allegations which turned out to be a setup? It's the next step up from "found drugs in their car".
>Remember the Assange rape allegations which turned out to be a setup?
Sorry, when did they "turn out to be a setup?"
This matter of fact phrasing implies evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt exists which should be commonly known, so if you could cite that, it would be appreciated.
Because they timed out, I thought. Something about him not being formally chargeable until he was in the country, and cases needing to be dropped if there was no formal charge after a certain period.
“Arrested on suspicion” (and “skipping bail”) being separate to that.
Claims in an Internet forum aren't evidence. Also, rape victims back out of accusations all the time because of the trauma involved. Is there evidence?
Yeah, lots in this case. The reason so many say the Assange charges are a setup is that the case was dropped initially by the prosecutor after it became clear the women were lying, their stories simply didn't stack up so there was no chance of a conviction. Assange hung around in Sweden after the charges were filed and requested permission to leave after the charges were dropped, the Swedish police said they were done with him. Then after he left a different prosecutor mysteriously reopened the case and demanded he return for questioning again, though nothing had changed in the case, no charges were filed and the chance of a successful prosecution was still zero.
Probably because you're asking people to Google stuff for you? It's all public.
There are two women. One posted on Twitter the next day boasting about the awesome night she'd had with Assange. She later deleted the post but others had recorded it already. The other woman sent lots of text messages saying she wasn't raped and only reported Assange because she wanted him to take an std test, that the police had blown it up and seemed to want to get him.
Moreover the women only filed these charges after they met each other and realised they'd both slept with him.
Look, I don't know why you're being so skeptical about this. False reports of rape are extremely common. Most credible studies I've seen peg it at 50% or higher. You should never take such an accusation at face value before a case has been won and in this case we don't even need a trial - the women both created documentary evidence they were lying and one even attempted to destroy it.
> Probably because you're asking people to Google stuff for you? It's all public.
The burden of proof is on the commenter posting the claims.
The article linked in the parent merely is a description of Assange's own statement, his side of the story, which certainly has no more credibility than the alleged victim and the legal authority. For example, regarding Assange's claims about text messages, the article makes a point of saying, "The ABC has not seen the text messages."
> the women both created documentary evidence they were lying and one even attempted to destroy it.
Again, any credible evidence? Surely this story would be in the NY Times and other major publications.
> False reports of rape are extremely common. Most credible studies I've seen peg it at 50% or higher.
I don't agree and I've never heard of such a study. We also are not talking about 'reports' by alleged victims, but an indictment by legal authorities after they examined the evidence. Again, perhaps the parent can provide some the evidence they say they've seen supporting this extraordinary claim about rape accusations, because false claims on the Internet are certainly even more common.
"The burden of proof is on the commenter posting the claims."
The burden of the person who wants to learn rather than argue is to do research for themselves. I don't care whether you believe me or not - I mean, why would I?
I'm not talking about hypothetical rape allegations. I'm talking about the Assange rape allegations. Educate yourself about the subject before just talking about it otherwise what's the point?
Counterintelligence investigations and prosecutions probably take a long time, and the stakes are high enough that prosecutors want to make their case airtight. Charging him with the other crimes he’s believed guilty of is probably a good way of laying the groundwork for the later case, with the added bonus of greater leverage and hurting their financial (and therefore, legal) positions.
I bet they could have planet d the CP to gain access to his hardware, without which they would have had no legally obtained evidence of his crime. Apparently he was running some sort of server, but I haven't read past that.
eh, you should still be skeptical. This is a CIA contractor/employee we're talking about here. Child pornography is an interesting situation because no one outside of the justice department and a few key people can even legally examine the evidence.
It shouldn't be beyond the realm of believeability to this bad actors created these charges in retaliation.
If you really think the guy who leaked highly classified CIA documents that reveals their means of mass surveillance happened to also be a pedophile then you are one naive person. Do yourself a favor and never watch 24-hour news programs.
Despite being certain of 2, I am also certain that they don’t need to plant evidence to make someone’s life hell.
Their omniscient surveillance, combined with how many overlapping laws eveyone seems to have, means all they need to do is enumerate the crimes of someone they don’t like and run with it. So, for example, this particular enemy of theirs likes illegal porn? Next one will have something else.
This isn’t to say the CIA definitely didn’t plant anything, just that I think doing so is not the only option they will consider sufficient for their desired result.
Moral outrage based attacks have happened before; I’m told the FBI’s poison-pen-letter to MLK was being truthful when it claimed that he was adulterous, for example. While the idea that adultary could have such an impact is alien to me, the fact that it was attempted means the FBI thought otherwise at the time.
As for option 1? There’s a reason why we cant find them before they break the law. Whatever that reason is, it has to be compatible with someone like that being willing to do something like this.
What I know is irrelevant. What matters is the general understanding and comprehension of the masses. If you accept Twitter and Facebook as an acceptable representation of the public at large then it's clear there are __a lot__ of naive / misled people.
Long to short, the majority would rather believe in the integrity of the intelligence community than the IC's willingness to take any road necessary (not just the high moral road).
I can think of multiple reports of cp payloads being directed at enemies of the CI@. ...going back to 2013 they have been known to plant the cp on their enemies inside USA> interesting thing is that it's the same year the domestic spy operation was made legal by the defense authorization act 2013.
While I won't justify anything this person allegedly did.. it seems open to speculation whether the child pornography stuff was actually legitimate, or some sort of targeted attack. (whether to destroy his character/career or keep him under judicial watch / within the country)
I suspect that once they stick you with possession of child porn __everything__ you do or have done is subject to legal review. That is, there are no bounds to where and when the law can look; no bounds and no on going need for warrants, etc.
Your rights go out the door, and your digital life probed endlessly.
You don't think the CIA would be able to fake the lingo, tone, and character of the scene? I mean, they certainly have access to a ton of real IRC logs about the subject, would probably be pretty easy to swap out some usernames.
There is nothing about the use of a VM that is "hard to explain away." You know what a VM is, right? You know anyone could plant things on a VM just like any other computer, right? You know there are many ways someone like the CIA could obtain a password used to encrypt a VM, right? Perhaps it was not always encrypted? Perhaps his host machine was infected with a key logger? Perhaps they used an exploit in the software he used to encrypt the VM, or a proprietary exploit designed to do exactly this, produced in conjunction with any number of software companies. There are many, many ways this could have happened, and the existence of a VM means literally nothing.
Why are you convinced the presence of a VM in this is significant?
My other comment is below. Have you read the complaint? The government is claiming that there is essentially 8 years of evidence on that VM, that in addition to the actual CP, there is a long trail of metadata and inode data that would be fairly difficult to fake.
I mean, think about it: if you were the defendant, all you'd have to do is have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi that the government didn't know about (which would be easy, given we're talking 8 years here, he'd just have to find when he was on a date or out to dinner or something, the government isn't going to know his entire life history for 8 years), and you'd be well on your way to creating enough doubt with a jury.
Now, it's possible the government is lying, but if they're not, it strains credulity to think that they'd go to the effort, cost, and risk to fake that VM in such elaborate detail. If they wanted to ruin his life, there are hundreds of easier ways to do it than such an elaborate fraud.
You didn't answer my question. There is nothing about the existence of a VM that makes it "difficult to explain away" and you did not establish why the fact that there is a VM being used is relevant.
What you are now saying is that it's implausible that the CIA would be able to fake logs (and that's what we're talking about with inode data) on a VM for some reason. It would absolutely not be as simple as "have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi" because it is very likely the guy was actually using a VM legitimately. All the CIA has to do is establish that he was in possession of child pornography. Hell, they don't even need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt if A) the jury, defense, prosecution and / or judge is not tech savvy to understand some of these concepts, and B) if their goal is to trash this guy's life and have it be a warning to other leakers. You don't even need a conviction for that.
It does not strain credulity at all to think that the CIA would go to the effort to fake a small set of data on a VM. The "elaborate detail" is not any more elaborate than in any other instance -- it would be trivially easy to forge. If they wanted to ruin his life, this is a perfect, practical way for them to do it.
The fact that they would forge this data on a VM makes it seem even more plausible to people who don't even understand what VMs are, or how one might fabricate logs like that. It's apparently working on you right now, and you're savvy enough to know about the existence of inode data. You're apparently ready to condemn this guy despite the ludicrous amount of circumstantial evidence that maybe this guy is being set up by an organization literally dedicated to covert operations of this nature, who have even go so far as to detail exactly how they would undertake this exact kind of operation.
> all you'd have to do is have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi that the government didn't know about (which would be easy, given we're talking 8 years here, he'd just have to find when he was on a date or out to dinner or something, the government isn't going to know his entire life history for 8 years), and you'd be well on your way to creating enough doubt with a jury.
There are plenty of ways that happens even accidentally though, a prosecutor would be able to knock out that claim easily.
You've never seen a Linux machine write entries to the system log with the wrong timestamp? It happens all the time on machines with no RTC (Raspberry Pi) or a dead battery.
Pages 3-6 detail the VM. Basically, they found a VM on his computer that was encrypted, with an encrypted file in it, that they unlocked with a password they found on his phone. In the encrypted (truecrypt) file, they found a large amount of what was unmistakenly CP. When they examined the file system, their claim is that there was evidence of a history of using that VM and moving those files around, etc., so it's not like they just appeared one day. Partial files that weren't deleted yet, caches, inode meta data, that sort of thing.
I mean, it's possible to fake, but it would be incredibly easy to fuck that up, and incredibly risky to get caught doing that. If they really wanted to make his life hell, there are easier, less risky, and even legal ways to do it without going to the effort to fabricate 8 years of computer usage that would withstand expert cross examination.
>I mean, it's possible to fake, but it would be incredibly easy to fuck that up, and incredibly risky to get caught doing that.
Maybe, but how hard would it be to convince a tech-illiterate jury of that? Is there a lawyer on earth that could explain the minutiae of metadata on virtual machines to one? And if they get caught, they go "oops!" and pay out a few million dollars as a sorry, at best.
I'd wager they couldn't. It's not likely they themselves would have those kids either. It would be the FBI prosecuting child pornography and being knowledgeable about it (with even more knowledge on how to lose a CP prosecution) and the NSA that would be hoarding those logs.
Of course, nothing says they wouldn't be cooperating in this.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but ISTM the question isn't really whether the logs are of a genuine conversation about CP, but rather whether the accused really was a part of that conversation? After all, if he really took part in a conversation about procuring such material, it wouldn't have mattered if he talked like a newb. Likewise, if he wasn't in on it, it doesn't matter that everyone who was in on it got "the lingo" right.
ps. How would one know enough about the scene to motivate such skepticism?
Send an undercover agent to immerse himself in the community, learn the lingo, etc, and use opsec to protect him from detection by external authorities (the same authorities that failed to bus everyone else in the community already). Then when you want to disappear someone, create some links between the real person and the online persona created by the undercover agent.
I’ve been on IRC for decades, a few years running a file distribution for audiobooks, which sadly meant I ran across some things I’ll never unsee. I’ve never seen anyone actually say “kiddie porn” who was actually looking for or offering it. It’s all “loli” or filename references, and “#yo” stuff. Those chat logs sound ridiculous, but I have to admit that my experience is limited to channels where cp wasn’t welcome. Maybe when they’re on their own they start talking like a special agent?
To me, it would be like being in a warez channel full of people saying, “I want pirated material.” That at least I have experience with, and someone saying “Where the copyright violations at?” Rather than “any good ftp’s and xdcc’s?” Would raises red flags.
Wow you really misrepresented those chat logs. The personas portrayed within appear to be interested in the concept of CP, seemingly mostly for its forbidden nature. Whenever they discuss an individual file, there are questions about whether the participants are 15yo or older, or whether the file is "really porn". If these are really the deepest depths plumbed by that "scene", the whole thing has been wildly misrepresented.
Honestly? If we can generate a video of Barack Obama saying that "Killmonger was right" and render existing paintings in the style of other paintings, then we can absolutely generate culturally-sound text.
Oh really, and did you ask how it is that IRC logs from 2009 just happened to be sitting in someone's back pocket?
It is actually quite obvious from the conversation that "STURM" is a CI or other operative who is trying to entrap "JOSH".
If this guy was breaking the law back in 2009 why did the CIA hire him exactly?
Maybe we should be investigating how law enforcement and intel agencies use child exploitation and child pornography to entrap people, and how many of the people involved in those ops have "inclinations" that trend in that direction.
Completely agree. To me it seems unlikely that people working for the cia are pedos. It is possible but goes counter to all demographic studies on the characteristics of pedos. Most pedos are low income, uneducated social misfit types. The educated people who do it are mostly the outliers in the demographic studies.
Meanwhile all of these leakers having some sort of cp charge is a significant enough to look deeper into what is going on.
The IRC logs in the papers linked in this thread make the suspect out to be an imbecile -- discussing highly illegal activity in plain text using the most obvious keywords ...?
Does that sound like something anyone would ever expect to return fruitful results enabling criminal activity? Does anyone imagine this being the sort of thing a person operating an encrypted server would do either deliberately or inadvertently? And what would it even mean, to have that in Google search logs?
Here on HN, to most of us, figure it means less than nothing. On some level, it might actually harm the authenticity of the prosecution's technical credibility.
I'd imagine the goal of the prosecutors though, is to select the most technically inept grandmas, to pack the jury with.
The feds are notorious for doing stuff like that. Just look at how they were trying to bag assange with rape charges back when he was on the run. Also look at how they prosecute bigger criminals. They dont go after them for smuggling or drug dealing. It is always tax fraud, wire fraud etc. They dont care what crime you committed as long as they get the person behind bars.
It’s an indictment, aka one side of the story presented in the best possible light. Of course it’s convincing. That doesn’t mean it isn’t completely accurate, but judging guilt or innocence based on limited information provided from one party is nuts.
> Mr. Schulte had been charged last year in New York with possession of child pornography.
The fact that they found child porn on his computer is the scariest part. Almost any technical person could frame almost anyone else with CP possession. It's just a matter of putting some files on a computer and/or faking some logs, browser history, etc.
It would be incredibly trivial for the CIA to put CP on his computer and then use that as a method of getting him into custody. A rogue agent could do it without anyone else knowing.
The frightening aspect of CP possession is that there's basically no one willing to even hear out a person charged with the crime. It's the perfect thing to frame someone with precisely because it's so revolting and hard to disprove.
CP possession laws should be changed to put much more onus on the state. It possibly should not even be a felony to merely posses simply because of how hard it is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Production of CP is clearly the main problem and far easier to be confident in prosecuting.
Exactly, some bad iframe could load CP files and not display them, later if someone checks the network logs they can "prove" you visited and watched those urls.
Combine this with the very specific ad targeting that is possible to pull of(like the guy that managed to make FB to show his ad to his roommate) and you get an easy and remote way to frame people
A hidden iframe was used to install an encrypted VM on the defendants computer, with an encrypted file on it, accessible using a password
Only the defendant knew?
There are also extensive file system logs indicating a history of use. That was faked too?
It is extremely within the CIA's ability to plant a VM on a computer. It is not established that the password was known only to "the defendant," as if the CIA alleging that is the case makes it true.
Extensive file system logs are also easy to generate. They could also be legitimate access logs but the VM itself was compromised by the CIA.
IRC logs are literally a text file. It would be extremely easy to fake those as well.
Do you really think the CIA is incapable of doing something like this? Hell, if I were able to obtain the password used to encrypt the VM (easily within the realm of possibility with CIA resources) I could do each one of these things myself.
The CIA has many extremely clear motivations to set this up, and they absolutely have the means to do so. They have also in the past been caught doing far, far worse. In addition the Vault 7 leaks contain instructions for doing exactly what many suspect here -- planting something like CP covertly in order to frame someone.
Or option 3, he was assigned to infiltrating a kiddie porn ring. Maybe to set him up. Many plausible explanations, but no proof of anything but his crimes.
I was not referring to the article but to the parent comment, my point is if someone monitors your traffic then it is very easy for any tech person to put bad links in your logs.
There was a case, I do not remember in what country where a guy was accused of child pornography because of his IP address and later was found that someone in police made a typo and they had the wrong IP.
Maybe the traffic logs are not enough to put you in jail but the accusation itself could destroy you and your family.
It's also a strict liability crime, so intent doesn't matter. The evidence can't be viewed except by very few people approved by the justice department, so CP might just be pictures of a 17th year old that the person didn't even know was underage.
you obviously didn't read the indictment. The claims are not some vague image found in his browser cache, but Gigs of graphic and disturbing content with metadata (i.e. titles) that clearly indicate it as CP.
I realize these claims != guilt, rather that a lot of these comments are arguing how easy it would be to get caught up in existing laws. That's not what's claimed here; if true this guy is a collector.
50+G of encrypted data, specific references to 6yo, 8yo in file names and confirmation by a LEO witness that the videos match the filenames. The videos presumably can be viewed in part (by the judge?) in some sort of closed session if the defence requests it?
If you look at the indictment it details that they found encrypted files on his computer, then used a password obtained from his cell phone to decrypt the files.
If this is a setup, it's beautifully orchestrated.
Maybe he had encrypted files with a password on his cell phone, the CIA just added the CP files later and ofcourse changed the created/modified dates of those files.
If you're going to go to all that effort to hide your tracks and frame someone, risking your own conviction for downloading and distributing illegal porn, and the umpteen other crimes you're committing, I feel like you're going to have a good reason ... which reason is going to put you on a list of suspects for framing the person.
You're going to need resources too, if you want access without leaving a trace, TBH I can't see how you can do it remotely (ie at a distance) without cracking the targets upstream ISP. Otherwise their logs of incoming connections from whatever anonymous relays you've used are going to implicate an external attacker, which would tend to corroborate the targets innocence.
In the case of "Josh" other people's links show IRC chats where the other end is confirmed from capture of another perp. Also that his personal phone has the passwords on; that he said the encrypted data was his and that no-one else had access. If the evidence presented is true it seems pretty hard to setup without him being party to the whole thing.
If i recall correctly there was a virus that did that. If you got infected it would visit sites that had cp on it and would download cp to the infected computer. Even if you deleted the virus the cp would still remain.
That's not how justice works. The indictment is the prosecutor's claims, not established facts that have survived subject to cross-examinations. The listed evidence could be fake, could be real but linked to the accused, or could be real and linked.
I didn’t say it was. What I am saying is that, assuming the evidence is as described (and I see no evidence to suggest otherwise short of theoretical exercises in “well it could always be faked”), the description of the VM is awfully convincing.
It strains credulity to think that the government planted an encrypted VM with an encrypted file with a password known only to the defendant, faked the entire usage logs, and faked an extensive file system logs to match a pattern of use that would be incredibly difficult to do correctly. It’s just not believable, nor is there any suggestion as to government motive that would risk such an incredible violation of the law if they were caught.
We can play theoretical exercises all day, but the fact is that the evidence as described is incredibly damning.
I arrive at the opposite conclusion from reading that. Someone smart enough to work in black hat security should know how fucking illegal CP is, how aggressively its investigated, and know not to flagrantly talk about it on an irc channel and host it to randos online. At the very least they would use tor and figure it out for themselves.
Speaking as someone who lived in a place that would boil dissidents alive in the 00's: That's the most beautiful part of this.
If you know anything about downloading hugely illegal material you will keep your mouth shut because the claims there are completely laughable, but you don't want to admit you've been downloading hugely illegal material that would get you jailed/killed.
To the average person it sounds reasonable because they are an idiot.
To anyone with half a brain even downloading the pdf without doing it through tor, copying it to an air gapped machine, and reading it there is such a huge breach of security you wouldn't be out of prison if you ever did it.
So your argument is that the entire thing is faked? Faked so incredibly well that it will withstand expert analysis at trial? That they faked years of activity (down to the inode level of the filesystem) by this guy and didn't make a single mistake? Because his defense team will tear that evidence apart and will find that mistake if it's there (e.g. any inode activity during a time he has an alibi... very easy to find).
And that you find that more believable than that someone could just happen to be both a security expert and a pedophile?
Do you realize he wasn't caught because of his security lapses? The found the VM because they raided his house for a separate matter. Every indication is that, with the exception of using a password he stored on his phone (which, read the indictment, he clearly realized during the interrogation that he had made a mistake), the government would have never found this VM of his.
He did take the steps you suggest, and it didn't matter, because they raided his house, and he made a single, and easily understandable mistake: he stored the password he used for the VM somewhere where someone could access it digitally. If he had just memorized the password, they would have very likely never broken that encryption.
> Faked so incredibly well that it will withstand expert analysis at trial? That they faked years of activity (down to the inode level of the filesystem) by this guy and didn't make a single mistake?
At this point, we don't know that it will. That's making the argument out to be stronger than it is.
You certainly wouldn't want that guy in charge of doing anything covert! Is it trying to say he used his real name in IRC too (or is that interpretation for the file)!?
News flash: people who are skilled in one area often are not skilled in others, and people who show good judgement in their professional life do not always show it their personal life.
It should also be noted that he did take precautions, many of them, and the VM was only found after they seized his computer for a separate matter. Without that there is no indication they would have ever found it.
Am I wrong? Going back over a month, you already had your mind made up. Every comment on the topic since is singing the same tune. You’ve characterized an indictment as “pretty convincing” and scoffed at the notion that a government could fake the evidence offered. You’ve engaged with someone who has talked about shills (and they weren’t talking to you) with incredulity. These are your words, The guy is clearly guilty.
So yes, it would seem you have reached a forgone conclusion a while ago and have been working backwards since. For the record I don’t think that you’re a shill, just a sincerely uncritical individual when it comes to the machinations of both criminal justice, and state intelligence apparatuses and their history.
I did not reach a forgone conclusion. I reached an informed conclusion after reading the indictment and hearing the explanation by the defendant. That is not a forgone conclusion, that is just a normal, regular, every day conclusion based on the reasonable perponderance of evidence of what seems most credible. Reaching conclusions after reading evidence is what people do.
Could he be innocent? Sure. Could the VM be a plant? Sure. Could the government be lying? Sure. And that is why we have a justice system.
But just because something is possible, or you can come up with an explation of why something may exist, doesn't mean it's probable, and doesn't mean it's likely.
And for the record, since you seem to think you know all about me and my government-shilling ways, I was protesting the war at MIT before you were even born, and I actually think this guy is innocent of the leaking charges. I also happen to think he's very likely guilty of the CP charges.
By the way, do actually have any evidence whatsoever that would imply the government planted that VM, other than some theoretical argument? Because for all your bluster about rationality, I don't see you presenting a shred of evidence to suggest that this didn't go down exactly how it was presented in the indictment.
And for the record, since you seem to think you know all about me and my government-shilling ways
Did you miss me specifically saying that I didn’t buy into the shilling thing? Please don’t claim that I said or implied something I went out of my way to disavow.
I was protesting the war at MIT before you were even born
Holy shit, you know how old I am?
and I actually think this guy is innocent of the leaking charges. I also happen to think he's very likely guilty of the CP charges.
I think the opposite is true, but I’ll tell you what, I’d never reach either conclusion with so little information available and it all coming via one side. A prosecutor looking for an indictment isn’t an unbiased viewpoint, just like a defense attorney speaking on behalf of their client isn’t.
If i where at the CIA, i would hire such rotten apples, so i have a handle, and know where the handle is, and could very carefully watch, wether somebody else was pulling that handle.
And if that trooper went rogue, and i had to make a public exempel- all those other rotten apples i had, ready to do whatever i want them to do- would know from where the bullets come flying.
Spying always attracted those who live in hiding by nature anyway. Before beeing gay was socially accepted, huge parts of the spy community where more or less flaming. If the suspect was a peod- and lived a spys life since puperty anyway, might as well hire him.
"Government investigators suspect that he provided WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, with a stolen archive of documents detailing the C.I.A.’s hacking operations, but they had not initially charged him in that crime."
Wikileaks is a news organization, not an anti-secrecy organization who's First Amendment Right to Freedom of the Press has been illegally infringed upon by the US Government.
They don't actually publish news articles like the NYTimes though right? anti-secrecy seems to be a part of what wikileaks does but I'm not sure that would be an appropriate name either.
Yes. But the press didn't simply publish them in their entirety without comment or context, did they?
I understand people want to lionize Wikileaks and consider Julian Assange to be the modern day equivalent to Woodward and Bernstein, but to consider what they do journalism is to discredit journalism. There's a reason Edward Snowden went to the actual press and not Wikileaks.
>Yes. But the press didn't simply publish them in their entirety without comment or context, did they?
Even better - Senator Gravel, doing his job, brought them into Congress .. something that was necessary, because the press was compromised and wasn't doing their job.
Calling wikileaks a propaganda arm of the Russian Government is just US propaganda. 1984 double-speak here. Can you point to ANYTHING that wikileaks has reported or released that is untrue?
You can tell the truth and still be deceitful. Claiming to have had evidence on Russian corruption and publicly declaring an intent to release followed by silence and unwillingness to do so indicate two things, to me anyway.
1. The original claim is a lie. There is no evidence of Russian corruption and the claim was made for attention or some other purpose. Remind me, again, how many lies it takes to make someone untrustworthy?
2. The original claim is true, but something or someone prevents information from being released. This is the more insidious reason. It means that the organization will only release "the truth" that jibes with the messages/agenda they want to push, which is propaganda. Regardless of whether or not Russia has a direct influence of the release is unknown, but it becomes propaganda nonetheless.
My personal opinion is that Assange is virtually inseparable from Wikileaks and appears to have a god complex, using the platform as his mouthpiece on his view of the state of things while enjoying the comforts of avoiding consequence.
they have their moments. they all tend to be good at cheerleading war, for example. msnbc fired phil donohue for being against the iraq war. last election, the washington post (in)famously ran a glut of anti-sanders material in a short time span (16 articles in 16 hours, i believe it was).
>My personal opinion is that Assange is virtually inseparable from Wikileaks and appears to have a god complex, using the platform as his mouthpiece on his view of the state of things while enjoying the comforts of avoiding consequence
Except around eight years of imprisonment now. It being a relatively nice imprisonment doesn't change what it is.
Before scrambling to gather a handful of news articles (though no proof) which confirm 'option C' to avoid down votes, are you certain that you are not regurgitating the propaganda of a different government or corporation?
Do you mind enlightening us how Wikileaks was a propaganda arm of the Russian government when they released video of US war crimes (murder of journalists in the Collateral Murder video)?
If another news organization received the DNC leaks and chose to not publish them, do you think that would have been ethical?
Is your position that, one cannot be a US citizen and oppose the US government and if you do you're a Russian agent?
The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity.
Julian Assange has an agenda against certain people/parties, and has demonstrably leaked things that support that, and not leaked things that refute it.
I say that as a detractor of many of the same people and institutions Assange dislikes, so check your assumptions of bias before you throw them, please.
Weird definition of a "journalistic entity" I don't think that any news source satisfies your requirement that it be complete non-partisan, even such a thing was even logically possible.
I don't expect journalism to be non-partisan. I expect it to be affirmatively transparent about its partisanship.
You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar. It's a human institution; it's necessarily flawed. That's why you source across biases and ideologies, and correct accordingly.
The thing I'm talking about is instead the deliberate pretense of not being partisan. Fox News calling itself "fair and balanced", or claiming "We report. You decide." are just particularly egregious examples. When you aren't presenting enough of the picture for someone to form an informed opinion, you're peddling propaganda. I know the propagandist can't admit that's what he's doing, so I hold journalism to the standard of integrity of knowing, and owning, its biases.
But it's ultimately a spectrum, and it's on me to gauge where on that spectrum any given source lands. Some things are more propaganda than journalism. Some things are more or less one or the other to different degrees on different topics, at the same time. Sometimes they're at different points on the same topic, on different days, or in different stories.
It's complicated, sure. But, holding as nuanced an appreciation of this mess as I hope I've implied, I hope also that you'll give me the credit of not merely talking out my ass when I say I find Assange to be towards the propagandist pole.
>You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar.
Then your post is content free. If you find nothing to meet your personal standard of being journalism than you finding wikileaks to not be journalists merely means they are the same as the New York Times.
>> But it's ultimately a spectrum, and it's on me to gauge where on that spectrum any given source lands.
In no way did I claim, or even imply some sort of equivalence between Wikileaks and the NYT. Please don't put words in my mouth which I explicitly disclaim just two paragraphs later.
My point is more that it's impracticable to impossible to share all of our biases, not least because we aren't aware of so many of them. When we've internalized a narrative, it becomes an unconscious bias, and can't very well be meaningfully disclosed.
Fox News isn't journalism. It's opinion wrapped around selective "reporting".
EDIT: Yes, of course it's impossible to eliminate bias. To extrapolate from that to accepting overtly biased and selectively published content as journalism is unsupported, at best.
It's the selectivity of reporting that compromises the claim of journalism, not the bias. When you don't report on things that don't support your narrative, you're no longer reporting.
Dear god this thread is being hit hard by people pushing the US government narrative. I'm not saying you're all paid trolls, but HN is to the tech scene what reddit was 10 years ago which is when we first saw shilling hit it hard and fast.
I'm looking at your post history. At the point when you have posted 17 times in a thread with half of them being a literal copy of what the prosecution is charging him with, while by omission implying that the information there is somehow impartial, the fact of being a paid or unpaid shill is immaterial.
You are the only person in this thread pushing the government narrative and taking their words at face value.
Anyone who has kept track of these persecutions knows that unmentionable facts are thrown in constantly to try and get the defendants to break. Viz, Daniel Ellsberg being called a homosexual.
Good God. I don't like Wikileaks, but even if they are a 'propaganda arm of the Russian government', they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization.
I remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. When a friend got in trouble for stealing and publishing data from our school, the state police went around scaring all of the parents and media with accusations of suspected child porn (completely made up, and never part of any actual investigation). Just uttering the words turned parents who had been closed lipped into law abiding, pre-judgemental, and supportive accolades.
In his case, there was never any plant (thank god), but honestly - I've watched this tactic used again and again to destroy reputations. If the State Police feel empowered to use it at will, it's entirely believable for me to believe the _CIA_ would go so far as to plant - especially given the extra-legal authority of impunity they are empowered by.
I remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. I don't remember the part where the police -- who were involved -- manufactured or planted child pornography accusations.
As you pointed out, that also isn't the case here either. Hat tip for the accurate username though.
> In a previous statement, WikiLeaks said the source of the damaging disclosure had hoped to “initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”
That didn't really work out... I wonder if that was the real motivation; it seems a little naive.
For one thing, it completely hollowed out a previously common claim of attribution for the alleged DNC "hack": "We have some evidence of tools that only Russian state employees use!" "These CIA documents indicate that CIA and other parties also use those tools..." "Why do you hate America?"
That's the thing, if you look at the NSA, they were and still are absolutely empowered to do what they did.
The only person who got in trouble for the domestic surveillance disclosures were the person who blew the whistle. That's because what he did was illegal and what they did wasn't.
I'm pretty sure that criminal conspiracies generally don't get out of investigation by arguing their latest activities haven't been proven to be criminal.
Yup which is one reason why trump is pushing so hard on tariffs. The chinese have an army of hackers committing war fare against the usa and its trade secrets. Governments should not be hacking each other. They should be engaging in diplomacy like any civilized country.
War by another name, it seems like an admission that it's a war we are losing, or perhaps have already lost. It's also a bit rich to imply the USA is engaging in (or has any reason to expect) civilized diplomacy in any way.
Instead of saying searched, perhaps we should say "planted." These are the same people who told us Trump was conspiring with the Russians, who used a doctored dossier to get a FISA. Until we know a lot more it should take it with a grain of salt, but if he is a pedophile I hope he rots in hell.
Perhaps they put greater emphasis than you on the difference between "is" and "is accused of being"? At least on the child abuse side, I'm pretty sure that most defenders are doubting the evidence rather than condoning the behavior.
Yeah, I’m not a CIA employee, but even I use different passwords for everything and don’t store them in the clear. This smells like a government hit job from a mile away, much like Assange’s “rape” case. Snowden would have no doubt attracted the same kind of “attention” had he not moved to one of the very few countries where CIA, FBI, and NSA can’t operate.
Crickets from all of the "news" outlets that pointed to this incident as more "proof" of a Russia-Wikileaks partership. Very much like the Sony hack, which was widely attributed to North Korea (again, without a shred of evidence), you can be sure that there will be very few, if any, mea-culpas issued by those media organizations that uncritically swallowed DC/CIA misinformation and reported that misinformation as fact. Hopefully this episode will serve as an important reminder to everyone that they should always remains skeptical, of everything, until presented with proof they can independently verify, instead of mindlessly accepting basless claims that happen to agree with popular narratives.
I researched your claim. For the Sony hack, no actual evidence was ever provided implicating North Korea - just unsupported allegations. [Independent researchers](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/30/sony-hack-resea...) found it was much more likely to have been disgruntled employees.
However, for the Vault 7 leak, almost no major news organizations cited Russia as a likely culprit for this.
I agree with your sentiment that basically any official information that comes out of the IC is suspect, but in this case, unless you can cite specific examples, I'm pretty sure the IC never publicly blamed Russia.
>no actual evidence was ever provided implicating North Korea - just unsupported allegations.
No actual evidence has been provided implicating Wikileaks received anything from Russia either - just unsupported allegations. If you disagree, I welcome you to link below actual evidence that has been provided. Despite the exhorations of many, claims made by spooks, spies, employees of think tanks and 3-letter agencies is not proof of anything, in any context, ever. Its extremely troubling, and very revealing, that this simple fact is an anathema to so many.
That's because Wikileaks is not in any way a Russian operation.
Wikileaks is globally important as a whistleblowing operation. If you go back to the 1990s you can find the US government applauding Wikileaks' publications.
When Wikileaks distributed several large caches of US documents, and would not negotiate with the US Justice Department on disclosure, censorship and propaganda agreements common with most other news providers - this more friendly relationship curdled.
The US became increasingly hostile with Wikileaks, tried to get its operators extradited, even shopped around for internet sock puppets and social media campaigns to damage their reputations.
Wikileaks in turn became distasteful of the US, and happily publishes damaging materials on the United States. These documents also happen to cover many of the details associated with unsavory activity of the world's sole superpower, which makes the reporting rather important.
US media characterizations of Wikileaks as a Russian operation are, and have been, a (successful?) domestic propaganda campaign. The way the IG talks in internal documents (go find them) about Wikileaks is that it is an independent information organization that "punches above its weight" and has geopolitical capabilities as a non-state actor. That's much closer to the truth.
North Korea was very likely the culprit behind the SONY hacks.
If you read the leaked emails, you will find that SONY had worked with the US Department of State and the CIA to add American propaganda into "The Interview" with a plan to distribute it across the Korean Peninsula. Seth Rogan also did several interviews about CIA and State Department working on the set.
The group attributed for hacking SONY was "DarkSeoul" within "Bureau 121". This group is known for actively retaliating against companies that use propaganda to attack North Korean national security as a form of deterrence.
Additionally, the group posted, along with the SONY leaks, criticisms of what they called "the movie of terrorism" ("The Interview").
Of course, American media turned it all around and pretended that they said something about blowing up movie theaters, and caused a public panic.
Nobody in the IC attributed Vault7 to Russia. Wikileaks themselves suggested that it was a CIA contractor. US media did domestically propagandize the public via IC partnerships to "infer" and "suggest" that it was Russia, but no public statements that I'm aware of were made.
Mr. Schulte had been charged last year in New York with possession of child pornography
Very interesting! It almost seems like the pornography charges against him was a way to punish him but without prosecuting him for the actual leakage. Perhaps the government wanted to still point the fingers at someone else or avoid embarrassment?
States, even relatively benevolent ones, take any steps necessary to secure national secrets, even extra legal ones.
Take the likelihood that a leaky contractor coincidently is a pedophile. One who works in security yet encrypts stuff with the same cellphone password everywhere.
Balance that with the possibility that a motivated state actor could plant such files on a pc or alter logs on a server they are monitoring.
Coincidentally also, it is very much sufficient for a jury to convict yet the accusation is ambiguous/obvious enough to deter other would be leakers.
I have no idea whether this is a good way to do things but it's a pretty widespread set of coincidences that would also happen to have a particular effect.
Completely agree. The narrative being presented is simply not logical to believe. Based on the narrative, this guy works for the cia, highly likely he knows cp is illegal, obtains cp, knows how to use encryption but then uses a weak password.
Not using a weak password is like security 101 first 5 minutes of the first class type of knowledge.
Im sure im not the only one buying this story.
You’re making an assumption, that it was weak. What we know is that they found the password on his phone. It could have been quite strong.
I think the question I have is did the guy have a password manager on his phone?
The question we need to answer is: Was the incriminating data planted or not. Having a password manager on his phone is tangental to answer that question. After the computer and phone left his custody, either device could have had data modified. Unless he's got his data pinned into the Bitcoin blockchain, it's a pretty hard to show that it was planted. If it wasn't planted then it's really just about how the key was revealed.
P.S. The description does seem to describe a password manager: "Specifically, the Cellphone Examination identified various passwords that had been input by the user of the Cellphone to, for example, access the phone, applications on the phone, and/or certain websites."
I think the level of security provided by passwords or password managers is probably of little import, when confronted by a nation-state actor, and indeed a top tier nation-state actor, with nigh unlimited resources, and an axe to grind over a serious grudge.
We have wi-fi routers being used to passively see through walls, with enough fidelity to read lips and record finger movement.
Put someone under a microscope long enough, and every single password they use will reveal itself. Whether locked behind a manager app (sooner or later you'll snag the master password for it) or directly entered.
> We have wi-fi routers being used to passively see through walls, with enough fidelity to read lips and record finger movement.
That’s terrifying. I had no idea that was possible despite it being published years ago and trying to keep track of technology like that: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7384744/
This is a big blank spot in the complaint, which tells me they broke or got around the encryption somehow. If it was in cleartext they would have said so because it would have added to their case.
I also wonder: if I was going to work for the CIA, wouldn't they triple check everything about what I do before hiring me? Whether the child porn evidence was real or planted, the agency doesn't seem to gain much credibility here.
During a security clearance investigation your computer and other personal effects aren't searched.
Reading further down in the docket reveals a few suggestive details. Of particular note, this filing which lead to the revocation of Schulte’s bail [https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.480183...]. Two salient points:
1. Schulte agreed as a condition of his pretrial house arrest not to own, possess, or use a computer or any other form of internet access. Surveillance showed internet connections from his house, accessing his personal email as well as the TOR network.
His attorneys argue that these connections were Schulte’s cousin (who lives with him) checking his email (and TOR?) on his behalf, which after all the Court never said he couldn’t do.
2. At his bail hearing, the prosecutor mentioned a photograph (apparently recovered from Schulte’s phone) showing an unconscious person (apparently Schulte’s roommate) being sexually assaulted (apparently in their shared bathroom). The identity of the assailant having not being established, this wasn’t taken into consideration at pretrial. But...
Since that hearing, the cops in Virginia followed up and have a reasonable suspicion that the person seen in a photograph on Schulte’s phone, sexually assaulting Schulte’s unconscious roommate, in Schulte’s house, might indeed be Schulte himself. So it sounds like he’s facing sexual assault charges in Virginia, as soon as his federal child-porn-cum-treason prosecution gets sorted out.
So... well, even if these additional allegations don’t change your perspective on his character, they proooooobably cut against any presumption of doubt based on dude’s mastery of opsec.
This seems to happen remarkably often in cases like these. Remember the Assange rape allegations which turned out to be a setup? It's the next step up from "found drugs in their car".
>Remember the Assange rape allegations which turned out to be a setup?
Sorry, when did they "turn out to be a setup?"
This matter of fact phrasing implies evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt exists which should be commonly known, so if you could cite that, it would be appreciated.
Yeah, those charges are very real. They've continually been upheld in courts in both the UK and Sweden.
Nope, Sweden dropped the case.
https://www-m.cnn.com/2017/05/19/europe/julian-assange-swede...
Because they timed out, I thought. Something about him not being formally chargeable until he was in the country, and cases needing to be dropped if there was no formal charge after a certain period.
“Arrested on suspicion” (and “skipping bail”) being separate to that.
Yes, the charges aren't going away. And because the girl was talked into the rape accusation and then tried to back out of it makes it a set up.
Claims in an Internet forum aren't evidence. Also, rape victims back out of accusations all the time because of the trauma involved. Is there evidence?
Yeah, lots in this case. The reason so many say the Assange charges are a setup is that the case was dropped initially by the prosecutor after it became clear the women were lying, their stories simply didn't stack up so there was no chance of a conviction. Assange hung around in Sweden after the charges were filed and requested permission to leave after the charges were dropped, the Swedish police said they were done with him. Then after he left a different prosecutor mysteriously reopened the case and demanded he return for questioning again, though nothing had changed in the case, no charges were filed and the chance of a successful prosecution was still zero.
Again I'm reading lots of claims and as everyone knows, claims on the Internet aren't really the most reliable things. Can anyone cite any evidence?
Probably because you're asking people to Google stuff for you? It's all public.
There are two women. One posted on Twitter the next day boasting about the awesome night she'd had with Assange. She later deleted the post but others had recorded it already. The other woman sent lots of text messages saying she wasn't raped and only reported Assange because she wanted him to take an std test, that the police had blown it up and seemed to want to get him.
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-07/julian-assange-goes...
Moreover the women only filed these charges after they met each other and realised they'd both slept with him.
Look, I don't know why you're being so skeptical about this. False reports of rape are extremely common. Most credible studies I've seen peg it at 50% or higher. You should never take such an accusation at face value before a case has been won and in this case we don't even need a trial - the women both created documentary evidence they were lying and one even attempted to destroy it.
> Probably because you're asking people to Google stuff for you? It's all public.
The burden of proof is on the commenter posting the claims.
The article linked in the parent merely is a description of Assange's own statement, his side of the story, which certainly has no more credibility than the alleged victim and the legal authority. For example, regarding Assange's claims about text messages, the article makes a point of saying, "The ABC has not seen the text messages."
> the women both created documentary evidence they were lying and one even attempted to destroy it.
Again, any credible evidence? Surely this story would be in the NY Times and other major publications.
> False reports of rape are extremely common. Most credible studies I've seen peg it at 50% or higher.
I don't agree and I've never heard of such a study. We also are not talking about 'reports' by alleged victims, but an indictment by legal authorities after they examined the evidence. Again, perhaps the parent can provide some the evidence they say they've seen supporting this extraordinary claim about rape accusations, because false claims on the Internet are certainly even more common.
"The burden of proof is on the commenter posting the claims."
The burden of the person who wants to learn rather than argue is to do research for themselves. I don't care whether you believe me or not - I mean, why would I?
I'm not talking about hypothetical rape allegations. I'm talking about the Assange rape allegations. Educate yourself about the subject before just talking about it otherwise what's the point?
>It almost seems like the pornography charges against him was a way to punish him but without prosecuting him for the actual leakage
It's the new "tax evasion."
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone#Tax_evasion
Counterintelligence investigations and prosecutions probably take a long time, and the stakes are high enough that prosecutors want to make their case airtight. Charging him with the other crimes he’s believed guilty of is probably a good way of laying the groundwork for the later case, with the added bonus of greater leverage and hurting their financial (and therefore, legal) positions.
And you can color me skeptical of any evidence that the government provided in that case.
I bet they could have planet d the CP to gain access to his hardware, without which they would have had no legally obtained evidence of his crime. Apparently he was running some sort of server, but I haven't read past that.
You should read the indictment. That porn was not planted.
https://www.scribd.com/document/379346745/Joshua-Adam-Schult...
I read the indictment, but I don't see how you can be certain it was not planted.
He apparently saved IRC logs of their entire quest to obtain child porn....?
Using his name as a handle?
Impossible? No, but do you really think this is not questionable at all?
Did you read the part about the VM he was (allegedly) hiding?
"Yes your honour, we totally found this."
"No your honour, we lost the evidence since then."
Do you actually have an argument as to how they would fake the VM in a manner that would withstand the analysis of the defendants experts?
Can't the CIA hide trojans on unused sectors of storage that can't be detected by any known anti virus program?
You don't think they can't fake a VM?
eh, you should still be skeptical. This is a CIA contractor/employee we're talking about here. Child pornography is an interesting situation because no one outside of the justice department and a few key people can even legally examine the evidence.
It shouldn't be beyond the realm of believeability to this bad actors created these charges in retaliation.
How would an indictment prove or disprove whether it was planted?
If you really think the guy who leaked highly classified CIA documents that reveals their means of mass surveillance happened to also be a pedophile then you are one naive person. Do yourself a favor and never watch 24-hour news programs.
Believing he was is believable. But it's only a symptom.
Believing the intelligence community never bends the rules is the problem. That belief is the root disease.
Which do you think is more likely:
1). A person willing to risk their life for what they believe is right is a pedophile.
2). The CIA plants evidence.
After having a look at the things we know the CIA did during my life time, Iran-Contra, I'd say 2 is vastly more likely than 1.
Despite being certain of 2, I am also certain that they don’t need to plant evidence to make someone’s life hell.
Their omniscient surveillance, combined with how many overlapping laws eveyone seems to have, means all they need to do is enumerate the crimes of someone they don’t like and run with it. So, for example, this particular enemy of theirs likes illegal porn? Next one will have something else.
This isn’t to say the CIA definitely didn’t plant anything, just that I think doing so is not the only option they will consider sufficient for their desired result.
Moral outrage based attacks have happened before; I’m told the FBI’s poison-pen-letter to MLK was being truthful when it claimed that he was adulterous, for example. While the idea that adultary could have such an impact is alien to me, the fact that it was attempted means the FBI thought otherwise at the time.
As for option 1? There’s a reason why we cant find them before they break the law. Whatever that reason is, it has to be compatible with someone like that being willing to do something like this.
What I know is irrelevant. What matters is the general understanding and comprehension of the masses. If you accept Twitter and Facebook as an acceptable representation of the public at large then it's clear there are __a lot__ of naive / misled people.
Long to short, the majority would rather believe in the integrity of the intelligence community than the IC's willingness to take any road necessary (not just the high moral road).
I can think of multiple reports of cp payloads being directed at enemies of the CI@. ...going back to 2013 they have been known to plant the cp on their enemies inside USA> interesting thing is that it's the same year the domestic spy operation was made legal by the defense authorization act 2013.
"In or about 2016" ... sounds like some pretty solid evidence they have there.
While I won't justify anything this person allegedly did.. it seems open to speculation whether the child pornography stuff was actually legitimate, or some sort of targeted attack. (whether to destroy his character/career or keep him under judicial watch / within the country)
I suspect that once they stick you with possession of child porn __everything__ you do or have done is subject to legal review. That is, there are no bounds to where and when the law can look; no bounds and no on going need for warrants, etc.
Your rights go out the door, and your digital life probed endlessly.
I read the IRC logs, and I'm skeptical that anyone not deeply versed in the lingo, tone, and character of that scene could fake them.
It's not impossible, but it was pretty convincing to me.
You don't think the CIA would be able to fake the lingo, tone, and character of the scene? I mean, they certainly have access to a ton of real IRC logs about the subject, would probably be pretty easy to swap out some usernames.
The IRC logs are minor pieces of evidence. It’s the VM that is hard to explain away.
There is nothing about the use of a VM that is "hard to explain away." You know what a VM is, right? You know anyone could plant things on a VM just like any other computer, right? You know there are many ways someone like the CIA could obtain a password used to encrypt a VM, right? Perhaps it was not always encrypted? Perhaps his host machine was infected with a key logger? Perhaps they used an exploit in the software he used to encrypt the VM, or a proprietary exploit designed to do exactly this, produced in conjunction with any number of software companies. There are many, many ways this could have happened, and the existence of a VM means literally nothing.
Why are you convinced the presence of a VM in this is significant?
My other comment is below. Have you read the complaint? The government is claiming that there is essentially 8 years of evidence on that VM, that in addition to the actual CP, there is a long trail of metadata and inode data that would be fairly difficult to fake.
I mean, think about it: if you were the defendant, all you'd have to do is have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi that the government didn't know about (which would be easy, given we're talking 8 years here, he'd just have to find when he was on a date or out to dinner or something, the government isn't going to know his entire life history for 8 years), and you'd be well on your way to creating enough doubt with a jury.
Now, it's possible the government is lying, but if they're not, it strains credulity to think that they'd go to the effort, cost, and risk to fake that VM in such elaborate detail. If they wanted to ruin his life, there are hundreds of easier ways to do it than such an elaborate fraud.
You didn't answer my question. There is nothing about the existence of a VM that makes it "difficult to explain away" and you did not establish why the fact that there is a VM being used is relevant.
What you are now saying is that it's implausible that the CIA would be able to fake logs (and that's what we're talking about with inode data) on a VM for some reason. It would absolutely not be as simple as "have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi" because it is very likely the guy was actually using a VM legitimately. All the CIA has to do is establish that he was in possession of child pornography. Hell, they don't even need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt if A) the jury, defense, prosecution and / or judge is not tech savvy to understand some of these concepts, and B) if their goal is to trash this guy's life and have it be a warning to other leakers. You don't even need a conviction for that.
It does not strain credulity at all to think that the CIA would go to the effort to fake a small set of data on a VM. The "elaborate detail" is not any more elaborate than in any other instance -- it would be trivially easy to forge. If they wanted to ruin his life, this is a perfect, practical way for them to do it.
The fact that they would forge this data on a VM makes it seem even more plausible to people who don't even understand what VMs are, or how one might fabricate logs like that. It's apparently working on you right now, and you're savvy enough to know about the existence of inode data. You're apparently ready to condemn this guy despite the ludicrous amount of circumstantial evidence that maybe this guy is being set up by an organization literally dedicated to covert operations of this nature, who have even go so far as to detail exactly how they would undertake this exact kind of operation.
> all you'd have to do is have someone examine it and find inode activity when you had a clear alibi that the government didn't know about (which would be easy, given we're talking 8 years here, he'd just have to find when he was on a date or out to dinner or something, the government isn't going to know his entire life history for 8 years), and you'd be well on your way to creating enough doubt with a jury.
There are plenty of ways that happens even accidentally though, a prosecutor would be able to knock out that claim easily.
You've never seen a Linux machine write entries to the system log with the wrong timestamp? It happens all the time on machines with no RTC (Raspberry Pi) or a dead battery.
Can you elaborate further?
The complaint is here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6359557/united-states-v...
Pages 3-6 detail the VM. Basically, they found a VM on his computer that was encrypted, with an encrypted file in it, that they unlocked with a password they found on his phone. In the encrypted (truecrypt) file, they found a large amount of what was unmistakenly CP. When they examined the file system, their claim is that there was evidence of a history of using that VM and moving those files around, etc., so it's not like they just appeared one day. Partial files that weren't deleted yet, caches, inode meta data, that sort of thing.
I mean, it's possible to fake, but it would be incredibly easy to fuck that up, and incredibly risky to get caught doing that. If they really wanted to make his life hell, there are easier, less risky, and even legal ways to do it without going to the effort to fabricate 8 years of computer usage that would withstand expert cross examination.
>I mean, it's possible to fake, but it would be incredibly easy to fuck that up, and incredibly risky to get caught doing that.
Maybe, but how hard would it be to convince a tech-illiterate jury of that? Is there a lawyer on earth that could explain the minutiae of metadata on virtual machines to one? And if they get caught, they go "oops!" and pay out a few million dollars as a sorry, at best.
I'd wager they couldn't. It's not likely they themselves would have those kids either. It would be the FBI prosecuting child pornography and being knowledgeable about it (with even more knowledge on how to lose a CP prosecution) and the NSA that would be hoarding those logs.
Of course, nothing says they wouldn't be cooperating in this.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but ISTM the question isn't really whether the logs are of a genuine conversation about CP, but rather whether the accused really was a part of that conversation? After all, if he really took part in a conversation about procuring such material, it wouldn't have mattered if he talked like a newb. Likewise, if he wasn't in on it, it doesn't matter that everyone who was in on it got "the lingo" right.
ps. How would one know enough about the scene to motivate such skepticism?
Send an undercover agent to immerse himself in the community, learn the lingo, etc, and use opsec to protect him from detection by external authorities (the same authorities that failed to bus everyone else in the community already). Then when you want to disappear someone, create some links between the real person and the online persona created by the undercover agent.
Read the transcript and decide for yourself, I'm referring strictly to how I've seen people speak on IRC. Warning, there is disturbing text in there.
https://dd80b675424c132b90b3-e48385e382d2e5d17821a5e1d8e4c86...
I’ve been on IRC for decades, a few years running a file distribution for audiobooks, which sadly meant I ran across some things I’ll never unsee. I’ve never seen anyone actually say “kiddie porn” who was actually looking for or offering it. It’s all “loli” or filename references, and “#yo” stuff. Those chat logs sound ridiculous, but I have to admit that my experience is limited to channels where cp wasn’t welcome. Maybe when they’re on their own they start talking like a special agent?
To me, it would be like being in a warez channel full of people saying, “I want pirated material.” That at least I have experience with, and someone saying “Where the copyright violations at?” Rather than “any good ftp’s and xdcc’s?” Would raises red flags.
Wow you really misrepresented those chat logs. The personas portrayed within appear to be interested in the concept of CP, seemingly mostly for its forbidden nature. Whenever they discuss an individual file, there are questions about whether the participants are 15yo or older, or whether the file is "really porn". If these are really the deepest depths plumbed by that "scene", the whole thing has been wildly misrepresented.
Honestly? If we can generate a video of Barack Obama saying that "Killmonger was right" and render existing paintings in the style of other paintings, then we can absolutely generate culturally-sound text.
Excellent point.
> I read the IRC logs
Oh really, and did you ask how it is that IRC logs from 2009 just happened to be sitting in someone's back pocket?
It is actually quite obvious from the conversation that "STURM" is a CI or other operative who is trying to entrap "JOSH".
If this guy was breaking the law back in 2009 why did the CIA hire him exactly?
Maybe we should be investigating how law enforcement and intel agencies use child exploitation and child pornography to entrap people, and how many of the people involved in those ops have "inclinations" that trend in that direction.
Then we might find some real criminals.
Completely agree. To me it seems unlikely that people working for the cia are pedos. It is possible but goes counter to all demographic studies on the characteristics of pedos. Most pedos are low income, uneducated social misfit types. The educated people who do it are mostly the outliers in the demographic studies.
Meanwhile all of these leakers having some sort of cp charge is a significant enough to look deeper into what is going on.
The IRC logs in the papers linked in this thread make the suspect out to be an imbecile -- discussing highly illegal activity in plain text using the most obvious keywords ...?
Not to mention... searching... Google?
Really.
Does that sound like something anyone would ever expect to return fruitful results enabling criminal activity? Does anyone imagine this being the sort of thing a person operating an encrypted server would do either deliberately or inadvertently? And what would it even mean, to have that in Google search logs?
Here on HN, to most of us, figure it means less than nothing. On some level, it might actually harm the authenticity of the prosecution's technical credibility.
I'd imagine the goal of the prosecutors though, is to select the most technically inept grandmas, to pack the jury with.
So you're saying you're "deeply versed in the lingo, tone, and character of that scene"?
Reminds me of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYkbqzWVHZI
The feds are notorious for doing stuff like that. Just look at how they were trying to bag assange with rape charges back when he was on the run. Also look at how they prosecute bigger criminals. They dont go after them for smuggling or drug dealing. It is always tax fraud, wire fraud etc. They dont care what crime you committed as long as they get the person behind bars.
>Just look at how they were trying to bag assange with rape charges back when he was on the run.
Those charges were Swedish.
Look up five eye agreement. Different governments often work with each other to catch people. You help me out and ill help you out type of stuff.
You might be right about some Swedish quid pro quo here, but Sweden is actually not a member of Five Eyes.
I think FVEY was used as an example of collaboration, not because the poster thought Sweden was part of it.
Exactly, it was an example. The point is governments often work with each other.
Sweden is a member of the Fourteen Eyes, not Five Eyes.
Sweden is also a member of One Hundred Ninety-Three Eyes and One Hundred Ninety-Five Eyes.
You can read the indictment for yourself: https://www.scribd.com/document/379346745/Joshua-Adam-Schult...
It's pretty convincing.
It’s an indictment, aka one side of the story presented in the best possible light. Of course it’s convincing. That doesn’t mean it isn’t completely accurate, but judging guilt or innocence based on limited information provided from one party is nuts.
> Mr. Schulte had been charged last year in New York with possession of child pornography.
The fact that they found child porn on his computer is the scariest part. Almost any technical person could frame almost anyone else with CP possession. It's just a matter of putting some files on a computer and/or faking some logs, browser history, etc.
It would be incredibly trivial for the CIA to put CP on his computer and then use that as a method of getting him into custody. A rogue agent could do it without anyone else knowing.
The frightening aspect of CP possession is that there's basically no one willing to even hear out a person charged with the crime. It's the perfect thing to frame someone with precisely because it's so revolting and hard to disprove.
CP possession laws should be changed to put much more onus on the state. It possibly should not even be a felony to merely posses simply because of how hard it is to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Production of CP is clearly the main problem and far easier to be confident in prosecuting.
Exactly, some bad iframe could load CP files and not display them, later if someone checks the network logs they can "prove" you visited and watched those urls.
Combine this with the very specific ad targeting that is possible to pull of(like the guy that managed to make FB to show his ad to his roommate) and you get an easy and remote way to frame people
A hidden iframe was used to install an encrypted VM on the defendants computer, with an encrypted file on it, accessible using a password Only the defendant knew?
There are also extensive file system logs indicating a history of use. That was faked too?
And the IRC logs, those are fake?
Come on man.
It is extremely within the CIA's ability to plant a VM on a computer. It is not established that the password was known only to "the defendant," as if the CIA alleging that is the case makes it true.
Extensive file system logs are also easy to generate. They could also be legitimate access logs but the VM itself was compromised by the CIA.
IRC logs are literally a text file. It would be extremely easy to fake those as well.
Do you really think the CIA is incapable of doing something like this? Hell, if I were able to obtain the password used to encrypt the VM (easily within the realm of possibility with CIA resources) I could do each one of these things myself.
The CIA has many extremely clear motivations to set this up, and they absolutely have the means to do so. They have also in the past been caught doing far, far worse. In addition the Vault 7 leaks contain instructions for doing exactly what many suspect here -- planting something like CP covertly in order to frame someone.
Come on, man.
Or option 3, he was assigned to infiltrating a kiddie porn ring. Maybe to set him up. Many plausible explanations, but no proof of anything but his crimes.
I was not referring to the article but to the parent comment, my point is if someone monitors your traffic then it is very easy for any tech person to put bad links in your logs.
There was a case, I do not remember in what country where a guy was accused of child pornography because of his IP address and later was found that someone in police made a typo and they had the wrong IP.
Maybe the traffic logs are not enough to put you in jail but the accusation itself could destroy you and your family.
It's also a strict liability crime, so intent doesn't matter. The evidence can't be viewed except by very few people approved by the justice department, so CP might just be pictures of a 17th year old that the person didn't even know was underage.
you obviously didn't read the indictment. The claims are not some vague image found in his browser cache, but Gigs of graphic and disturbing content with metadata (i.e. titles) that clearly indicate it as CP.
I realize these claims != guilt, rather that a lot of these comments are arguing how easy it would be to get caught up in existing laws. That's not what's claimed here; if true this guy is a collector.
50+G of encrypted data, specific references to 6yo, 8yo in file names and confirmation by a LEO witness that the videos match the filenames. The videos presumably can be viewed in part (by the judge?) in some sort of closed session if the defence requests it?
If you look at the indictment it details that they found encrypted files on his computer, then used a password obtained from his cell phone to decrypt the files.
If this is a setup, it's beautifully orchestrated.
Maybe he had encrypted files with a password on his cell phone, the CIA just added the CP files later and ofcourse changed the created/modified dates of those files.
One of the leaks describes methods for doing just this.
I was afraid to open the comments here. Very happy I was wrong.
If you're going to go to all that effort to hide your tracks and frame someone, risking your own conviction for downloading and distributing illegal porn, and the umpteen other crimes you're committing, I feel like you're going to have a good reason ... which reason is going to put you on a list of suspects for framing the person.
You're going to need resources too, if you want access without leaving a trace, TBH I can't see how you can do it remotely (ie at a distance) without cracking the targets upstream ISP. Otherwise their logs of incoming connections from whatever anonymous relays you've used are going to implicate an external attacker, which would tend to corroborate the targets innocence.
In the case of "Josh" other people's links show IRC chats where the other end is confirmed from capture of another perp. Also that his personal phone has the passwords on; that he said the encrypted data was his and that no-one else had access. If the evidence presented is true it seems pretty hard to setup without him being party to the whole thing.
If i recall correctly there was a virus that did that. If you got infected it would visit sites that had cp on it and would download cp to the infected computer. Even if you deleted the virus the cp would still remain.
The indictment goes into some detail on this: https://www.scribd.com/document/379346745/Joshua-Adam-Schult...
The guy is clearly guilty.
That's not how justice works. The indictment is the prosecutor's claims, not established facts that have survived subject to cross-examinations. The listed evidence could be fake, could be real but linked to the accused, or could be real and linked.
I didn’t say it was. What I am saying is that, assuming the evidence is as described (and I see no evidence to suggest otherwise short of theoretical exercises in “well it could always be faked”), the description of the VM is awfully convincing.
It strains credulity to think that the government planted an encrypted VM with an encrypted file with a password known only to the defendant, faked the entire usage logs, and faked an extensive file system logs to match a pattern of use that would be incredibly difficult to do correctly. It’s just not believable, nor is there any suggestion as to government motive that would risk such an incredible violation of the law if they were caught.
We can play theoretical exercises all day, but the fact is that the evidence as described is incredibly damning.
> risk such an incredible violation of the law if they were caught
No consequences. No one pays attention. No fear.
I arrive at the opposite conclusion from reading that. Someone smart enough to work in black hat security should know how fucking illegal CP is, how aggressively its investigated, and know not to flagrantly talk about it on an irc channel and host it to randos online. At the very least they would use tor and figure it out for themselves.
Speaking as someone who lived in a place that would boil dissidents alive in the 00's: That's the most beautiful part of this.
If you know anything about downloading hugely illegal material you will keep your mouth shut because the claims there are completely laughable, but you don't want to admit you've been downloading hugely illegal material that would get you jailed/killed.
To the average person it sounds reasonable because they are an idiot.
To anyone with half a brain even downloading the pdf without doing it through tor, copying it to an air gapped machine, and reading it there is such a huge breach of security you wouldn't be out of prison if you ever did it.
So your argument is that the entire thing is faked? Faked so incredibly well that it will withstand expert analysis at trial? That they faked years of activity (down to the inode level of the filesystem) by this guy and didn't make a single mistake? Because his defense team will tear that evidence apart and will find that mistake if it's there (e.g. any inode activity during a time he has an alibi... very easy to find).
And that you find that more believable than that someone could just happen to be both a security expert and a pedophile?
Do you realize he wasn't caught because of his security lapses? The found the VM because they raided his house for a separate matter. Every indication is that, with the exception of using a password he stored on his phone (which, read the indictment, he clearly realized during the interrogation that he had made a mistake), the government would have never found this VM of his.
He did take the steps you suggest, and it didn't matter, because they raided his house, and he made a single, and easily understandable mistake: he stored the password he used for the VM somewhere where someone could access it digitally. If he had just memorized the password, they would have very likely never broken that encryption.
> Faked so incredibly well that it will withstand expert analysis at trial? That they faked years of activity (down to the inode level of the filesystem) by this guy and didn't make a single mistake?
At this point, we don't know that it will. That's making the argument out to be stronger than it is.
You certainly wouldn't want that guy in charge of doing anything covert! Is it trying to say he used his real name in IRC too (or is that interpretation for the file)!?
The indictment says he used the username 'Josh'.
Good point, I missed that.
News flash: people who are skilled in one area often are not skilled in others, and people who show good judgement in their professional life do not always show it their personal life.
It should also be noted that he did take precautions, many of them, and the VM was only found after they seized his computer for a separate matter. Without that there is no indication they would have ever found it.
Slow your roll, Judge. I think you're probably right, but don't you want to at least hear what the defense has to say?
Reading all of Cacti’s comments on this topic, I get the sense that the answer to your question is a resounding “No.”
Solid argument, mate.
Am I wrong? Going back over a month, you already had your mind made up. Every comment on the topic since is singing the same tune. You’ve characterized an indictment as “pretty convincing” and scoffed at the notion that a government could fake the evidence offered. You’ve engaged with someone who has talked about shills (and they weren’t talking to you) with incredulity. These are your words, The guy is clearly guilty.
So yes, it would seem you have reached a forgone conclusion a while ago and have been working backwards since. For the record I don’t think that you’re a shill, just a sincerely uncritical individual when it comes to the machinations of both criminal justice, and state intelligence apparatuses and their history.
Is that better, mate?
I did not reach a forgone conclusion. I reached an informed conclusion after reading the indictment and hearing the explanation by the defendant. That is not a forgone conclusion, that is just a normal, regular, every day conclusion based on the reasonable perponderance of evidence of what seems most credible. Reaching conclusions after reading evidence is what people do.
Could he be innocent? Sure. Could the VM be a plant? Sure. Could the government be lying? Sure. And that is why we have a justice system.
But just because something is possible, or you can come up with an explation of why something may exist, doesn't mean it's probable, and doesn't mean it's likely.
And for the record, since you seem to think you know all about me and my government-shilling ways, I was protesting the war at MIT before you were even born, and I actually think this guy is innocent of the leaking charges. I also happen to think he's very likely guilty of the CP charges.
By the way, do actually have any evidence whatsoever that would imply the government planted that VM, other than some theoretical argument? Because for all your bluster about rationality, I don't see you presenting a shred of evidence to suggest that this didn't go down exactly how it was presented in the indictment.
And for the record, since you seem to think you know all about me and my government-shilling ways
Did you miss me specifically saying that I didn’t buy into the shilling thing? Please don’t claim that I said or implied something I went out of my way to disavow.
I was protesting the war at MIT before you were even born
Holy shit, you know how old I am?
and I actually think this guy is innocent of the leaking charges. I also happen to think he's very likely guilty of the CP charges.
I think the opposite is true, but I’ll tell you what, I’d never reach either conclusion with so little information available and it all coming via one side. A prosecutor looking for an indictment isn’t an unbiased viewpoint, just like a defense attorney speaking on behalf of their client isn’t.
If i where at the CIA, i would hire such rotten apples, so i have a handle, and know where the handle is, and could very carefully watch, wether somebody else was pulling that handle.
And if that trooper went rogue, and i had to make a public exempel- all those other rotten apples i had, ready to do whatever i want them to do- would know from where the bullets come flying.
Spying always attracted those who live in hiding by nature anyway. Before beeing gay was socially accepted, huge parts of the spy community where more or less flaming. If the suspect was a peod- and lived a spys life since puperty anyway, might as well hire him.
"Government investigators suspect that he provided WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, with a stolen archive of documents detailing the C.I.A.’s hacking operations, but they had not initially charged him in that crime."
Wikileaks is a news organization, not an anti-secrecy organization who's First Amendment Right to Freedom of the Press has been illegally infringed upon by the US Government.
They don't actually publish news articles like the NYTimes though right? anti-secrecy seems to be a part of what wikileaks does but I'm not sure that would be an appropriate name either.
>They don't actually publish news articles like the NYTimes though right?
No, they publish classified documents. What they do is more akin to public espionage than journalism.
Ever heard of the Pentagon Papers?
Yes. But the press didn't simply publish them in their entirety without comment or context, did they?
I understand people want to lionize Wikileaks and consider Julian Assange to be the modern day equivalent to Woodward and Bernstein, but to consider what they do journalism is to discredit journalism. There's a reason Edward Snowden went to the actual press and not Wikileaks.
>Yes. But the press didn't simply publish them in their entirety without comment or context, did they?
Even better - Senator Gravel, doing his job, brought them into Congress .. something that was necessary, because the press was compromised and wasn't doing their job.
Or option C: a propaganda arm of the Russian Government.
EDIT: downvoters aren't offering a response, so I'll just hope or assume that they want evidence:
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-l...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/putin-dismisses...
[3] http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.771716
[4] http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/cambridge-analyti...
[5] https://sunlightfoundation.com/2016/07/28/on-weaponized-tran...
[6] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/the-sec...
Calling wikileaks a propaganda arm of the Russian Government is just US propaganda. 1984 double-speak here. Can you point to ANYTHING that wikileaks has reported or released that is untrue?
You can tell the truth and still be deceitful. Claiming to have had evidence on Russian corruption and publicly declaring an intent to release followed by silence and unwillingness to do so indicate two things, to me anyway.
1. The original claim is a lie. There is no evidence of Russian corruption and the claim was made for attention or some other purpose. Remind me, again, how many lies it takes to make someone untrustworthy?
2. The original claim is true, but something or someone prevents information from being released. This is the more insidious reason. It means that the organization will only release "the truth" that jibes with the messages/agenda they want to push, which is propaganda. Regardless of whether or not Russia has a direct influence of the release is unknown, but it becomes propaganda nonetheless.
My personal opinion is that Assange is virtually inseparable from Wikileaks and appears to have a god complex, using the platform as his mouthpiece on his view of the state of things while enjoying the comforts of avoiding consequence.
By that measure, the New York Times, Fox News, Washington Post, CNN, and Wall Street Journal are all propaganda.
they have their moments. they all tend to be good at cheerleading war, for example. msnbc fired phil donohue for being against the iraq war. last election, the washington post (in)famously ran a glut of anti-sanders material in a short time span (16 articles in 16 hours, i believe it was).
You see there was that little thing called the Iraq war.
>My personal opinion is that Assange is virtually inseparable from Wikileaks and appears to have a god complex, using the platform as his mouthpiece on his view of the state of things while enjoying the comforts of avoiding consequence
Except around eight years of imprisonment now. It being a relatively nice imprisonment doesn't change what it is.
does anything necessarily need to be 'untrue'? (a lot of propaganda is 'true')
Before scrambling to gather a handful of news articles (though no proof) which confirm 'option C' to avoid down votes, are you certain that you are not regurgitating the propaganda of a different government or corporation?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...
What evidence?
None of your links contain any "evidence".
Evidence shouldn't be difficult to explain. Loosely connected assumptions, however, are often difficult to articulate.
The argument you propose is that practically anyone who exposes corruption in western organizations could be Russian government propagandists.
Do you mind enlightening us how Wikileaks was a propaganda arm of the Russian government when they released video of US war crimes (murder of journalists in the Collateral Murder video)?
If another news organization received the DNC leaks and chose to not publish them, do you think that would have been ethical?
Is your position that, one cannot be a US citizen and oppose the US government and if you do you're a Russian agent?
The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity.
Julian Assange has an agenda against certain people/parties, and has demonstrably leaked things that support that, and not leaked things that refute it.
I say that as a detractor of many of the same people and institutions Assange dislikes, so check your assumptions of bias before you throw them, please.
Weird definition of a "journalistic entity" I don't think that any news source satisfies your requirement that it be complete non-partisan, even such a thing was even logically possible.
I don't expect journalism to be non-partisan. I expect it to be affirmatively transparent about its partisanship.
You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar. It's a human institution; it's necessarily flawed. That's why you source across biases and ideologies, and correct accordingly.
The thing I'm talking about is instead the deliberate pretense of not being partisan. Fox News calling itself "fair and balanced", or claiming "We report. You decide." are just particularly egregious examples. When you aren't presenting enough of the picture for someone to form an informed opinion, you're peddling propaganda. I know the propagandist can't admit that's what he's doing, so I hold journalism to the standard of integrity of knowing, and owning, its biases.
But it's ultimately a spectrum, and it's on me to gauge where on that spectrum any given source lands. Some things are more propaganda than journalism. Some things are more or less one or the other to different degrees on different topics, at the same time. Sometimes they're at different points on the same topic, on different days, or in different stories.
It's complicated, sure. But, holding as nuanced an appreciation of this mess as I hope I've implied, I hope also that you'll give me the credit of not merely talking out my ass when I say I find Assange to be towards the propagandist pole.
>You're right, though, that nothing actually meets that bar.
Then your post is content free. If you find nothing to meet your personal standard of being journalism than you finding wikileaks to not be journalists merely means they are the same as the New York Times.
>> But it's ultimately a spectrum, and it's on me to gauge where on that spectrum any given source lands.
In no way did I claim, or even imply some sort of equivalence between Wikileaks and the NYT. Please don't put words in my mouth which I explicitly disclaim just two paragraphs later.
My point is more that it's impracticable to impossible to share all of our biases, not least because we aren't aware of so many of them. When we've internalized a narrative, it becomes an unconscious bias, and can't very well be meaningfully disclosed.
Please demonstrate all the examples where Wikileals could have leaked things that refute that agenda and chose not to.
>The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks
What GOP documents did Wikileaks receive that they didn’t release?
> The selectivity of Wikileaks' leaks put the lie to their claim of being a journalistic entity.
It really doesn't, though. You don't have to be unbiased to be a journalist, a journalistic entity, or whatever you want to call it.
Fox News, biased as it is, is still news.
Fox News isn't journalism. It's opinion wrapped around selective "reporting".
EDIT: Yes, of course it's impossible to eliminate bias. To extrapolate from that to accepting overtly biased and selectively published content as journalism is unsupported, at best.
It's the selectivity of reporting that compromises the claim of journalism, not the bias. When you don't report on things that don't support your narrative, you're no longer reporting.
American journalism is pathetic. I hope you're just using Fox News as an example and not singling them out as the only exemplar.
Of course not.
They're among the worst offenders, they're far from alone in playing that game.
The WikiLeaks that released the "Collateral Murder" video was a very different thing from the Russian organization that exists today.
That WikiLeaks even had a wiki.
WikiLeaks has a long and ongoing history, and Assange founded it long before the Russia stuff. When and how did it change?
Dear god this thread is being hit hard by people pushing the US government narrative. I'm not saying you're all paid trolls, but HN is to the tech scene what reddit was 10 years ago which is when we first saw shilling hit it hard and fast.
Look in the mirror, man. You're accusing people, without a shred of evidence, of being government shills simply because you disagree with them.
I'm looking at your post history. At the point when you have posted 17 times in a thread with half of them being a literal copy of what the prosecution is charging him with, while by omission implying that the information there is somehow impartial, the fact of being a paid or unpaid shill is immaterial.
You are the only person in this thread pushing the government narrative and taking their words at face value.
Anyone who has kept track of these persecutions knows that unmentionable facts are thrown in constantly to try and get the defendants to break. Viz, Daniel Ellsberg being called a homosexual.
MUH RUSSIA
Good God. I don't like Wikileaks, but even if they are a 'propaganda arm of the Russian government', they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization.
> they still have First Amendment rights, and they are still a news organization
I agree. But the First Amendment doesn’t protect individuals or companies from any and all prosecution.
I remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. When a friend got in trouble for stealing and publishing data from our school, the state police went around scaring all of the parents and media with accusations of suspected child porn (completely made up, and never part of any actual investigation). Just uttering the words turned parents who had been closed lipped into law abiding, pre-judgemental, and supportive accolades.
In his case, there was never any plant (thank god), but honestly - I've watched this tactic used again and again to destroy reputations. If the State Police feel empowered to use it at will, it's entirely believable for me to believe the _CIA_ would go so far as to plant - especially given the extra-legal authority of impunity they are empowered by.
I remember getting in trouble for hacking with friends in High School. I don't remember the part where the police -- who were involved -- manufactured or planted child pornography accusations.
As you pointed out, that also isn't the case here either. Hat tip for the accurate username though.
Chip on your shoulder?
So the State Police (NY State for me) did manufacture child pornography allegations. I am glad your experience was different.
I believe that in this case, the CIA planted this evidence.
I love my username, one could even say irrationally so.
> In a previous statement, WikiLeaks said the source of the damaging disclosure had hoped to “initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”
That didn't really work out... I wonder if that was the real motivation; it seems a little naive.
For one thing, it completely hollowed out a previously common claim of attribution for the alleged DNC "hack": "We have some evidence of tools that only Russian state employees use!" "These CIA documents indicate that CIA and other parties also use those tools..." "Why do you hate America?"
What other method is there?
Put the info out there, hope it gets traction, hope we who care spread it.
You can't force people to care.
Prosecute the messenger; leave the criminal conspiracy untouched.
What criminality? Unless the CIA was using the tools against targets in the US, there's no US law broken.
Every country does it.
Common misconception. CIA is allowed to target Americans, and does on a regular basis.
Targeting Americans for political purposes is illegal. Targeting Americans for National Security reasons is perfectly within National Security Law.
Note I said "in the US", which I believe is a geographical restriction that applies, not "Americans".
Ahh same deal. Geographical restrictions are for civilian law and political purposes. National Security follows different standards.
The same restrictions apply to the NSA, and we all know how much that mattered to them. Why do you think the CIA is different?
That's the thing, if you look at the NSA, they were and still are absolutely empowered to do what they did.
The only person who got in trouble for the domestic surveillance disclosures were the person who blew the whistle. That's because what he did was illegal and what they did wasn't.
I'm pretty sure that criminal conspiracies generally don't get out of investigation by arguing their latest activities haven't been proven to be criminal.
Yup which is one reason why trump is pushing so hard on tariffs. The chinese have an army of hackers committing war fare against the usa and its trade secrets. Governments should not be hacking each other. They should be engaging in diplomacy like any civilized country.
War by another name, it seems like an admission that it's a war we are losing, or perhaps have already lost. It's also a bit rich to imply the USA is engaging in (or has any reason to expect) civilized diplomacy in any way.
I dunno, I think Trump is pushing so hard on tariffs because he doesn't understand what trade imbalances mean.
Didn’t Snowden encourage people to leak? At least on the surface it seems like he may have been role model for this particular actor.
The american people have a right to know what its government is doing.
Not any more they don't.
Instead of saying searched, perhaps we should say "planted." These are the same people who told us Trump was conspiring with the Russians, who used a doctored dossier to get a FISA. Until we know a lot more it should take it with a grain of salt, but if he is a pedophile I hope he rots in hell.
It’s amazing how many people on hacker news jump to the defense of a traitor, let alone someone that’s involved in child abuse.
Perhaps they put greater emphasis than you on the difference between "is" and "is accused of being"? At least on the child abuse side, I'm pretty sure that most defenders are doubting the evidence rather than condoning the behavior.
Yeah, I’m not a CIA employee, but even I use different passwords for everything and don’t store them in the clear. This smells like a government hit job from a mile away, much like Assange’s “rape” case. Snowden would have no doubt attracted the same kind of “attention” had he not moved to one of the very few countries where CIA, FBI, and NSA can’t operate.
Crickets from all of the "news" outlets that pointed to this incident as more "proof" of a Russia-Wikileaks partership. Very much like the Sony hack, which was widely attributed to North Korea (again, without a shred of evidence), you can be sure that there will be very few, if any, mea-culpas issued by those media organizations that uncritically swallowed DC/CIA misinformation and reported that misinformation as fact. Hopefully this episode will serve as an important reminder to everyone that they should always remains skeptical, of everything, until presented with proof they can independently verify, instead of mindlessly accepting basless claims that happen to agree with popular narratives.
I researched your claim. For the Sony hack, no actual evidence was ever provided implicating North Korea - just unsupported allegations. [Independent researchers](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/dec/30/sony-hack-resea...) found it was much more likely to have been disgruntled employees.
However, for the Vault 7 leak, almost no major news organizations cited Russia as a likely culprit for this.
I agree with your sentiment that basically any official information that comes out of the IC is suspect, but in this case, unless you can cite specific examples, I'm pretty sure the IC never publicly blamed Russia.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/mar/07/wikileaks-cia-...
>no actual evidence was ever provided implicating North Korea - just unsupported allegations.
No actual evidence has been provided implicating Wikileaks received anything from Russia either - just unsupported allegations. If you disagree, I welcome you to link below actual evidence that has been provided. Despite the exhorations of many, claims made by spooks, spies, employees of think tanks and 3-letter agencies is not proof of anything, in any context, ever. Its extremely troubling, and very revealing, that this simple fact is an anathema to so many.
That's because Wikileaks is not in any way a Russian operation.
Wikileaks is globally important as a whistleblowing operation. If you go back to the 1990s you can find the US government applauding Wikileaks' publications.
When Wikileaks distributed several large caches of US documents, and would not negotiate with the US Justice Department on disclosure, censorship and propaganda agreements common with most other news providers - this more friendly relationship curdled.
The US became increasingly hostile with Wikileaks, tried to get its operators extradited, even shopped around for internet sock puppets and social media campaigns to damage their reputations.
Wikileaks in turn became distasteful of the US, and happily publishes damaging materials on the United States. These documents also happen to cover many of the details associated with unsavory activity of the world's sole superpower, which makes the reporting rather important.
US media characterizations of Wikileaks as a Russian operation are, and have been, a (successful?) domestic propaganda campaign. The way the IG talks in internal documents (go find them) about Wikileaks is that it is an independent information organization that "punches above its weight" and has geopolitical capabilities as a non-state actor. That's much closer to the truth.
North Korea was very likely the culprit behind the SONY hacks.
If you read the leaked emails, you will find that SONY had worked with the US Department of State and the CIA to add American propaganda into "The Interview" with a plan to distribute it across the Korean Peninsula. Seth Rogan also did several interviews about CIA and State Department working on the set.
The group attributed for hacking SONY was "DarkSeoul" within "Bureau 121". This group is known for actively retaliating against companies that use propaganda to attack North Korean national security as a form of deterrence.
Additionally, the group posted, along with the SONY leaks, criticisms of what they called "the movie of terrorism" ("The Interview").
Of course, American media turned it all around and pretended that they said something about blowing up movie theaters, and caused a public panic.
Nobody in the IC attributed Vault7 to Russia. Wikileaks themselves suggested that it was a CIA contractor. US media did domestically propagandize the public via IC partnerships to "infer" and "suggest" that it was Russia, but no public statements that I'm aware of were made.