
N.S.A. Contractor Arrested in Possible New Theft of Secrets - SuperKlaus
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/us/nsa-leak-booz-allen-hamilton.html
======
jbapple
What constitutes a "secret arrest", as mentioned in this article? Jose Padilla
was arrested and initially held without notice to his family or attorney. Is
that what this arrest is like? What proportion of the arrests in the US are
"secret"? When the families of the prisoners are told, are they sometimes
bound by court orders not to disclose the arrests?

~~~
matt_wulfeck
I also wondered about that. Why would you "secretly" arrest anyone? And here I
thought a critical component of due process is that we don't detain people
without charging them with a crime, which is necessarily an _open_ process.

But what do I know? I'm just a schmuck who happens to believe normal people
can read and interpret the constitution on their own.

~~~
vertex-four
The Constitution is a piece of paper, and might influence certain parts of
Government to some degree, the same as any other piece of paper. But the
beliefs of the people are what really matters. And if the people don't
actually entirely agree with the Constitution to the point that they're
willing to fight for it and drag their representatives out of Government over
it, it's as useless as any other piece of paper.

~~~
lettergram
Have you ever tried to get a group of people to protest anything? Like
seriously, the black lives matter are more effective, than people regarding
the NSA, privacy, or encryption. Even though some of the stuff we know about
the government is WAY scarier.

~~~
bdavisx
Not to downplay the NSA issues -- but it's a lot scarier for a black/brown
person to realize their life can be ended when they get stopped for having a
tail light out.

~~~
lettergram
I do agree that people will think that way, but it's actually not scarier.
Giving the government the power it has, implies the government can basically
do what ever it want. It has secret courts, secret arrests, and secret police.
That is way more horrifying than the very small risk of being shot - which the
numbers don't even fully support that it's getting worse, unjustified, or even
preventable. I recommend the Through the Wormhole episode: are we all
bigots?).

That being said, I do think we whould always be wary of police and generally
question the government. It's important we keep into perspective what's
actually a threat and whats just unfortunate. Both should be improved, but one
(the NSA) can prevent any sort of improvement, the police shooting rate seems
to be more of an over reaction and mistake that almost everyone agrees should
be fixed.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/13/why-
a-massive-new-study-on-police-shootings-of-whites-and-blacks-is-so-
controversial/)

[http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/through-the-
wormhole/...](http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/through-the-wormhole/are-
we-all-bigots/)

~~~
optimuspaul
I don't think you can say what is scarier for another person.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
What's the difference than someone saying it _is_ scarier? This reasoning
"only people who are X can say what it's like to be X" makes no logical sense.

~~~
vertex-four
"Needles are scary."

Well, actually... no, I don't find needles scary.

To be scared is an emotional response, and you can't really tell pother people
what their emotions are.

------
dguido
Here's the criminal complaint. Check Paragraph 12, sounds like he just liked
to take work home with him. I'm leaning on the side that this IS NOT
ShadowBrokers.

[https://lawfare.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/staging/2016/Mart...](https://lawfare.s3-us-
west-2.amazonaws.com/staging/2016/Martin%20Criminal%20Complaint.pdf)

EDIT: Yeah, Martin is not even being charged with unauthorized disclosure. Not
ShadowBrokers, sorry to burst everyone's bubble.

~~~
matheweis
Whilst trying to remain as politically neutral as possible, isn't this
basically what Clinton did?

~~~
roywiggins
Nobody has managed to find any documents that passed through Clinton's email
server that were labeled as classified, let alone Top Secret.

(One or two documents had classified sections, which were labeled with small
(c) marks. The document should have had big CLASSIFIED marks, but since it
didn't, missing a (c) next to a paragraph is not an arrestable offense)

~~~
rdtsc
> Nobody has managed to find any documents labeled as classified, let alone
> Top Secret.

Really? So you can just delete all the classification labels and send the
document to a yahoo account. Look no labels, so it is fine? You better ask
your friendly Security Officer about that (actually don't you'll be highly
suspicious doing that).

She had 10 or so TS/SCI satellite images in there. Other people would go to
jail for that...

She deliberately set up her own separate server, that wasn't an oops I
slipped, one doesn't accidentally stumble and end up with a separate email
server. Then classified documents up to TS/SCI were found on that server.
Imagine an NSA or NRO employee doing that.

"So yeah, Jim, I just set up my own work email server at my house, just send
work email there". "Oh, you found some satellite images there? You think you
got me, however, see, classification markings are not there so it's fine"

~~~
ChoHag
> one doesn't accidentally stumble and end up with a separate email server.

Have managed email servers. Can confirm. Would be more likely to arrive at
Mordor on foot.

> Imagine an NSA or NRO employee doing that.

Well, one kind of did, but we like him. He's one of us.

------
cornchips
Want to see something really scary???

Here's his house:
[https://www.google.com/maps/place/7+Harvard+Rd,+Glen+Burnie,...](https://www.google.com/maps/place/7+Harvard+Rd,+Glen+Burnie,+MD+21060/@39.1612929,-76.600954,3a,75y,149h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sTxLrvauce4d-rYPt3MTJAQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DTxLrvauce4d-rYPt3MTJAQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dsearch.TACTILE.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D392%26h%3D106%26yaw%3D149.19705%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x89b7fcfe81adf90b:0xfbc37b77559c0a0e!8m2!3d39.161058!4d-76.600697!6m1!1e1)

~~~
nocarrier
Not sure if you know this, but you can ask Google to blur a Street View
address by filling out a form. I'd guess he did this himself versus any sort
of conspiracy thing happening.

~~~
themodelplumber
I gave it a shot and couldn't find the form. Before I got anywhere near it,
Google Help seemed to suggest that the address to be blurred needed to be a
violation of Google's policies or something.

~~~
detaro
just open Streetview and click "report a problem" at the very bottom right of
the page.

------
matt_wulfeck
I ask myself what I should be more upset about: that someone walked away with
government hacking tools, or that our government knew about existing exploits
in critical American company technologies and kept them a secret?

~~~
redwards510
Understandable complaints, but isn't the latter just standard procedure in
modern cyberwarfare? I think I would be more upset if America didn't have any
offensive zero-day weapons to strike with. If we only had capability against
foreign companies software, everyone would just buy American and be immune.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
Would Americans be more or less secure in that world?

On account of (a) unjust governments being more likely to abuse power than
just ones, (b) unjust governments are more dangerous than unjust actors and
(c) the belief that just governments are plausible, I would say "more".

If you live under an unjust government, their curtailed power is a plus. If
you live under a just government, your threat profile from unjust governments
is decreased. The threat from unjust actors may increase, but that is a fair
trade-off per (b).

~~~
ChoHag
This is what the USA has forgotten, and why they are such a disappointment to
the rest of us. Unjust government can be as abusive as it likes. Just
government gains its strength from justice _alone_ and its acts of abuse are
its first step towards its inevitable _un_ justice.

Additional: Abuse is seductive. Abuse from power is absolutely seductive.

------
awqrre
He didn't learn much from Hillary's case.... Always claim that you didn't know
that there was any classified material and always bring your attorney along,
even if it's a voluntary interrogation.

~~~
zeveb
And make sure your attorney gets immunity, and make sure that the FBI promises
to destroy your hardware once it's done with it!

~~~
ww520
With hammers?

------
acveilleux
This is why things like mandatory escrow and encryption backdoors are an
horrible idea. However much the NSA would like us to use them.

------
r721
DoJ press release:

[https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/government-contractor-
cha...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-md/pr/government-contractor-charged-
removal-classified-materials-and-theft-government-property)

------
catscratch
I understand curiosity of sensitive data. I think everyone wants to know more.

I also understand that some people think that no one should have this power
and want to stop it. I wish that, if you feel this way, you renounce your
citizenship and find another country that acts as you believe they should and
just leave the other country alone, unless you feel they are threatening you
or those you love and you must do something about it, and even then only if
can do something to help in a way that won't hurt anyone now or in the future.
Yes, I know it's not always that easy.

But, if you live in a country, through your taxes and your citizenship, you
pay for and are recipient of the work of people whose job it is to protect us
and all other citizens of your country. And if you didn't know how they
defended you, you do now. It isn't always pretty, to say it lightly.

I don't want people to do bad things in the name of good or defense. It'd be
better if every country had a large number of grown up boy scouts to protect
that country in the most honorable way possible. But, we have what we have.
Sure go ahead- expose it if you want, but the more you harm it, the more
you'll end up with a group of people that are even more secretive and do
things even worse to try to ensure that security. I really don't want that to
happen. Things need to get better instead!

Many in the US say that we need to protect people from themselves, and then
criticize or harm those trying to protect us. Why?

I used to be much more paranoid and just group people into the "trying to hurt
me" bracket. But I grew up. I realized that almost everyone in the world I
meet wants to do good or at least has a motivation to try to accomplish
something they believe is right.

------
mxuribe
At some point is there an actual employee on the NSA side (maybe an HR rep.)
asking the account manager on the Booz Allen Hamilton side: please stop
sending us these guys/girls, they're just not working out, ok? ;-)

------
zymhan
"Two officials said that some of the information the contractor is suspected
of taking was dated."

So, only some of it. The rest was up to date then. And the old stuff is
helpful for figuring out how they think.

------
encoderer
If the accusation is true, nothing about this is related to whistleblowing.
It's closer to sabotage and espionage.

------
nylsaar
After reading this article a second time, I noticed that it's crafted to
suggest the suspect had stolen software. The evidence given in the article
only admits the suspect had documents, some of them classified, at his home.
To suggest that many computers and code was found at a programmers home is
quite ridiculous. Late in the article, the F.B.I "suspects" that he may have
stolen code. What this article lacks in evidence, it makes up in
sensationalism.

------
maerF0x0
here's an unsubstantiated claim that gave a great laugh:

> "For the N.S.A., which spent two years and hundreds of millions, if not
> billions, of dollars repairing the damage done by Mr. Snowden, "

------
zmanian
Wonders if this is Shadowbrokers...

~~~
1457389
>the highly classified “source code” developed by the agency to break into
computer systems of adversaries like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Sure sounds like a plausible candidate considering what Shadow Brokers were
touting.

------
the_watcher
For purposes of discussion, let's say he did take the data to leak. I'm
honestly curious as to the response. From everything out there, nothing he
took had been used for anything beyond espionage and counter-espionage in the
manner that any sane person assumed was happening. Finding a motive (unless he
planned to sell it, which I haven't seen any indication of, and would wildly
change the story) seems tough. Was he really just taking it to leak, being a
radical transparency advocate? Why just this?

------
kiba
Embarrassing? You expect at some point that people will try to steal and leak
secrets whether that's for money or moral conscience.

------
redthrowaway
John Schindler (former NSA counterintelligence officer) called this back in
August:

[http://observer.com/2016/08/the-real-russian-mole-inside-
nsa...](http://observer.com/2016/08/the-real-russian-mole-inside-nsa/)

This would explain how the Russians ended up with the source code for TAO's
toys.

~~~
dopamean
He is one of the worst personalities on twitter. For someone who could perhaps
add a lot to the discussion his contributions frequently boils down to "I know
better than [you or some other person] and so I don't have to explain [some
insulting thing he said about someone]."

~~~
redthrowaway
Nature of the twitter beast. You can't actually educate or do much more than
say, "read any of the 20 articles I've written on the subject" in 140
characters. And there are a _lot_ of people who are very wrong about the sorts
of things he talks about.

He knows his stuff. And he's dismissive and rude. The former forgives the
latter, for me.

------
engx
Whatever happened to the other "second Snowden" where it was reported DoJ was
reluctant to prosecute?

[http://news.yahoo.com/feds-identify-suspected--second-
leaker...](http://news.yahoo.com/feds-identify-suspected--second-leaker--for-
snowden-reporters-165741571.html)

------
eeZah7Ux
"New Theft of Secrets", as if whistleblowing was a bad thing.

"he stole and disclosed highly classified computer codes developed to hack
into the networks of foreign governments"

"different in nature from Mr. Snowden’s theft"

What's next, NYtimes, calling people "rats" for reporting a homicide?

~~~
VelociRapster
Are you of the opinion that whistleblowing and espionage are the same thing?

It's one thing to call attention to warrantless wiretapping and
unconstitutional practices. It's an entirely different thing to take and
distribute the source code of a tool used to access foreign government
systems. The former is illegal the latter is literally the reason why the NSA
was created.

~~~
withholding
The article clearly implies that Snowden's actions were "theft"

~~~
zeveb
Which they were. Also, espionage. Also, treason.

And — also — not whistleblowing, because _nothing he has alleged is illegal_.

~~~
dragonwriter
> nothing he has alleged is illegal.

At least one surveillance program revealed by Snowden has been challenged in
US courts and found to be illegal, whether any others revealed were illegal
remains a disputed point.

[http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-
metadat...](http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/politics/nsa-telephone-metadata-
illegal-court/)

------
NN88
they got him a month ago. gat'damn.

the US Government is playing a different game right now. Play time is over.

------
NN88
This dummy was caught red handed. Documents, hardware, etc.

