Tag Archive for: imprisoned

Ex-CIA Officer Imprisoned For ‘Heinous Crimes Of Espionage’


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Ex-CIA officer Joshua Adam Schulte sent to prison for “committing some of the most brazen, heinous crimes of espionage in American history.”

The 35-year-old Schulte was sentenced to 40 years in prison for crimes of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, and making false statements to the FBI.

Schulte was employed by the CIA as a software developer in the Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI) from 2012 to 2016.

“Mr. Schulte severely harmed U.S. national security and directly risked the lives of CIA personnel, persisting in his efforts even after his arrest,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in a statement.

In March 2016, Schulte was moved within branches of CCI as a result of personnel disputes between Schulte and another developer. Following that transfer, in April 2016, Schulte abused his administrator powers to grant himself administrator privileges over a development project from which he had been removed as a result of the branch change. Schulte’s abuse of administrator privileges was detected, and CCI leadership directed that administrator privileges would immediately be transferred from developers, including Schulte, to another division. Schulte was also given a warning about self-granting administrator privileges that had previously been revoked.

Schulte had, however, secretly opened an administrator session on one of the servers before his privileges were removed. On April 20, 2016, after other developers had left the CCI office, Schulte used his secret server administrator session to execute a series of cyber-maneuvers on the CIA network to restore his revoked privileges, break in to the backups, steal copies of the entire CCI tool development archives (the Stolen CIA Files), revert the network back to its prior state, and delete hundreds of log files in an attempt to cover his tracks. Schulte’s theft of the Stolen CIA Files is the largest data breach in CIA history.

From his home computer, Schulte then transmitted the Stolen CIA Files to WikiLeaks, using anonymizing tools recommended by WikiLeaks to potential leakers, such as the Tails operating system and the…

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Saudi activist Loujain al-Hathloul files lawsuit claiming 3 former U.S. officials helped hack her iPhone before she was imprisoned, tortured


Loujain al-Hathloul, a prominent Saudi political activist who pushed to end a ban on women driving in her country, is suing three former U.S. intelligence and military officials she says helped hack her cellphone so a foreign government could spy on her before she was imprisoned and tortured.

The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation announced Thursday that it had filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court on al-Hathloul’s behalf against former U.S. officials Marc Baier, Ryan Adams and Daniel Gericke, as well as a cybersecurity company called DarkMatter that has contracted with the United Arab Emirates.

In the lawsuit, al-Hathloul alleges that the trio oversaw a project for DarkMatter that hacked into her iPhone to track her location and steal information as part of broader surveillance efforts targeting dissidents within the UAE and its close ally Saudi Arabia. She said the hacking of her phone led to her “arbitrary arrest by the UAE’s security services and rendition to Saudi Arabia, where she was detained, imprisoned, and tortured.”

FILE PHOTO: Saudi women's rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul is seen in this undated handout picture
Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul is seen in this undated handout picture. 

Handout . / REUTERS


“Companies that peddle their surveillance software and services to oppressive governments must be held accountable for the resulting human rights abuses,” said EFF Civil Liberties Director David Greene.

DarkMatter assigned her the codename of “Purple Sword,” the lawsuit says, citing a 2019 investigation by Reuters that first detailed the hacking of al-Hathloul.

The lawsuit is the latest legal challenge to the secretive private cyber-surveillance industry, which often sells pricey hacking services to authoritarian governments that are used to secretly break into phones and other devices of activists, journalists, political opponents and others. Tech giant Apple filed a lawsuit last month against Israel’s NSO Group seeking to block the world’s most infamous hacker-for-hire company from breaking into Apple’s products, like the iPhone.

Baier, Adams and Gericke admitted in September to providing sophisticated computer hacking…

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Pols push Trump on LIer imprisoned in China – Newsday

Pols push Trump on LIer imprisoned in China  Newsday

Li Kai, 56, of Huntington was first detained in 2016 when he traveled to Shanghai to pay tribute to his mother on the anniversary of her death, his son says.

“china espionage” – read more