Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by kerkeslager on Friday June 10, 2016 @05:29PM
(#11880177)
Here's the punishments they received: "In all, the conduct of 57 Secret Service personnel was reviewed, including 11 at the SES [Senior Executive Service] level. Of those, 41 are receiving some level of discipline. This discipline includes a letter of reprimand to one individual, suspended discipline contingent on no further misconduct for a period of five years, and suspensions from duty without pay for periods of up to 45 days. The one individual found by the Inspector General to have disclosed the private information to an outside source, the Washington Post, has resigned from the Secret Service."
In contrast:
"On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, and two counts of violating the Espionage Act through unauthorized communication of national defense information and "willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person." Each of the three charges carries a maximum possible prison term of ten years. The charge was initially secret and was unsealed a week later."[1]
"After making his concerns about mistreatment of whistleblowers known to his superiors, Crane was removed from his position in 2013."[2]
"In April 2010, Drake was indicted by a Baltimore, Maryland grand jury on the following charges: 1) Willful Retention of National Defense Information 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) (5 counts)
(793(e) is a modification of the Espionage Act of 1917 made under the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950), 2) Obstructing justice 18 U.S.C. § 1519 (1 count), and 3) Making a False Statement 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a) (4 counts)"[3]
Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by maxxxxx on Friday June 10, 2016 @04:24PM
(#11879713)
Now scale that behavior up by a factor of 10 where people never get caught. Same with Snowden. There are probably dozens of other people accessing the same data but handing it to a political party or selling it somewhere else.
Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by zeveb on Friday June 10, 2016 @05:29PM
(#11880179)
> Now scale that behavior up by a factor of 10 where people never get caught. Same with Snowden.
Snowden hasn't been caught yet, but we can devoutly hope that he will be someday.
What he did was no different: taking information he had no need to know about but had access to, and giving it to folks who had neither need nor access.
As for selling it — he seems to have made quite the career from his crime.
Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by yompers888 on Saturday June 11, 2016 @05:02AM
(#11882745)
In terms of it being a startlingly large group implicated in wrongdoing, I agree. However, I would argue that this intended harassment of an elected representative by a self-protecting bureaucracy is more heinous than the corrupt waste of money (and accompanied sharing of classified ships' schedules.) Maybe that's because I see the greatest threats to the US being internal rather than external. In both cases they should be punished harshly (and I'm satisfied to say that Navy careers are being ended quickly, with accompanying UCMJ sentencing), but one of these is the janitor who steals office supplies, while the other is the janitor who finds an unlocked computer and looks for incriminating emails for later blackmail.
Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by jowiar on Friday June 10, 2016 @05:42PM
(#11880301)
This is... the biggest thing that scares me about the assorted 3-letter-acronyms -- Not that they're spying on you or me (because most of us are irrelevant), but that they may have material on those with control of budgets and bombs.
Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by facetube on Friday June 10, 2016 @03:59PM
(#11879534)
If they're not in jail, they're not being punished. This is a staggering amount of willful, intentional corruption. The criminal conspiracy and "illegal fun" rises all of the way to Secret Service Assistant Director Ed Lowery. The only acceptable answer to this is to flush the toilet and rebuild the agency from the ground up.
Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by poof131 on Friday June 10, 2016 @05:55PM
(#11880406)
Another sad day for government and its inability to maintain any sense of accountability. As others have stated, I don’t understand how this isn’t a criminal matter. Beyond just privacy issues, this seems to fit the definition of blackmail in D.C.
“Blackmail also has two elements. The first relates to criminal intent. That is, the person needs to intend to obtain property from someone else or to cause the other person to do or refrain from doing something. Second, in order to achieve the intended goal, the person needs to threaten either: (1) to accuse the other person of a crime, (2) to expose a secret or asserted fact that could subject the other person to “hatred, contempt, or ridicule,” or (3) to damage the other person’s reputation.” [1]
They exposed the congressman’s secrets with the intent to cause him to refrain from critiquing the agency. How isn't this a crime?
Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by doug1001 on Sunday June 12, 2016 @10:07AM
(#11888134)
The precise context--which i didn't see mentioned in the OP--makes this story many times worse: Why were the SS out to get Rep Chaffetz? Because he was asking them questions during a Congressional Hearing. Why was the Hearing called? Because of an incident in which two senior SS got drunk at a farewell party for a colleague and rammed their car into a White House barricade. (Sadly) not from The Onion
Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by koenigdavidmj on Friday June 10, 2016 @04:10PM
(#11879618)
Our corruption doesn't require average citizens to pay bribes in order to get basic bureaucrats to do their jobs (simple things like obtaining a birth certificate) or to avoid arrest for a simple traffic stop. It's nearly all at the high level.
Whether that's better or worse is worth discussing.
Of course, you can get it back, but it's up to you to prove that it's your money that they've just confiscated from you. Hope you don't need to hire a lawyer to get your money back since now you have no money.
Re:Secret Service Employees Punished For Illegally Accessing...
by hackney on Friday June 10, 2016 @04:02PM
(#11879560)
The only thing secret about their service is how stupid these people really are. It's unfortunate that instead of taking healthy criticism from another US citizen, they instead chose to be vindictively juvenile. Real men don't hide from the truth. Not surprised, unfortunately.
In contrast:
"On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, and two counts of violating the Espionage Act through unauthorized communication of national defense information and "willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person." Each of the three charges carries a maximum possible prison term of ten years. The charge was initially secret and was unsealed a week later."[1]
"After making his concerns about mistreatment of whistleblowers known to his superiors, Crane was removed from his position in 2013."[2]
"In April 2010, Drake was indicted by a Baltimore, Maryland grand jury on the following charges: 1) Willful Retention of National Defense Information 18 U.S.C. § 793(e) (5 counts) (793(e) is a modification of the Espionage Act of 1917 made under the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950), 2) Obstructing justice 18 U.S.C. § 1519 (1 count), and 3) Making a False Statement 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a) (4 counts)"[3]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Criminal_charge...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crane_(government_officia...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake#Indictmen...
Snowden hasn't been caught yet, but we can devoutly hope that he will be someday.
What he did was no different: taking information he had no need to know about but had access to, and giving it to folks who had neither need nor access.
As for selling it — he seems to have made quite the career from his crime.
Reminds me of this recent article on the US Navy corruption scandal, just astonishing-
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/seduc...
Also, there was a short HN discussion of Fat Leonard recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11792183
This sort of behaviour shouldn't be a disciplinary matter - it should be a criminal matter.
“Blackmail also has two elements. The first relates to criminal intent. That is, the person needs to intend to obtain property from someone else or to cause the other person to do or refrain from doing something. Second, in order to achieve the intended goal, the person needs to threaten either: (1) to accuse the other person of a crime, (2) to expose a secret or asserted fact that could subject the other person to “hatred, contempt, or ridicule,” or (3) to damage the other person’s reputation.” [1]
They exposed the congressman’s secrets with the intent to cause him to refrain from critiquing the agency. How isn't this a crime?
[1] http://koehlerlaw.net/assault-theft/extortionblackmail/
It's good to be the executive branch.
Whether that's better or worse is worth discussing.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11862582
Of course, you can get it back, but it's up to you to prove that it's your money that they've just confiscated from you. Hope you don't need to hire a lawyer to get your money back since now you have no money.