The go to ‘sprinkle some crack on em’ tool in the alphabet toolbox.

He had state secrets on his machine.. why would they need to do this or what would they gain from doing this?

Impeaching the witness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witness_impeachment

IANAL, but I don't think they can introduce child pornography charge in the espionage trial--they severed the two trials, and the ex-CIA coder hasn't yet been convicted of child pornography (it's the later trial), so it doesn't fall under the "Prior Conviction" umbrella.

Fair point. There are other potential prosecutorial benefits.

There's still the court-of-public-opinion element. Such a charge might give allies / witnesses for the defence pause to come forward.

Facing multiple independent counts also increases pressure, costs, and distracts attention for the defendant against any one case. Given the defendant here is representing himself, that may be a major hurdle. (Last sentence here is a stealth edit FYI.)

Whether the CP charges are justified or strategic I really can't say. The practice of digging up additional dirt on defendants in specific instances is a venerable tradition however.

It's a tradition at those 3 letter agencies. They know that some people love wistleblowers and they want to discredit them. Just look at wikipedia pages of those wistleblowers or spies.

How would they know he had state secrets on his computer? And how could they convince a judge they knew he had those secrets without admitting to illegal activities themselves?

he leaked them. he had to have them for him to leak them. if you're asking how they know he was the leak, idk

>he had to have them for him to leak them

A smart leaker would then delete them and destroy any disk they touched.

Even if they knew he leaked them, there's no guarantee he would have them on his machine. Which would be another reason to ‘sprinkle some crack on em,' that way he would still be punished if he was prepared.

> A smart leaker would then delete them and destroy any disk they touched.

And the prosecutors will put them back. Just like police inserts a small package in your backpocket when they arrest you.

>Which would be another reason to ‘sprinkle some crack on em,'

I would assume they would know by doing a standard legal investigation where they get a warrant from the judge and look. I don't know what evidence they gave in the warrant application in this case but usually they have to be more than a blind shot in the dark request.

Thinking they ran an aboveboard investigation of the person they think leaked their surveillance tools is optimistic. Given what I've read about the CIA at that time plotting the assassination of Assange, I don't share your trust.

Makes him look really scummy?

If there was such a tool, why wasn't it used for others like Chelsea Manning?

Not every leak and leaker is the same. If a tool/procedure like that existed, it would probably be used on people who could generate positive public perception of their actions.

Apparently the "vault 7" leak was centered around how devices were hacked to spy on private citizens and consumers. The public has a soft spot for people who leak things that expose direct invasions of privacy. Chelsea Manning on the other hand leaked documents that I don't believe would influence public opinion of them very easily (diplomatic cables and different military things).

If you were going to break the law (planting evidence) to smear the character of someone, smear the person who has a higher chance of the public siding with.

then why wouldn't they have used it against Edward Snowden? he revealed a whole mass surveillance operation, along with misconduct by NSA agents, and there was a lot of popular support for him.

I still agree they could have smeared him, but I don't think it's improbable that the porn was actually his. Pedophiles are skilled at opsec, keeping secrets and doing unsavory things, so their background suits working in IC if they can conceal their behavior. And if discovered by a foreign intelligence agency, they'd be easy to extort into spying.

Vault 7 released a fair bit of code, didn't it? It would benefit state adversaries to leak that publicly, by burning exploits the CIA's using.

How would it work with Snowden? "Yknow the guy who flew to Hong Kong and stated he deleted all his data? Turns out he still had one computer he forgot that just so happens to be jam packed with illegal porn."

Much easier to trap him in Russia and claim he's a foreign agent.

Because that dirty tricks team was busy with Assange

It was; they got the word "rape" printed next to Assange's name in hundreds of headlines despite the women involved saying that they were railroaded by police and that no rape occurred.

Character assassination is a common tool in the CIA toolbox.

Her court martialing could already happen without anything else needed, and was enough to get her up to 90 years in prison, of which she got a 35 year sentence.

Living by the sword could result in dying thereby.

I think all the comments miss that this comment is said as a joke. I don't think OP is meant that they literally did that - it would be a particularly dumb law enforcement move that would jeopardize the entire case.

Plenty of people believe the government literally does that all the time, as a matter of routine.

This one is very hard to believe. A guy who worked on advanced hacking tools and was able to get out that much data without trace does not know how to use encrypted hidden volumes nor shred his hard drives?

Maybe he did. Maybe he wasn't able to shred in time.

Easy for me to believe. Highly intelligent and skilled people are often also very arrogant and think they can't get caught. Or, they have blind spots. Or, they just get careless about certain things.

Leakers tend to be optimists and idealists. But it’s cynics and misanthropes who are the best at opsec.

This leaker wasn't motivated by idealism, he was just a dickhead trying to get back at his employer.

Edward Snowden was the exception, not the rule.

I don’t find that extremely surprising. The Catholic Church scandals have shown that child sexual abuse is much more widespread than anyone would like to think, and with all of the teenagers out there taking nude pictures there could easily be underage porn out there that people don’t even know is illicit. Between intentional and unintentional possession there is probably a significant percentage of the population who they could get on this charge.

ASD love doing that too. I think they got it from the Americans.

Have we ever seen proof that any intelligence agency has done something like this in the modern era?.

I have no written proof to offer.

What word causes the ultimate form of cognitive dissonance in males?