US Government IT contractor could face death penalty over espionage charges

Deeply fucking hate these kinds of headlines.<p>It is always the maximum punishable by the law and they never, ever cite the actual sentencing guidelines or look at prior comparable cases.

Considering we haven&#x27;t executed anyone for espionage or treason since Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, I seriously doubt that&#x27;s a likely outcome for him, especially since someone you&#x27;re going to execute has little incentive to cooperate with the counter-intelligence response.<p>He&#x27;ll get a few decades if he cooperates, and life if not: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_imprisoned_spies" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_imprisoned_spies</a>

Will we be seeing this for Menendez too?<p>&quot;At one point in 2018, prosecutors said, Mr. Menendez texted “highly sensitive” information from the State Department about employees at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to Ms. Menendez. She forwarded it to Mr. Hana, who forwarded it to an Egyptian government official.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;09&#x2F;24&#x2F;nyregion&#x2F;robert-menendez-indictment-takeaways.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;09&#x2F;24&#x2F;nyregion&#x2F;robert-menendez-...</a>

Who was the last spy executed? The Rosenbergs? Aldrich Ames and Robert Hansen are considered the two most damaging spies in history, and both of them got sentenced to life in prison. Times like this, I&#x27;m reminded of Ken White&#x27;s (aka Popehat&#x27;s) comment about how federal sentencing guidelines actually work.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;popehat.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;beware-the-flood-of-trump-sentencing" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;popehat.substack.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;beware-the-flood-of-trump-sen...</a>

I could easily find this guy&#x27;s LinkedIn profile, a profile which includes his past government-related jobs, and I&#x27;m wondering why would people make that stuff public?<p>Or maybe I asked the wrong question and the correct one should have been: Why would the U.S. Department of State or the U.S Department of Justice allow their employees&#x2F;contractors to make that contractual information public to the world, including to state entities that are adversarial to the US Government?

Are the people who allowed all of this to happen getting the same treatment though? Because how the hell was this person able to modify documents, and exfiltrate them from secured facilities? At best, this is a level of incompetence that requires a staff rotation with dishonorable discharge for everyone involved, and at worst these folks were complicit.

So is Dalke not also charged with espionage? He <i>attempted</i> to transmit messages to a foreign agent (who happened to actually be FBI). So maybe his incompetence makes his crimes less severe? I was under the impression that he also sent documents to a Discord group, and that there were foreigners in that group.

This article appears to be a summary of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;state-dept-it-contractor-espionage-ethiopia&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbsnews.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;state-dept-it-contractor-espion...</a>

Interesting: the article states he used &quot;an encrypted application&quot; but follows that with contents of the communication from that app.<p>Did they break the encryption or access the communications through device exploits (once in plaintext).

Dec 22 through Aug 23<p>That&#x27;s a long time, I would love to know the breakdown on that. How long was he operating undetected vs how long was he operating after detection (while being monitoring&#x2F;investigated)

NSA seems to have a major problem vetting people.

But espionage is a Federal charge, which is currently under a execution stay, as has been for the past 2 non-trump decades.<p>Will Biden ever follow through on his promise of abolishing the penalty? Possible campaign topic again.

Really, an Ethiopian?