U.S. soldier charged in AT&T hack searched "can hacking be treason"

I don’t expect him to get convicted for just the google searches. They possibly matter in this case because they direcly relate to his personal circumstances. In his legal proceedings, they are used as an argument to keep him in custody due to flight risk. I find that understandable.

This is why I take time out of my busy week to make sure I Google and plan at least one crime a week, just to keep the government on its toes in whatever discovery they’ll be forced to do.

It's not. Not at all.

As mentioned in the article, it's part of the reasons why prosecutors consider him to be a flight risk. He was searching for this, alongside figuring out what countries don't have extradition treaties and how to get to the Russian embassy.

Evidence can be circumstantial.

Eg, searching “how to pick locks” when you’ve also robbed a house — even though people search that without committing crimes.

That’s particularly true for evidence showing intent.

The question for evidence is not “is this alone irrefutable proof of wrongdoing?” but “does this in an ensemble with other known facts raise the probability of guilty?”

In the US judicial system, which is adversarial in nature, the job of the prosecutor is to put forth the strongest case which involves casting even minor details in the most evil, twisted light possible.

Every single high profile case involves these sort of details including ones where the defendant is found innocent.

All it takes is reading the takedown of a prosecutors case a few times to hear these “facts” with an highly skeptical ear.

It's not, but other evidence of a crime together with suspiciously related searches might be considered evidence of a crime.

There is or there used to be a browser extension called Track Me Not that would run random internet searches based on trending topics on Google News or whatever.

At one point I had thousands of searches a day on multiple networks on my "profile"

Do you work for the US military in any way?

If only he'd searched for "how to cover my tracks after making incriminating google searches"

> Days after he apparently finished communicating with Country-1’s military intelligence service, Wagenius Googled, ‘can hacking be treason.'”

If only he searched "mens rea" first.

Given the Russia-centric stuff there, I can't help but imagine what it might look like if he were arrested several months later, especially if he'd known the results might be visible to new management in the DoJ or DoD.

- "how to apply for a pardon"

- "whistleblower protections from Trump for exposing the deep state"

- "biden AT&T witch-hunt tip line"

People are overthinking things.

The court filing says they seized his laptop and phone, and seems to suggest all this information came from examining those devices. The google searches were probably just sitting in his browser history.

Oh, and then the idiot went and bought another laptop the very next day, despite explicit military orders not to. His opsec skills seem to be lacking.

Or they searched his computer and it was in the browser history.

It's possible they could do it without a warrant

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

Maybe they subpoenaed Google for the records of searches from his IP address.

Is that a thing? I don't trust incognito mode when communicating with google servers, that's for sure.

Depending on who they worked for, they may sign a document that says you will be hacked and monitored for the rest of your life.

Far better than the gag for 40 years or death, whichever comes last document.

Technically it's Google's data, so all they have to do is ask. If Google says no, then they get a warrant.

Search "Snowden CIA google datacenter"

He was a US Soldier, to my understanding he'll be tried under the UCMJ and federal government. I'm not sure if location has to do anything with it, as he held a clearance and committed his alleged crimes on US or US-held soil.

likely based out of there, or his unit's HQ is, even if based elsewhere. joint base lewis mcchord is just south of tacoma.

It's about time the Arctic got what's coming to it, with all its ice and polar bears.

Total worldwide first-strike nuclear capability is somewhat less than 4,000 megatons TNT.

Total worldwide annual energy production is roughly 14.8 billion tons of oil equivalent (TOE).

Dividing the two and solving for days, we're "nuking the Arctic" (and the rest of the planet) roughly every 10 days, or in actuality, probably about half of that. Call it weekly in very rough numbers.

This mostly goes to show that 1) we're consuming energy at extremely prodigious rates and 2) the rate of energy release matters. The energy released in even a large nuclear explosion is typically a few hours of energy output of a large (1--2 GW) power plant. Form of energy release also matters, with nuclear weapons releasing heat, blast, and longer-term radiation, each of which has its own destructive potential on structures, people, and the larger environment. Primary energy production largely produces heat and combustion products, by contrast.

Sources:

- Global nuclear arsenal: <https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/estimated-megatons-of-nuc...>

- Global energy consumption: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_consum...>

For your sake, I hope it doesn't happen.

Like, the entire Arctic?

Didn't they just fire 100 NSA employees for being freaky?

Option A: they used a correlation exploit combining taps of 14 undersea cables, with the audio and video recordings from his laptop and phone and the devices of his 3 nearest neighbours and two of the the cars across the street, in conjunction with multiple vpn and tor exit nodes. From this they were able to detect some of the keystrokes and virtually reconstruct the image on screen using lidar and radar to intercept brainwaves.

Option B: they checked his browser history on his laptop.

What's creepy? I would definitely trust hackers or foreign government agents more if I was trying to screw over my own country. I guess at least. This guy just seems dumb.