U.S. soldier charged in AT&T hack searched "can hacking be treason"
46 comments
·February 27, 2025ghssds
superjan
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.
not_a_bot_4sho
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.
dkjaudyeqooe
It's not, but other evidence of a crime together with suspiciously related searches might be considered evidence of a crime.
zmgsabst
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?”
refurb
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.
oefrha
Out of all the search engines out there, he just had to use Google, the U.S. Big Brother search engine, to search for defecting from the U.S. Wouldn’t surprise me if the U.S. IC is alerted to these search terms in real time. Unbelievable.
null
duxup
His google searches:
-“where can i defect the u.s government military which country will not hand me over”
-“U.S. military personnel defecting to Russia”
-“Embassy of Russia – Washington, D.C.”
dkjaudyeqooe
If only he'd searched for "how to cover my tracks after making incriminating google searches"
someothherguyy
> Days after he apparently finished communicating with Country-1’s military intelligence service, Wagenius Googled, ‘can hacking be treason.'”
Terr_
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"
readyplayernull
He just needed big balls on his side.
vitajex
Dumb question here: How do they know what he googled? Is it a matter of serving Google with a warrant?
phire
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.
miffy900
This is probably exactly what happened. I bet he used Chrome as well. It doesn't really help that Google Chrome keeps history basically forever (on the order of months), even without signing into a Google Account.
tbrownaw
Or they searched his computer and it was in the browser history.
tdeck
It's possible they could do it without a warrant
metadat
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.
Lich
My understanding is that incognito mode just doesn’t save local browser history. Your ISP and google can still log what you search based on IP or login state.
tbrownaw
Your ISP can't see it because of TLS. But the search provider will know things.
null
eastbound
Is the IP hidden if I search from my workplace, where there are 250 computers from several startups behind a single IP? (and it’s not a corporate computer) Granted, Google can identify browsers uniquely using fingerprinting, even with Incognito.
refurb
Yes, it happens all the time.
bloomingkales
FISA. All that Patriot Act bullshit is still around most likely, including the secret courts to get secret warrants. It was supposed to be for terrorism, but just about everyone in history warned us over and over that these things get repurposed.
Guantanamo Bay is still around. The legacy of the Bush administration is for real.
wmf
There's no need to bring up FISA or Guantanamo. Normal criminal cases routinely get warrants from normal non-spooky courts for Google searches.
null
jarsin
Search "Snowden CIA google datacenter"
legitster
> “As discussed in the government’s sealed filing, the government has uncovered evidence suggesting that the charged conduct was only a small part of Wagenius’ malicious activity,” the government memo states. “On top of this, for more than two weeks in November 2024, Wagenius communicated with an email address he believed belonged to Country-1’s military intelligence service in an attempt to sell stolen information. Days after he apparently finished communicating with Country-1’s military intelligence service, Wagenius Googled, ‘can hacking be treason.'”
Seems like an easy guess as to what "Country-1" could be.
null
blackeyeblitzar
Out of curiosity, why are the prosecutors who are mentioned in the article from Seattle? It sounds like the alleged criminal is from Texas and was stationed in South Korea. What determines this legal process?
bloomingkales
Fuck, I was heavily researching what would happen if we nuked the Arctic. Apparently nothing, sea level won’t rise dramatically.
dredmorbius
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...>
tcmart14
It's about time the Arctic got what's coming to it, with all its ice and polar bears.
bagels
For your sake, I hope it doesn't happen.
tbrownaw
Like, the entire Arctic?
bloomingkales
I guess? Just found this:
https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/64637/nuki...
unification_fan
Did they get to his browsing history because he's dumb and didn't even bother deleting it before they seized his PC, or because they have access to the ISP logs, or because Google just handed over the data?
Regardless it's creepy. Use DDG, a VPN, and never persist history if you're looking for shit like this on the web.
The people you can trust the least are not hackers or foreign agents (who don't really care about you) but your own government.
UberFly
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.
> A U.S. Army soldier who pleaded guilty last week to leaking phone records for high-ranking U.S. government officials searched online for non-extradition countries and for an answer to the question “can hacking be treason?” prosecutors in the case said Wednesday.
I searched for both those sentences in the past year at least once. I also made other sketchy searches on a weekly basis. Curiosity should not be considered evidence of a crime.