Former CIA Operative Joshua Schulte Sentenced to 40 Years for Leaking Secrets to WikiLeaks
Joshua Schulte's sentencing for WikiLeaks leak and child abuse charges in a high-profile CIA case."
Joshua Schulte, the former CIA operative indicted for passing secrets to WikiLeaks, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by a court on Thursday. Joshua has also been charged with possessing a huge tranche of child pornography materials, and it is not clear if the present conviction also includes charges of possessing child pornography.
Joshua was already convicted in July 2022 for various offenses, which included four charges of espionage, computer hacking, lying to the FBI, and providing highly classified files to whistleblower WikiLeaks in what was to be known as Vault 7 leaks. The prosecutors had sought life imprisonment, but the Judge handed out a sentence of 40 years.
WikiLeaks started to publish the files in 2017, and the files detailed how the CIA eavesdropped on foreign governments and terrorists through bugged electronic gadgets and computer networks. The breach was labeled as one of the biggest security breaches in the history of the CIA.
Child Pornography Charges Linger as Joshua Schulte Receives 40-Year Sentence
Prosecutors had also recovered a huge collection of child abuse pictures from Schulte’s New York apartment. The files were encrypted and hidden in three layers of password protection along with other files that Joshua Schulte had passed on to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks has released thousands of files in one of the biggest leaks detailing the tools which the CIA employed to hack into phones, communication devices, and electronic appliances. The CIA had worked in close cooperation with British Intelligence to devise methods to compromise smart televisions and convert them into improvised snooping devices.
Impact of Vault 7 Leaks
The leaks, dubbed Vault 7, severely dented the image of the CIA in protecting its secrets in the digital age. The leaks were even more damaging than the earlier revelations by army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning in 2010 about covert operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and by Edward Snowden in 2013, which were linked to the National Security Agency and Britain’s GCHQ.
Joshua Schulte, 35, was a computer engineer and hacker, worked for the CIA as an analyst for more than six years. He enjoyed the highest security clearance and had designed hacking tools.
Handing out the sentence, Judge Furman remarked that he was struck by the lack of remorse on the part of Joshua.
“This is not justice the government seeks, but vengeance,”
Joshua said.
Joshua Schulte also raised concerns about the conditions in the detention center where he was held. Earlier, he was released on parole but was detained again for breaking the parole terms.
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