The Blue Pill.

[BIAD]

It always makes my day when established Journalism can bring the public important information and at the same time,
never query the natural logical beat the information provides. Below is an article about a CIA employee who used to
hack cell-phones, computers, smart TVs and other devices in order to acquire senstive information from overseas.
(The 'overseas'-bit is important for the BBC to get you to understand about a particular type of honour in this particular
type of duty!)

The piece is about a former-CIA employee's unlawful charges of 'leaking' sensitive information via Wikileaks and once
again, the author of these types of articles never furthers the logistics of how 'persons-of interest' are identified and
monitored.
It's obvious just by this banal piece that software is available to listen to any communication device anywhere in the
world, but the real question is who's?

Are we talking about moustache-twiddling billionaire-visitors to Bohemian Grove or Cheeto-eating dweebs chatting on
conspiracy websites and knowingly -or unknowingly, generating complex schemes they believe could do harm to certain
countries? What about old Mrs Miggins who sometimes likes to chat -on the cell-phone her grand-daughter set up, to
the charming brown-coloured gentleman from West Bengal who she met on 'Coffin-Dodgers Dating' website?

Would such invasive software care who it listens to? Would certain 'anti-country' comments made whilst listening to
a thought-provoking, deliberately-produced public-agitating television programme be considered tantamount to having
their name placed on a list titled 'Persons Of Interest'? Are such TV programmes designed to draw out such points of
view from its audience for this software to gather?

You've been living in a dream-world, Neo...

Joshua Schulte: Former CIA hacker convicted of 'brazen' data leak



'A former CIA hacker has been found guilty of leaking a trove of classified hacking tools to Wikileaks.
Joshua Schulte was convicted of sending the CIA's "Vault 7" cyber-warfare tools to the whistle-blowing platform. He had
denied the allegations. The 2017 leak of some 8,761 documents revealed how intelligence officers hacked smartphones
overseas and turned them into listening devices.

Prosecutors said the leak was one of the most "brazen" in US history.

Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Mr Schulte's actions had "a devastating effect
on our intelligence community by providing critical intelligence to those who wish to do us harm". Mr Schulte, who represented
himself at the trial in Manhattan federal court, now faces decades in prison.
He also faces a separate trial on charges of possessing images and videos of child abuse, to which he has pleaded not guilty...'

If he'd only had some idea of how computers and the internet worked, he might have been able to avoid this collar-grab!

'...After joining the CIA in 2010, Mr Schulte soon achieved the organisation's highest security clearance. He went on to work at
the agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, designing a suite of programmes used to hack computers, iPhones and Android
phones and even smart TVs.

Prosecutors alleged in 2016 that he transmitted the stolen information to Wikileaks and then lied to FBI agents about his role in
the leak. They added that he was seemingly motivated by anger over a workplace dispute in which his employer ignored his
complaints. The software engineer had been struggling to meet deadlines and Assistant US Attorney Michael Lockard said
one of his projects was so far behind schedule that he had earned the nickname "Drifting Deadline".

The prosecutors said he wanted to punish those he perceived to have wronged him and said in "carrying out that revenge, he
caused enormous damage to this country's national security". But Mr Schulte said the government had no evidence that he
was motivated by revenge and called the argument "pure fantasy". In his closing argument, he claimed that "hundreds of
people had access" to the leaked files and that "hundreds of people could have stolen it".
"The government's case is riddled with reasonable doubt," he added.

Prosecutors had urged jurors to consider evidence of an attempted cover-up, including a list of chores Mr Schulte made that
contained an entry reading: "Delete suspicious emails." They added that after his arrest, Mr Schulte attempted to transmit
more information. He smuggled a phone into jail where he attempted to send a reporter information about CIA cyber groups
and drafted tweets that included information about CIA cyber tools under the name Jason Bourne, a fictional intelligence operative.

Mr Schulte has been held behind bars since 2018.
His original case was declared a mistrial after jurors were deadlocked on some of the most serious charges.
The conviction comes as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange faces extradition to the US over documents leaked in 2010 and 2011,
which officials say broke the law and endangered lives...'

BBC:


A quote from a 2017 BBC article linked to the above account:

'...Wikileaks has published details of what it says are wide-ranging hacking tools used by the CIA.
The alleged cyber-weapons are said to include malware that targets Windows, Android, iOS, OSX and Linux
computers as well as internet routers.

Some of the software is reported to have been developed in-house, but the UK's MI5 agency is said to have
helped build a spyware attack for Samsung TVs. A spokesman for the CIA would not confirm the details.
"We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents," he said...'