FBI arrests satellite engineer on charges of espionage A US military contractor is alleged to have tried to sell Uncle Sam's satellite secrets to someone he thought was a Russian intelligence officer, the Feds claim. Gregory Allen Justice, 49, of Culver City, California, worked as a security tester on military satellites, including the GPS system, the Milstar military …
So if he didn't have 'access to classified material', how was he able to copy it onto USB drives? Or was security and proper separation of classified material from unclassified lax with no access controls?
Or was the stolen data not actually 'classified' at all, just commercially sensitive stuff that the Americans would rather foreigners didn't get their grubby paws on?
Or was the stolen data not actually 'classified' at all, just commercially sensitive stuff that the Americans would rather foreigners didn't get their grubby paws on?
Did you miss this bit of the article?
"Justice did not have access to classified material, but, claimed Special Agent Peter Lee in an affidavit, he allegedly handed over proprietary trade secrets that, under international arms laws, could not be moved from the US without an export licence – in breach of arms laws, as well as trade secret protections."
No, didn't miss that bit. But as the article later says he handed over USB sticks containing classified material, it wasn't clear whether he had obtained classified data that he didn't have access to (in which case, how did he access it), or whether it wasn't 'Government classified', but - as in the section you quoted - proprietary trade secrets (in which case it is possibly misleading for the agent to describe it as 'classified').
Or perhaps it's my interpretation - companies have commercial secrets that they don't want competitors to have, and in this case may require a license to export, but to me at any rate, that's not the same thing as being classified as containing government secret information or designs, which ought to be access restricted etc.
I'm guessing it's the former - that he obtained the material that he wasn't supposed to have access to through nefarious means, but that implies poor security.
There was a film (with Sean Connery and Nick Cage) in which a general was prepared to turn traitor to get the men who died in his platoon proper care and recognition.
If I cite that film (the Rock), it is because said general gave a speech to his men promising them a million dollars each for their services, because, in his words, they would never again be able to set feet on any soil that had an extradition agreement with the US. In essence, they were traitors going into exile and they knew it.
It seems to me that if you are setting yourself up to be such a traitor purely for monetary purposes, as apparently in this case, you should be smart enough to realize that you're in the same spot. You should therefor make sure that each transaction has the possibility of giving you the means to vacate the country ASAP and, at the very least, set yourself up to get some form of revenue somewhere else. $1,000 is not going to do that.
So this guy sells state secrets at a thousand a pop. He must have thought himself very smart and able to do so for years without getting caught. He apparently thought he was just supplementing his income or something.
Smacks of unbelievable stupidity to me.
Sure. But although you don't get much info on Justice's personal circumstances, a bit of guessing between the lines suggests his personal circumstances were not contributing to a sense of overall calmness and wellbeing. It's not always easy to make rational decisions in such cases. I tend to doubt that he was the evil spy as implied by the FBI, more likely he was just desperate and impulsive, and probably exactly the kind of guy that agents (of all kinds) exploit to get what they want. If he was a calm and calculating seller of national secrets, he would, most likely, have had a plan - even if a rather poor one - along the lines you describe.
>> "Smacks of unbelievable stupidity to me".
This.
Also considering that he was apparently selling trade secrets for amounts on the order of magnitude of what he was paying for readily-available soft-porn, it does not seem to me that this guy was very smart.
And he "worked as a security tester on military satellites"...!?
Oh, dear...
On The Internet:
- 16 year old girls are cops
- 16 year old boys are cops
- the hot babe from Stalingrad is a sweaty, overweight scammer from Moscow
- the Soviet spy is an FBI agent
- the supplier of bomb-making materials is an FBI agent
- the ISIS recruiter probably is, but he just wants you to blow yourself up
Got it?
Sending 'support' to an Eastern European 'girlfriend'? He's already a jerk, so stealing trade secrets and selling them for paltry amounts to what he thought were Russian agents in some sort of pathetic James Bond fantasy world of riches is more of the same. I feel sorry for this poor schmuck.
Its pretty amazing. In the 80s the US Navy busted some chump for selling sub secrets to the Russians. the pay out was around $40K if I remember correctly. Staggeringly stupid. State governments have millions at their disposal and you ask for hundreds or thousands? Dumb ass.
This guy was an 'engineer' and not more intelligent than this? His emotions must have been an utter WRECK to be so susceptible to such scams. What kind of idiot sends material help to someone they've never met in real life who can't be verified (unlike a genuine charity)? Another example of technology-derived mental illness... sad.
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