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Crime United States The Military

Discord Leaker Sentenced To 15 Years In Prison (nbcnews.com) 81

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years for stealing classified information from the Pentagon and sharing it online, the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts announced. Teixeira received the sentence before Judge Indira Talwani in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. In March, the national guardsman pleaded guilty to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under the Espionage Act. He was arrested by the FBI in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in April 2023 and has been in federal custody since mid-May 2023.

According to court documents, Teixeira transcribed classified documents that he then shared on Discord, a social media platform mostly used by online gamers. He began sharing the documents in or around 2022. A document he was accused of leaking included information about providing equipment to Ukraine, while another included discussions about a foreign adversary's plot to target American forces abroad, prosecutors said. [...] While the documents were discovered online in March 2023, Teixeira had been sharing them online since January of that year, according to prosecutors.

Discord Leaker Sentenced To 15 Years In Prison

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  • Since the beginning this story has sounded wrong to me. I realize that the general assumption is that the military is full of incompetents, but in what context could this low-level idiot have possibly had access to some of this stuff? It smells like three day dead fish. The only possibility that makes sense to me is that someone wanted them published, and this moron was their way to do it.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      IT Person. They probably needed a sysadmin and he probably accessed stuff he did not have permission to because he could. Too many people do not understand that "possibility to access" does not imply "permission to access".

      • The lowest of the low get called on to prepare the power point deck for someone else. Nobody over a army captain (o-3) does their own work on their own, they have staffs that reach down to 19 year olds with no hair on their balls. If you saw figure 2.3.4.5.3.2.a.ii-ver(2.12) of the national nuclear attack plan, even though it was USA infographic of top population citifies of western russia per the CIA factbook you are the holder of classified materials and if republish the CIA factbook you are traffic
    • Its pretty clear that there has long been bizare problems with info security within the US military industrial context.

      Chelsea manning was a specialist (The rank above private , which you rank into after 2 years as private , I believe [im not an army guy so dont quote me on that]) and was given access to the whole damn lot. How that is even possible is bizare to think about. Why does a low grade analyst need access to private conversations between embassies unrelated to whatever it is they are analysing, pr

      • by MikeS2k ( 589190 )

        I wonder if they do what a lot of organisations seem to do, instead of having access levels based on rank etc, they just give every IT guy "domain admin" not really realizing what it means. I was hired at a school district on a temporary day by day contract and was given sysadmin rights on day 1. Now a school district isn't military but judging by these stories maybe it's not that far off

      • Yeah I dont get that either. Some parts of the US classified system are incredibly tight, and then occasionally they just randomly hand wide access over to some 23 year old with a documented history of mental instability and throwing furniture at supervisors (aka Manning).
        • As it has been described to me by US government workers, I am not one. The mail system (exchange and outlook add ons) lets you set default classification (metadata) the day you set your signature line and set up your contact info. They tell people on the first day to set it to classified for the department so it is immune from congressional oversight, if everyone does it we are all covered from being pulled into legal trouble. Nobody puts a price to classifying every piece of email in the department of
          • by flink ( 18449 )

            In a former life, I was a government contractor with a clearance and a CAC and access to one of those Outlook servers. 99.9% of the stuff we exchanged regarding the program I worked on was marked FOUO despite the fact that everyone had to have at least a Secret clearance.

            The reason? It would have make everything a massive pain in the ass to deal with if we over classified it. An FOUO document I can keep on my company laptop or lock in my desk as long as I take reasonable precautions. I can transmit an F

            • by flink ( 18449 )

              Also, just as an addendum, as the holder of a collateral clearance, you are not supposed to just willy-nilly mark things with a classification without a justification. Only an OCA (original classification authority) can do that. That's people like the president, certain generals like the joint chiefs, the secretary of state or defense, etc. It's not a long list. Everyone else is supposed to be following a site or program policy authorized by an OCA. For contractors that's the DD254 associated with thei

          • So like Google having everyone CC their legal team on every email so courts can't get access to them.

      • by cusco ( 717999 )

        Snowden was an IT contractor who just asked people **IN THE NSA** their username/password AND THEY GAVE IT TO HIM . He personally had access to very little. The Press Corpse want to make him out as some elite hacker, but the reality is that a bunch of people in the NSA appear to be utter morons (I've worked with two ex-NSA staffers, and that was my impression as well).

    • by Anonymous Coward

      So you have no idea about the story. Why give us your ignorant opinion then?

      Why complain about things you haven't the slightest clue about?

    • but in what context could this low-level idiot have possibly had access to some of this stuff?

      What stuff? Define "stuff". Classified documents mean a document has some level of classification, it doesn't necessarily mean it is Top Secret. The vast majority of government documents from the military are classified in some capacity and as such virtually all military personnel have some level of security clearance. Heck most contractors have some level of security clearance as well.

      I think the bigger issue in the US government is there aren't sufficient grades of classification to decide who can and can

    • Of course the military is full of idiots: it's big.

      Basically any large organization regresses towards the mean. Lots of large organizations like to say how they hire better than average, but they don't. The key to successful organizations is to keep achieving with an on average mediocre workforce.

      The alternative is small organizations, but they can't do big things, and they have their own inefficiencies as well that are better hidden.

      Oh also the military has to be survivable, not in a war sense, but in the

  • We have got batshit crazy in sentences. I can see a year or two, but 15 is ludicrous. That's not a sane sentence in any way, but we in the U.S. love to lock up people as long as possible, unless you're an elite. It's this guy's first offense, and it wasn't even that big a deal. Worse was leaked on wiki leaks, but becuase the dude was gay, Obama pardoned him. I just don't get it, we're an insane nation that wants everyone in jail forever for the smallest offenses.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Well, that is "tough in crime", unless it is an important person doing it. Then you can get away with rape, insurrection and a few other things and even get elected by the "tough on crime" morons after you have a felony conviction. Well, at least for the history books, the time when the US Republicans became a complete joke is amply clear.

  • a. Why had Teixeira access to such material?

    b. Why did Teixeira leak it to discord?

    c. What was such information even doing on a computer connected to the Internet. (regardless of whether JWICS was supposed to be a top-secret communication system.)

    d. Have they not learned anything from the Manning and SIPRNet leak.

    e. How can information remain secret if over a MILLION people have authorized access to it.
    • Amen
    • As for (c) it certainly wasn't connected to the internet, since the summary says he "transcribed classified documents that he then shared on Discord."

      On the broader topic, sure you can restrict access further and further, but that reduces the value you get from it. Something like 9/11 happens and they launch a big congressional investigation to discover why they didn't "connect the dots"... "doesn't anybody around here talk to each other?" It's a difficult tradeoff.

    • e- If a million people have access to it, it might be important but it certainly is not classified correctly.
  • by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Wednesday November 13, 2024 @07:01AM (#64942185)

    He should just have used warthunder forums like everyone else...

  • I couldn't find any specifics as to exactly what documents this guy leaked. And maybe even if they were unclassified, he shouldn't be posting them on some random Discord group.

    That said, the US government has a secrecy fetish. I used to have a Top Secret clearance, and a lot of the stuff I saw was completely banal. We don't even need to discuss the merely "secret" or "confidential" material. It's just an automatic reaction: it is easier and safer to over-classify information. The flavor of toothpaste prefe

    • by skam240 ( 789197 )

      The flavor of toothpaste preferred by strategic bomber pilots? "Strategic bomber" --> top secret.

      You say that but you'll feel awfully foolish when China disables our strategic air fleet by poisoning Americas supply of cinnamon flavored toothpaste.

  • ...his military trial will put the traitor away for life. He knew what he was doing.

This is the theory that Jack built. This is the flaw that lay in the theory that Jack built. This is the palpable verbal haze that hid the flaw that lay in...

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