A former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) software engineer who was convicted for carrying out the largest theft of classified information in the agency’s history and of charges related to child abuse imagery was sentenced to 40 years in prison on Thursday. According to the newspaper, the judge did not impose a life sentence as sought by prosecutors. Joshua Schulte was convicted in July 2022 on four counts each of espionage and computer hacking and one count of lying to FBI agents, after giving classified materials to the whistleblowing agency WikiLeaks in the so-called Vault 7 leak. WikiLeaks in March 2017 began publishing the materials, which concerned how the CIA surveilled foreign governments, alleged extremists and others by compromising their electronics and computer networks. The leak, named Vault 7 by WikiLeaks, raised questions about the inability of US spy agencies to protect secret documents in the digital age.

Source: The Guardian February 02, 2024 07:37 UTC