Former CIA Engineer Receives 40-Year Sentence for Vault 7 WikiLeaks Disclosure and Child Abuse Imagery Charges

Former CIA Engineer Receives 40-Year Sentence for Vault 7 WikiLeaks Disclosure and Child Abuse Imagery Charges. A former CIA software engineer, previously convicted for the most significant classified information leak in the agency’s history and related to child abuse imagery, received a 40-year prison sentence from US District Judge Jesse Furman. The sentence addressed espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, false statements to the FBI, and child pornography charges, as stated by federal prosecutors. Despite prosecutors’ push for a life sentence, Furman opted for 40 years.

In July 2022, Joshua Schulte was found guilty of espionage and computer hacking (four counts each) and one count of deceit towards FBI agents, following his disclosure of classified data to WikiLeaks, known as the Vault 7 leak. A judge largely confirmed the conviction in August of the same year.

WikiLeaks started to release the disclosed materials in March 2017, revealing CIA techniques for monitoring foreign governments, alleged extremists, and others through electronic and network compromises.

Described by prosecutors as the CIA’s most substantial data breach, Schulte’s sharing of information with WikiLeaks marked a major unauthorized classified information disclosure in US history. Attempts to contact Schulte’s representative for comments were unsuccessful.

Former CIA Engineer Receives 40-Year Sentence for Vault 7 WikiLeaks Disclosure and Child Abuse Imagery Charges

Furthermore, prosecutors discovered thousands of child sexual abuse images and videos in Schulte’s New York apartment, protected by encryption and multiple password layers, amidst the CIA leak investigation.

The 2017 WikiLeaks publication, dubbed Vault 7, exposed the CIA’s digital spying tools, including collaborations with British intelligence to transform smart TVs into covert listening devices, underscoring the challenges US intelligence faces in safeguarding secrets in the digital era. This leak followed significant disclosures by Chelsea Manning in 2010 about Afghanistan and Iraq and Edward Snowden in 2013 regarding the NSA and GCHQ.

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