Originally published at: Nuclear engineer and wife charged with trying to sell nuclear warship data to foreign government | Boing Boing
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Why couldn’t we go back to nice old days of people leaking classified tank documents to try to settle an argument on a War Thunder forum
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Nuclear reactor, not bomb.
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Well this wasn’t millions, and if the facts as reported are accurate (always a big “if”) then this case does seem more serious. But I wonder why they decided to keep this going and wire an additional $70k to the guy for more info after it seems that they already had plenty of evidence to arrest and convict him? Hopefully they can get it back. Of course the way these things go I guess $70k is probably trivial compared to how much the investigation and prosecution is costing overall.
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Consider that he could have earned $30,000 by Rickrolling. I wonder if he would have been able to keep the money if it turned out the decrypted file was just a music video? FBI might have been too embarassed to demand it back.
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In an odd coincidence:
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When committing a crime that will get you prison for life, don’t do it for chump change. If you sell the secrets for $1 or $10,000,000, the prison time is the same. While $70k is a chunk of change, that is hardly anything like what you need.
Once you’ve committed such a crime, never go back to the well. Most embezzlers, fraudsters, etc. are caught on the subsequent tries. Like the kid who bought a PS4 as fruit.
Hit once, hit big. Make it big enough money that you never need to again and then run as fast and as far from extradition as you can.
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“There, with Diana Toebbe acting as a lookout, Jonathan Toebbe placed an SD card concealed within half a peanut butter sandwich at a pre-arranged “dead drop” location.”
This would make a good plot device in a movie when some person or animal eats the peanut butter sandwich before the other person can grab the SD card.
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A: “Where is the intel now?”
B: “Check the Pigeon Stool.”
A: “You mean the Stool Pigeon?”
B: “No I mean that bird swallowed the MicroSD card and we’re waiting for the damn thing to pass it.”
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It’s too early in the morning for this kind of thing.
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Might be more fun if a goose ate it.
B: It passed quickly, sir, but we still can’t reach it.
A: Why the hell not?
B: This goose and it’s flockmates are … especially aggressive. We’ve lost three agents already. Poor Jenkins was just a day away from retirement.
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RE: that “MICE” link, the salt over Edward Snowden is real, and delicious.
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The snarling rage. I laughed and thought, yep, link this one.
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Sage advice.
What did you say your day job was?
/looks skeptically
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Hmm, who needs nuclear subs? North Korea has a big sub fleet, but they’re all diesel. Maybe any snail mail sent to North Korea gets ‘special attention’ .
The original rationale for nuclear subs is that a nation could park them under the arctic ice cap, because they didn’t need to surface. Recent diesel-electric subs are very quiet because they don’t need to constantly pump coolant into a nuclear reactor.
In this sense the conceits of the Hunt for Red October are obsolete.
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