The Feds Love to Stack Charges When It Comes to Cybercrime

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Earlier this week, the Justice Department announced that a grand jury had indicted former CIA employee Joshua Schulte for leaking classified information in 2016. While the indictment does not specify which leaks Schulte is tied to, several news organizations have reported that he provided the WikiLeaks Vault 7 documents, which comprised thousands of pages of classified material detailing the CIA's cyber operations and digital surveillance efforts. Among other revelations, the documents showed the U.S. intelligence community making widespread use of existing or repurposed techniques and computer programs to carry out its own operations. Unfortunately, the indictment offers frustratingly few clues as to how the government believes Schulte, a 29-year-old former member of the CIA's Engineering Development Group, carried out these leaks two years ago and how he was caught.