Charging Foreign Intelligence Services

In the latest of these adventures, the US Justice Department is charging a North Korean with the Sony hack and the Wannacry attacks.  "Park Jin Hyok was accused in a criminal complaint dated June 8 but unsealed Thursday of working with other unnamed co-conspirators to conduct a series of cyberattacks on corporate and financial networks to steal money and information at the direction of the North Korean government."

In the same week, the British have charged two GRU officers who attempted to murder Sergei Skripal with a Russian nerve agent.  That was on top of the Chinese military officers charged for stealing corporate secrets (link to previous post) .  Somewhere along the line, governments seem to have discovered that intelligence services do things the governments deny, so indicting them years later is proof that their denials were hollow. 

I want to remind everyone what DNI James Clapper said about this in one of his many testimonies on the Hill.  He was referring to the theft of data from OPM, our holder of security clearance information.  "People should remember we live in glass houses."  He elaborated on it, but the idea was intelligence services do this kind of thing all the time but they don't arrest one another, or even make this kind of discovery public.  It makes other intelligence services be more careful to not get caught.  That makes intelligence collection everywhere harder to do.  They have enough help with that aspect from our technology companies in the US. 

I think these indictments are a waste of time and done by people who know very little about how Intelligence works.  Trials, even trial preparation, expose sources and methods.  The prosecution has to say how they know the person is guilty, should he ever come to trial (not likely).  So exposing sources and methods for a person or persons who will never stand trial is not just a waste of time;  it is an unnecessary risk to the community.