Peanut butter and ProtonMail: US charges underscore evolution of espionage in digital age
It’s an espionage case so outlandish that the renowned espionage writer John le Carré would have rejected the idea as too difficult to believe. The U.S. Department of Justice on Saturday unsealed charges against a Navy engineer who allegedly tried passing classified information about nuclear submarines in exchange for a payment. The engineer is accused of working with his wife to transmit military secrets to a removable memory card, hiding the device in a peanut butter sandwich and then passing it to an individual they believed was an agent for an unnamed foreign government. In fact, the agent worked for the FBI. The complaint against the couple, Jonathan and Diana Toebbe, reads like a modern day spy thriller, complete with details about protected national secrets, cryptocurrency and the use of encrypted email in an attempt to secure sensitive communications. Like the Russian government’s weaponization of social media to influence American […]
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