The United States has filed charges against a software engineer who allegedly leaked a trove of classified documents pertaining to the CIA’s hacking programme to whistleblower outfit WikiLeaks.
Joshua Adam Schulte, a former employee of the US spy agency, was arrested last year after child pornography was found on his electronic devices in a raid on his home.
That raid was carried out as part of the investigation into the leak, prosecutors said.
“Leaks of classified information pose a danger to the security of all Americans,” said Assistant Attorney General John Demers in a statement.
The massive leak of thousands of documents, which embarrassed the CIA, came out last year – a year after Schulte had left the agency to work elsewhere. He had apparently been part of a team designing hacking tools for the agency.
Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, remains at the Ecuadorean Embassy in Britain, where he has been since 2012, even as Swedish judicial officials said last year they were no longer seeking him on sexual assault charges.
