Tenet insanabile multos scribendi cacoethes - Juvenal
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Techie does bird for selling MI6 secrets
ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE included downloading Secret Intelligence Service staff lists and trying to sell them to the Dutch, of all people, for one software engineer.
Daniel Houghton, 25, of Hoxton in east London, pleaded guilty to two offences under the Official Secrets Act and was sentenced to a year's porridge but is already out due to time served. While at the home of 007 Houghton copied over 7,000 files onto a memory stick when not doing his actual job as a £23,000 per year software engineer.
Apparently not realising that the Netherlands is actually an ally of the UK, Houghton tried to sell the data to the Dutch secret service for £1 million. But the buyers contacted the British security services when they received the offer, initially believing it to be a hoax from someone who had perhaps been smoking too much of the wacky baccy in Holland's coffee shops.
In bugged and recorded negotiations, Houghton was bargained down to £900,000, but when he handed over the files on 1 March he was arrested while carrying the cash in a suitcase.
"This was not an offence committed by a calculating ideologue to disclose material to a hostile sovereign state," said David Perry QC, defending, according to the BBC.
Perry described Houghton as a "naive young man who came across as a loner", and said that he had carried out the crime at the behest of voices in his head.
Judge Justice Bean sentenced Houghton to 12 months, but he was released on probation owing to the length of time he had already spent in prison. µ
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The thing about hearing voices is that they come from your own mind, just in a way that makes it seem like they're coming from some other source. No one has really been able to figure out why the disconnect occurs(the answer might cure a lot of mental illness if it's discovered), but my point is that this guy almost certainly liked the idea of handing over secrets before the voices told him to.
Remember this if you're ever on a jury that hears the "voices" defense. If the voices tell someone to kill someone or jump off a bridge, or whatever, it's because they wanted to, the voices just supply them with an apparent justification.
You're hearing this from someone who's more experienced with voices than a lot of psychiatrists. I'm a stable(because of the medication) paranoid schizophrenic, and I'm here to tell you that the voices never tell you anything you don't want to hear.
Btw, While I still suffer from them, I know they're not real. Technically, in my case, it was more like ideas instead of voices, sometimes I'd have visions. Still do to a certain extent, which is one of the reasons I don't drive. I lie and tell people it's too expensive or that my ADD might make it dangerous, but it's the visions.