War Thunder players have got some stiff competition, as one Minecraft player has just been jailed for leaking classified American military secrets online.
As revealed by The Register's Iain Thomson, a memo that was published by the District Court of Massachusetts has confirmed that Jack Teixeira, a 22-year-old Air National Guard member, has been sentenced to a 15-year stint in a Texas prison.
Teixeira earned his time in prison by leaking the United States military's classified secrets in a Minecraft Discord server. It’s not often I’m lost for words but, c’mon dude.
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Ironically, Teixeria discovered all of this classified info during his time as a cyber defence operations journeyman at the Otis Air National Guard Base.
According to the memo written by one of the trial’s prosecutors, he managed to gain access to all of the documents in question by using his clearance level to find info above his classification grade. In short, he snooped at stuff he shouldn’t have.
Don't forget there's a Minecraft film on the way. Or maybe you do want to forget. It is nightmare fuel.
He then shared the secrets in a Minecraft Discord server to, by the sounds of things, a bunch of complete randos.
According to Iain Thomson’s deep dive into the recently published court documents, the classified documents detailed “US and NATO plans for supporting Ukraine, information on UK and US personnel helping out the Ukrainians, and details of a Chinese drone program”.
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After realising that he was clearly at risk of being arrested, Teixeria attempted to hide any evidence of his wrongdoings by… dumping his hard drives in the garbage bin behind his house.
Yeah, starting to understand how this guy was dumb enough to think he could get away with this in the first place.
One of the prosecutors involved stated that “Teixeira caused exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States. The scope of his betrayal is breathtaking. The amount of damage he caused is immeasurable."
Here’s hoping Teixeria spends his stint in prison doing something worthwhile with his time. Maybe they’ll let him recreate his Minecraft village using some LEGO or something.