On Friday, March 23, USG once more indulged its recently-acquired taste for indicting in absentia loyal soldiers of a sovereign nation — this time, nine signals-intelligence professionals residing in, and lawful citizens of, Iran. For carrying out their duties in service to their sovereign, USG saw it fit to charge (archived OCR) them in USG kangaroo court with the USG.crime of "Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusions".

For the role of "victims" of this "crime", USG chief prosecutor Rosenstein cast:

"… 144 U.S. universities, 176 universities across 21 foreign countries, 47 domestic and foreign private sector companies, the U.S. Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the State of Hawaii, the State of Indiana, the United Nations, and the United Nations Children’s Fund",

from whom the "criminals" have "stolen" "…more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property".

Interestingly, the most unforgivable USG.crime committed by the accused appears to have been a successful attempt to… re-create, in-house, "SciHub":

"The members of the conspiracy used stolen account credentials to obtain unauthorized access to victim professor accounts, which they used to steal research, and other academic data and documents, including, among other things, academic journals, theses, dissertations, and electronic books. The defendants targeted data across all fields of research and academic disciplines, including science and technology, engineering, social sciences, medical, and other professional fields. The defendants stole at least approximately 31.5 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property, which they exfiltrated to servers outside the United States that were under the control of members of the conspiracy… …Megapaper sold stolen academic resources to customers within Iran, including Iran-based public universities and institutions, and Gigapaper sold a service to customers within Iran whereby purchasing customers could use compromised university professor accounts to directly access the online library systems of particular U.S.-based and foreign universities."

I.e. roughly the same act of "terrorism" for which Aaron Swartz was hanged in New York in 2013.

It is worth noting that, while USG at one time, not so long ago, had "long hands" in Iran, these hands have recently acquired a tendency to get abruptly shortened — Iranian-style. Therefore it remains unclear how, if at all, USG intends to bring the nine "criminals" to "justice". And one may safely suppose that the only people likely to hang in connection to this "conspiracy"… are the remaining USG moles in Iran, who supplied Rosenstein and his assistant Freislers with their "evidence".

"31337 w4r3z" in our time.