NSA employee charged with violating Espionage Act

Sept. 30 (UPI) -- A former National Security Agency employee is charged with violating the Espionage Act, accused of trying to sell classified information to an undercover FBI agent who posed as a spy, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

Jareh Sebastian Dalke, 30, an information systems security designer for the agency, is accused of transferring classified documents to an FBI agent who he believed was working for a foreign government, according to the complaint filed Tuesday.

Dalke started communicating with the FBI agent on July 29 and said that he had taken highly sensitive information relating to foreign targeting of U.S. systems, the complaint said. He requested cryptocurrency in exchange for the information he had, which was classified.

"One excerpt was classified at the secret level and two excerpts were classified at the top secret level," the DOJ said.

On Aug. 26, Dalke requested $85,000 more for additional information he had.

Dalke agreed to transmit the additional information at public location set up by the FBI in Denver. On Wednesday, Dalke was arrested at that location.

While the complaint doesn't state who Dalke tried to sell the information to, it does say that he reached out to the Tor site of the SVR, Russia' foreign intelligence service.

Dalke is charged with three violations of the Espionage Act.