A United States judge dismissed a lawsuit pursued by four American attorneys and journalists, who alleged that the CIA and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo spied on them while they were visiting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Ecuador's London embassy. The lawsuit claimed that the plaintiffs, like all visitors, were required to "surrender" their electronic devices to employees of Undercover Global, a Spanish security company managed by David Morales that was hired by Ecuador to handle embassy security. They were unaware that UC Global had allegedly "copied the information stored on the devices" and shared the information with the CIA. Pompeo allegedly approved the copying of visitors' passports, "including pages with stamps and visas." He ensured that all "computers, laptops, mobile phones, recording devices, and other electronics brought into the embassy," were "seized, dismantled, imaged, photographed, and digitized." In September 2021, Yahoo News published an investigation "based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials"eight of whom described details of the CIA's proposals to abduct Assange." Pompeo allegedly "championed" proposals to abduct Assange after WikiLeaks published the Vault 7 materials in 2017. Pompeo favored a rendition operation that would involve breaking into the Ecuador embassy to drag Assange out and bring him to the U.S. "via a third country."