Prosecutors Say Contractor Stole 50 Terabytes of NSA Data (zdnet.com)

An NSA contractor siphoned off dozens of hard drives' worth of data from government computers over two decades, prosecutors will allege on Friday. From a ZDNet report: The contractor, Harold T. Martin III, is also accused of stealing thousands of highly classified documents, computers, and other storage devices during his tenure at the agency. It's not known exactly what Martin allegedly stole, but a report from The New York Times on Wednesday suggests that the recently-leaked hacking tools used by the agency to conduct surveillance were among the stolen cache of files. Prosecutors will on Friday charge Martin with violating the Espionage Act. If convicted, he could face ten years in prison on each count. The charges, news of which was first reported by The Washington Post, outline a far deeper case than first thought, compared to the felony theft and a lesser misdemeanor charge of removal and retention of classified information revealed in an unsealed indictment last month.

Comments

Oh brother

[Noryungi]

First there was Snowden, now this.

50TB of data stolen? OK, so they caught the guy, but, if he had been a bit less greedy, perhaps he would have gotten away with it.

Seriously, how can anyone trust the NSA to do the right thing (respect human rights, rule of law, due process, yadda yadda yadda) after these two... ahem... "incidents" is beyond me. Is everyone asleep at the wheel at Fort Meade?

And here is something even more disturbing: if a contractor can do this, what makes you think other people at NSA can't do this, for, you know... "fun" and profit?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?