Slashdot Mirror
NSA Contractor Indicted Over Mammoth Theft of Classified Data (reuters.com)
Dustin Volz, reporting for Reuters: A former National Security Agency contractor was indicted on Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges he willfully retained national defense information, in what U.S. officials have said may have been the largest heist of classified government information in history. The indictment alleges that Harold Thomas Martin, 52, spent up to 20 years stealing highly sensitive government material from the U.S. intelligence community related to national defense, collecting a trove of secrets he hoarded at his home in Glen Burnie, Maryland. The government has not said what, if anything, Martin did with the stolen data. Martin faces 20 criminal counts, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison, the Justice Department said. "For as long as two decades, Harold Martin flagrantly abused the trust placed in him by the government," said U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein.
... not to take work home with you
They said he stole 50+ TB of data from the NSA.
I'm not sure how this is possible?
So what did the alphabet agency do this time that they don't want the world to know about?
Museum of Natural History contractor indicted over theft of classified mammoth data
if he's THAT good for THAT long
But Hillary did nothing wrong.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Perhaps he was a prepper, a book writer, wanted to make a video game, weapons hoarding and hiding enthusiast (you know, the ones answering the call to service after an EMP strike and the meltdown of public order) or a sufferer of paranoid schizophrenia. Stay positive, prosecuting prosecutors!
Why is the trust that the government placed in the contractor worth more than the trust that the citizens of the U.S. have placed in the government? It works both ways, guys.
is this written by the screaming shitgibbon currently in charge of the white house? or one of his syncophants like the brand new AG?
I'm sure they'll fry him for this. Unless he was keeping the data on his secure private server (hidden in the closet under a pile of sweatsocks), then it's cool.
His name was Edward Snowden and we already know about. Old news. Dumb.
Holy shit aren't those things extinct?
20 years!!!
is the only punishment fit for treenuts traders.
For the remaining 5 nerds who still come here to get their news!
This is so ridiculous that I'm wondering if you actually believe this shit, as opposed to merely trolling.
Islam is not a race.
Check out the facial differences between Indonesians, Pakistanis, Saudis and Somalis. They look fuck-all like each other, therefore your post is shit.
Didn't have time to read the full description... but, wow!
They've already got mammoths cloned from ancient DNA, and they're training them to steal classified data? What CAN'T the NSA do?
For as long as two decades, Harold Martin flagrantly abused the trust placed in him by the government
Sucks when it happens to you doesn't it government!
Naw, realistically someone from another country offered the bloke cash for secrets, and he decided to follow suit and sell out his fellow countrymen. Wonder if the guy hopes he can get a free pass on treason because others have.
Sigh, if you believe this your all really broken.
"For as long as two decades, Harold Martin flagrantly abused the trust placed in him by the government"
Kind of like how the Government has flagrantly abused the trust placed in them by the average citizen?
He just copied it.
That is assuming he did it uniformly over a 20 year period, which is possible, but unlikely.
You would think they would have not only network but physical safeguards in place to prevent this. I see this as more damning of the NSA security procedure than anything else. Regardless of how you slice it, it is a massive amount of data to be able to go "unnoticed" for 20 years!
"Unnamed U.S. officials told the Washington Post this week that Martin allegedly took more than 75 percent of the hacking tools belonging to the NSA's tailored access operations, the agency's elite hacking unit."
Took? They don't have it anymore? Unnamed US officials could have better used the term "copied" I think (though not totally wrong I suppose).
Somehow I finished that sentence with, When reached for comment Martin said "the other 25% of the hacking tools were rubbish!" :p
...then why wasn't he caught sooner? Especially with the amount of data he was absconding with?
Governmental bureaucracy in action, again, most likely.
Dream as if you'll live forever.
Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
~Anonymous~
If he didn't give or sell the information away ('hoarded"), then it sounds to me like he was simply lazy about proper security procedures, rather than criminal. I know lots of people that take work home with them and it sounds like that is what he did.
Yes, it was a potential problem, yes it was a violation of the rules. But I bet his boss was simply more concerned with results than with security and created a culture of "get it done and don't talk to me about problems." The boss was probably too stupid to realize that 'problems' included national security leaks.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
... backup tapes.
Those are so easy to walk off with.
I'm retired IT, and many times when I was assisting on another site, I saw backup tapes and EHD, some old, laying around in plain site, some in drawers where tools and connectors were stored, so yeah.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
"Genetically muslims are largely of Negro ancestry."
Science taught us, that _all_ humans are largely of Negro ancestry, including your racist ass.
This would have been way worse than anything Snowden or Manning released. He discovered that they ordered anchovies for the pizza served at a staff party.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
How dare he compete with Hillary!
Your underlying point? Secret U.S. government agencies are dishonest. There is no good management; management errors are kept secret.
A/C has demonstrated a mastery of pseudoscience. If you continually insist on citing scientific facts, how can it ever succeed in its quest to transmute lead into gold?
. "For more than two decades, the NSA has flagrantly abused the trust placed in them by the citizens on the United States
...but was the information marked classified?
Snowden probably tipped them off.
Besides the glaring issue of Islam not being a race or ethnicity as has been pointed out, you have also failed to demonstrate the relevance of the "Negro ancestry", or show any connection between genetic defects arising from inbreeding and "barbarism" or terrorism.
I read this as "NSA Contractor Indicted Over Theft of Classified Mammoth Data" and wondered what the Government knows about mammoths that they are hiding from us.
> More specifically, if you look back over the case law for this, people generally get prosecuted if:
> A) They get caught lying to the investigators
So what do you call this? Not to mention destroying items under subpoena. Here's the full hearing if you want more context.
> This is why Comey said what he did - cases like Clinton's result in administrative punishment at most, and the worst penalty was loss of clearance and thus job (which didn't apply anymore for her because she was no longer Secretary of State).
There's also the fact that Obama's AG, Loretta Lynch, would have had to prosecute a presidential candidate. It's not like this server was some accidental thing or that she was ignorant of the Presidential Records Act. Here's where I discuss her email with Colin Powell on how to cheat the oversight. The original email is here (click 'view original PDF'). And here's a transcription of it for anyone who hates PDFs. Some typos are in the original, but compare with the PDF if you want to be sure I didn't add any:
For off-site data backup storage.
That doesn't mean a whole lot for a country that isn't even in the top 20 connected countries.
The US: The best second world country! 'murica!!!!!
KKK has been founded by the democrats. Democrats have also taken unions in cahoots with the mafia.
Most of the people say that current day living is worse than two generations ago, so if there is any undoing, they are not exactly undoing the progress.
More to the point: refusing to prosecute unless A or B is met is genuinely good for national security. If people know their mistakes are forgivable they're going to be much more inclined to cooperate with investigators to help seal the breach. If people think they're looking at 10-to-20 for their carelessness, they're far more likely to lawyer up.
The jew is jealous his precious secrets didn't go directly to israel instead
Obviously.
So he walked out of the office with insane amounts of data each year and subsequently did (apparently) nothing with it for 20 years? Something doesn't smell right here, that's a little like a jewel thief stealing some million dollar diamond and then throwing it on a shelf in his/her basement. I'm betting that this is yet another case of government officials putting insane amounts of time/effort/money in tracking down some "bad guy" and subsequently finding out it was some idiot with very poor judgement but no criminal intent but because they burnt so much resources building a case against this person they push for high level prosecution anyways because otherwise attention might turn to all the time and money they've wasted. Half of the "terrorism" prosecutions in the past decade have followed this trend.
Awww, why couldn't that say NSA Contractor Indicted Over Theft of Classified Mammoth Data ?