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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.
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.
Assume 50 TB over 50 working weeks a year and that's 1TB a week, divided over 20 years gives you an average of 5GB a week. That's well within the realm of feasibility, even if the bulk of his data collection came within the last 10 years and he was relying on thumb drives, SD cards, or the like.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
You can't see how someone, over a 20 year period, was able to gather 50TB of data? 2.5TB of material per year is insignificant to the amount of data people such as him have access to.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
That and as someone else said somewhere else, it's the National Security Agency and not the Secure National Agency.
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!
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
... 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.
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?
... not to out-source critical shit to contractors.
But you want to be able to hire and fire them easily, on the whims of the budget, right? And to show efficiency with as tiny a staff as possible, right? And to obfuscate responsibility if something goes wrong, right? If your assistant commits treason on your watch, you're to blame because you should have picked up on it, at least. But a contractor? Who takes the fall for contracting the contractor? Fingers point everywhere but nobody's directly responsible for what a contractor does (except when he does something good, you can take credit).
Out-sourcing. Your stepping-stone to success in management.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
"They said he stole 50+ TB of data from the NSA.
I'm not sure how this is possible?"
Read again, he also stole a mammoth to transport the stuff.
> 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:
The contractor arrangement is occurring for several reasons. Of course, because the government allows it. But also many young professionals in the DC area are doing it intentionally in order to make more money. You can get a higher salary if you're a "contractor" to the NSA than you would being hired straight to the NSA. Ignoring things like benefits, the government just doesn't pay enough for security personnel. Hell, last time I looked the NSA was offering *up to* $104,000 for a job that required 5 years experience and a master's degree for software engineering (and probably requires a security clearance as well, which typically adds value to an individual....especially if you hire them when they already have the required clearance. In some cases the value can be up to $15,000-30,000, so employers can give you a $10,000 'bonus' simply for already being cleared and still come out ahead compared to hiring someone who isn't cleared at all).
Compared to the private sector in the same area, salaries seem to be at least $120,000+ for the same requirements (5 years + masters). With that level of experience it's not uncommon to reach $130,000-140,000 for software engineers who have specialized in system security in the DC area.
Now, with contracting, you have to go even higher because you're on the hook for your own benefits. So that person who would make $120k full-time in the private sector is probably somewhere up to $170k or higher. Now they contract themselves to the US government, which would have only paid them $100k to start with, but they have the $170k price tag based on the private sector, and they pocket the $20k difference (less taxes). So you do the same work (government work, which is infamous for being slow-paced and secure), have less risk compared to real contract/freelance work, and get more money.
In DC you're almost guaranteed to have better benefits and more in-pocket cash if you're a "contractor". Most of these "contractor" types don't actually freelance or work anywhere else, they're just gaming the system because they know the NSA and other three letter agencies will play along.
Maybe 50 tb isn't that much compared to the monsoons of data the NSA is collecting from all of us with no idea what to do with it?