Former NSA contractor indicted for hoarding classified documents

[bigheadfred]

Feb. 9 (UPI) -- A former national security contractor was indicted Wednesday by a grand jury on charges he illegally collected hundreds of millions of pages of classified information at his home during the last two decades.

Hal Martin was charged in a federal grand jury indictment with 20 counts of willful retention of national defense information, and could be sentenced to 10 years in prison for each count he is convicted of.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2017/02/09/Former-NSA-contractor-indicted-for-hoarding-classified-documents/6301486624863/?utm_source=sec&utm_campaign=sl&utm_medium=2

[Just_Victor]

I suppose he'll attempt the Hillary defense.  "Well she did it too, and no one has gone to jail...."

[mountaineer]

Older story on this guy:

NSA Thief Worked With Elite Hacker Squad
He was billed as a ‘Second Snowden’ and worked with the NSA’s most skilled hackers. But Hal Martin may have taken classified information just to help him get through school.
Shane Harris
Katie Zavadski
Nancy A. Youssef
10.05.16 5:25 PM ET
Daily Beast

The retired Navy officer arrested for allegedly removing highly classified information from the National Security Agency worked with the organization's elite computer hackers, who specialize in using computer code to penetrate the systems of foreign nations, according to a former colleague and the man’s online resume.

Harold Thomas Martin, III, who goes by Hal, was also enrolled in a PhD program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The university has a partnership with the NSA, in which the agency helps develop curriculum for the school and agency employees can take classes there.

Martin worked with NSA’s Tailored Access Operations unit, sources with knowledge of his background told The Daily Beast. In his LinkedIn resume, Martin says he worked as a “cyber engineering advisor” supporting “various cyber related initiatives” in the Defense Department and intelligence community.  ...

Former intelligence officials, who said they aren’t familiar with Martin’s case, suggested he may have brought the material home to use as research for his PhD studies. “It’s conceivable given what he was working on that he might have used the [classified] material for research,” a former official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The university’s director of communications, Dinah Winnick, confirmed to The Daily Beast that Martin, 51, is a PhD student in the Information Systems program but said the school had no further comment.   ...