Posted on 10/07/2016 4:35:38 PM PDT by drewh
Harold Thomas Martin, a 51-year-old US National Security Agency contractor from Maryland, may be remembered as the second Edward Snowden, although there are many differences between the two cases.
Martin, a former US Navy officer with top secret national security clearance, was arrested on Aug. 27 by the FBI and charged with the unauthorized removal and retention for many years of highly-sensitive classified documents.
The purloined materials found in raids of his home and his car, which were described by as capable of causing exceptionally grave damage to US national security.
Like Snowden, Martin worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, which hires out workers skilled in intelligence fields to American intelligence agencies, which often prefer to employ some workers as contractors for economic and legal reasons.
Senior members of the giant company, after they retired from the US defense sector, have strong ties in the corridors of power in Washington.
In a statement, the FBI said that Martin admitted some of the charges against him, when a large cache of printed documents and computer files marked top secret or sensitive, were found in his home and his car, He also owned up to leaking sensitive documents from his office.
His admission revealed that valuable sources of human intelligence (humint) and signal intelligence (sigint) had been compromised and assets were in danger of elimination.
Marins motives, not so far revealed, for stealing NSA confidential materials differ from Snowdons urge to blow the whistle on NSA practices, which he claimed were in violation of the US Constitution.
The programs he stole were not the same. They included a cache of codes for breaking encryption, some of which were connected to US efforts to hack into the cyber systems of such cyber adversaries as Russia, Iran, North Korea and China.
According to some official sources, the disclosure of some of these codes could allow targets of NSA espionage to find out they were being hacked and enable some foreign secret agencies to reuse the tools.
Clearly, the NSA had not improved its screening methods for employees in the three years since Snowdon absconded with countless classified documents, ending up in asylum in Moscow.
Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the US House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that Martins arrest made it painfully clear that the intelligence community still has much to do to institutionalize reforms designed to protect in advance the nations sources and methods from insider threats.
Martin was assigned by the same contractor as Snowdon and passed all of the security checks including a polygraph test, before defeating NSA security measures and making off with a treasure trove of classified documents in printed and file form.
In the last two years, Chelsea Manning and Thomas Drake were also arrested and convicted as illegal leakers of classified materials.
Wednesday, Oct. 5, Snowdon tweeted a message from Moscow suggesting an ulterior motive behind Martin arrest:This is huge. Did the FBI secretly arrest the person behind the reports that NSA sat on huge flaws in US products? he asked.
The FBI and NSA are still trying to discover what drove Martin to his actions and to whom he passed the stolen files.
Even though the part of Martins indictment that has been released does not reveal which documents he removed, the timing raises concern that the group of hackers which calls itself Shadow Brokers used some of the technological tools and programs found in Martins possession.
It appears that the exposure of their activities around the time of Martins arrest was directly or indirectly connected to US intelligence organizations, and was intended to cover up a number of recent flaws, especially in firewalls.
If Snowdens suggestion is true, Martins actions aimed at exposing vulnerabilities in US cyber products worldwide. US intelligence could use these vulnerabilities to inject a code for monitoring and controlling networks and programs, such as those used for communication, data transfer, sending e-mails, or storage of documents.
If that was Martins intention, many people, companies and organizations had an illicit motive for stopping him.
These include computer program manufacturers, information security companies and even top US intelligence officials interested, for unjust reasons, in halting his research.
One incident that may bear ironically on the Martin case and indicate that he was the victim of a sting operation was the claim that he was found in possession of stolen goods worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
An ironical finale of the Martin episode was the release in August of a new cyber product called Insider4Sight, designed to nab workers who filch sensitive materials from the databases of companies and organizations.
No intent..!
Did nothing wrong, next case.
MOVE ON..!
If I was his lawyer, I’d tell him to become a Democrat and run for President.
Give him a fair trial with all the Constitutional protections.
When he’s convicted hang him in the public square.
L
Hey Harry...Just tell Corrupt Comey that there was NO INTENTION of CRIMINAL ACTIVITY!!! Works for the Clintons!
No different than Hillary; he will use the Hillary defense and get off.
Why should he have to go to trial? The SoS did exactly the same thing and no less then the FBI director stood up in front of Congress and said he would recommend a prosecution.
Is there any proof he gave this information up? Or did he just take it home to work on it?
No Intent, bubba. You can be President.
Did the guy actually pass on the intel to various foreign powers? Or did he just stash it at home?
He could say he had no evil intent, and he was just trying to sting/trap the evil Russians. Then become a Democrat, replace Susan Rice as the President’s National Security Advisor, if Clinton, the traitor, wins.
He and Clintoon would be a perfect match.
said he would NOT recommend a prosecution.
Oh please. US national security is a joke while the O'muslim brotherhood is in charge of the federal gubbermint.
Does anyone believe we have ANY national secrets that haven't been sold to the highest bidder or given away? /rhet
I’ve never understood why people engaged in anything like this keep the evidence in the houses/cars,
Good grief. I’d have it somewhere far away from home/car - like ,maybe buried in 30 gallon. waterproof cans in the woods - or a shed with secret walls or a with a trap door to a large, water proof container.
it’s like Criminals that get caught because they keep their shoes or tires (prints) or clothes (fibers/buttons etc...
dumb
Did this fellow attend a major private university based in Utah?
I would just email them to my server at home.
Why am I the only one who believes we would all be as dumb as a box of ROCKS, if it weren’t for the Snowdens and Assanges’ out there?
Obviously Americans have benefited from their “crimes” and we now side with our masters against them. They are the Paul Reveres of the electronic age.
I don’t get it?
Yes, and we should just say “thank you” to Snowden and Assange, or we wouldn’t even know that “national security is a major joke and easily sold to the highest bidder”, as you said.
Thank! Made my morning.
“Give him a fair trial with all the Constitutional protections.
When hes convicted hang him in the public square.”
Next to Eaddy Snowjob, Drake & Manning ...
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