Former NSA Contractor Pleads Guilty After Stealing 300 Times as Much Data as Snowden

Harold Thomas Martin III entered a guilty plea at U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Thursday, admitting his role in what could be the worst breach of classified data in U.S. history. The severity of the breach is measured in terms of how much information Martin looted from the systems he had access to. Fortunately, he does not appear to have done anything with the data he took. His defense lawyers characterized him as a data hoarder, a victim of compulsive mental illness who piled up classified files and sensitive documents the way other hoarders accumulate newspapers or clothes. -- More...