A former National Security Agency employee who worked at Tailored Access Operations has pleaded guilty to willful retention of national defense information, the same charge Harold T. Martin III faces:
A former National Security Agency employee admitted on Friday that he had illegally taken from the agency classified documents believed to have subsequently been stolen from his home computer by hackers working for Russian intelligence.
Nghia H. Pho, 67, of Ellicott City, Md., pleaded guilty to one count of willful retention of national defense information, an offense that carries a possible 10-year sentence. Prosecutors agreed not to seek more than eight years, however, and Mr. Pho's attorney, Robert C. Bonsib, will be free to ask for a more lenient sentence. He remains free while awaiting sentencing on April 6.
Mr. Pho had been charged in secret, though some news reports had given a limited description of the case. Officials unsealed the charges on Friday, resolving the long-running mystery of the defendant's identity.
Mr. Pho, who worked as a software developer for the N.S.A., was born in Vietnam but is a naturalized United States citizen. Prosecutors withheld from the public many details of his government work and of the criminal case against him, which is linked to a continuing investigation of Russian hacking.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by jcross on Tuesday December 05 2017, @02:04PM
Sounds somewhat plausible. Another possible narrative I thought of (leaning in the other direction) is that the guy was compromised somehow and then instructed to install Kaspersky and take the documents home. I mean it's a great cover story if/when the leak gets found out. Maybe instead of arranging sophisticated dead drops, the spies of the future will always have their documents "stolen" from them, since unlike in the old days you'll never be expected to notice when someone copies a file and exfiltrates it over the internet.