Security of Infrastructure in America (Can apply to other countries as well)

Pimander · October 27, 2016, 03:00:04 AM

Quote from: RUSSO on October 26, 2016, 08:15:53 PM

This is image is very interesting to me. It looks like the craft Paul Bennewitz filmed at Kirtland Air Force Base. The people who have the film will not share it. Here are some stills of the craft from Chris Lambright's book about it. He stopped communicating with me when I enquired as to who has the film and can I see a copy. Not even a reply.

It looks strikingly similar and I'm very interested in this case Russo. Thanks for sharing. Can you point me to the best website for information about the case please?

If anyone knows about UFO cases of craft that look very like these then I'd be interested to know. Pictures are good but I'd like to see a film. These are extremely important in my opinion. I notice that officials have taken the film in both cases. If it was not important then they would not be interested.

RUSSO · October 27, 2016, 08:01:40 PM

Quote from: Pimander on October 27, 2016, 03:00:04 AM
This is image is very interesting to me. It looks like the craft Paul Bennewitz filmed at Kirtland Air Force Base. The people who have the film will not share it. Here are some stills of the craft from Chris Lambright's book about it. He stopped communicating with me when I enquired as to who has the film and can I see a copy. Not even a reply.

The Paul Bennewitz case is really intriguing and i share the same understanding Chris Lambright have, that these crafts probably are something much more mysterious than top secret aircrafts.

Quote
If anyone knows about UFO cases of craft that look very like these then I'd be interested to know. Pictures are good but I'd like to see a film. These are extremely important in my opinion. I notice that officials have taken the film in both cases. If it was not important then they would not be interested.

They confiscated the footages (The Brazilian Air Force has publicly admitted to the Operation , and has over 500 pictures and 16 hours of video) and i suppose it probably already vanished from national archives or military database, i mean, even if you go through the legal ways for the information, I dont think it still are in the archives. We barely had the access to the pictures.

But if on the one hand I'm sad not to have access to them, on the other hand it indicates how harmful it would be for those who through information concentration, has the pretension to imprison the population's perception of reality as if they were immersed in the Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

QuoteIt looks strikingly similar and I'm very interested in this case Russo. Thanks for sharing. Can you point me to the best website for information about the case please?

The best information you can get, unfortunately is in portuguese language, but i will try to make a post where you can read most of it, including the pictures we could get through freedom of information. The best source I would say is to just watch the interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Uyrange Hollanda cause he spilled most of the beans there.

Let me get started with a very good summary about what happened:

'Operation Saucer' The Real Evidence:

QuoteFor those who don't know, Operation Saucer was the biggest military operation conducted in Brazil to officially and secretly investigate UFOs. Probably the biggest in the world as well. It started in September 1977 by direct order from the command of the First Regional Aerial Command (COMAR) of the Brazilian Air Force in Belém, Para state, in the Amazon.

The main reason to initiate Operation Saucer were the several tragic attacks on people from mysterious balls of light and other objects, first at night - in 1974, 1975 and late 1976 - that soon started to happen almost all day long, especially early and mid-1977. Operation Saucer was prematurely ended in December 1977 for the reasons that we now know and is described below.

According to the best source we once had available, the commander of the Operation, Colonel Uyrange Hollanda, who gave a detailed and in-depth _exclusive_ interview to the Brazilian UFO Magazine, to me and to my co-editor Marco Antonio Petit, the objectives of the Operation Saucer were:

1) To collect as many witness reports as possible about the lights and objects being seen and that performed the strange attacks.

2) To register the lights and objects in the jungle (called suck-suck) with the highest photo and film technology available.

3) To engage, if possible, in a co-ordinated attempt to contact the "intelligences behind the phenomena".

On the contrary of what the post suggests, yes, there is an enormous amount of information about Operation Saucer already available, and lot of very concrete evidence of it and its amazing results. As for the objectives mentioned above, it is also widely known that they were fully accomplished:

1) Over 2,000 witness reports were collected by the 30+ military that took part in Operation Saucer, and before and after that. It is estimated that at least 400 people were attacked by the balls of light, of which 3 died - and maybe a 4th - were recorded. Brazilian UFO Magazine has dozens of those reports and conducted personal interview, on-site, with witnesses, military, pilots and the doctor who treated the patients.

2) It is estimated that over 500+ B&W pictures of lights and objects in the jungle were taken, along with several rolls of film in super 8 and super 16mm. It is estimated that at least 16 hours have been recorded. Brazilian UFO Magazine has also dozens of such pictures and has extensively published them in several editions. Although the films are not available, they have been watched by several people in Brazil and we have their personal accounts of what they saw. Pilot Gerson Maciel the Britto, for instance, described having watched a film shown to him by the military, in the 80s, where there was a huge mother-ship with small objects over the Amazon River.

3) The third objective, according to Hollanda, it was also fully accomplished when, by mid-December 1977, he and a few of his men were in a small boat in the river close to Colares Island and they all saw a 300+ feet long cylinder-like object that almost landed on the other side of the river, in a standing position. From its upper part, a door was open and a humanoid-like creature in a uniform floated from it to the river level and stood just a few feet from the military, and kept staring at them.

That was a genuine close encounter with an alien entity, performed by a military team from the Brazilian Air Force, officially! It was part of Hollanda's official orders to attempt such contact.

Through the helmet glass Hollanda and his men could see the alien's eyes. No sound was every emitted by any of the involved, nor by the creature. It stood there for a few minutes and went back to the ship, that took off. As part of his duties, when Hollanda reported that he had a direct contact with the "intelligences behind the phenomena", his superiors at the First Regional Aerial Command (COMAR) of the Brazilian Air Force in Belem, ordered him to immediately shut down Operation Saucer. So he did. He was also ordered to give to his superiors every piece of material, report, photo, film, etc., obtained during the Operation, which he did.

So, it is believed that the Operation was shut-down because the military feared loosing control of the situation, if the direct contacts continued. This has also been reported to the Brazilian UFO Magazine by a number of people who were directly and indirectly connected to the Operation.

http://ufoupdateslist.com/2007/oct/m22-017.shtml
http://www.ufodigest.com/news/1007/operation-saucer2.html

Draws made by the Colonel in the official documents that cover the size of the "mother ship", Alien being, and weapons they had:

All the official documents(portuguese language)-->http://www.fenomenum.com.br/ufo/governos/documentos/docprato

RUSSO · October 27, 2016, 08:01:55 PM

Lots of information covered in this documentary:

QuoteDuring the months of September through December 1977, the Brazillian Air-Force under the command of a Captain Uyrangê Hollanda, was sent to the island of Colares to investigate a series of incidents in which over 80 people reported being attacked by beams of light from UFO's, paralyzing two of them and leaving puncture and burn marks on their skin.

The investigation was codenamed "Operation Saucer". This operation collated over 15 hours of film, 500 photos, and hundreds of documents with detailed drawings and interviews with over 3000 witness'. The files were to remain classified by the Brazillian Government until 1997, when UFO investigator's A J Gevaerd and Marco Petite of UFO Magazine were allowed partial access. They were also contacted by the then retired Cpt Hollanda who gave them a vivid recollection of the whole series of events.

4 Month Air-Force UFO Investigation - Brazil 1977

https://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GB&v=H8C9nWBJwjE&hl=en-GB

RUSSO · October 27, 2016, 08:02:29 PM

The pictures that people were able to get access through law (keep in mind it was over 500 tho):

PDF with all the pictures-->http://www.fenomenum.com.br/ufo/governos/documentos/brasil/prato/fotografias_op_prato.pdf

RUSSO · October 27, 2016, 08:11:33 PM

RUSSO · October 27, 2016, 08:26:45 PM

This is the most revealing interview of Lieutenant Colonel Hollanda. He speaks about the famous operation "prato" before he "committed suicide". Pay attention to the clarity with which he passes the information. According to police he was depressed and committed suicide a week after this interview. (suicide my a$$)

QuoteAn interview with Colonel Hollanda:

When the terror caused by the UFOs spread from Colares to the neighboring cities, the Brazilian Aeronautics sent a military team to discover what was happening. This operation was named Operation Plate and was commanded by Captain Uyrangê Bolivar Soares Nogueira de Hollanda Lima, now a retired Colonel. His team made hundreds of photos and four films. When the phenomenon ceased, the military locked up its activities. Unfortunately, none of the photos and films were disclosed. But to the great surprise of the Ufologists, in October of 1997, Colonel Hollanda gave a detailed interview to the Ademar researchers Jose Gevaerd and Marco Antonio Petit, respectively publisher and co-publisher of the Brazilian UFO magazine "Revista UFO." Here is the full text of this capital interview.

Note: because my understanding of the Portuguese language is somehow limited, I have kept the original untranslated version at the end of this page. Do not hesitate to contact me if you find a translation error.

QuoteUFO Magazine - If you have created a file, then it tells us that there has already been some progresses in the investigation?

Hollanda - Yes, when I arrived from Brasilia I already had agents who had being sent to investigate occurrences of UFOS, because this thing was already happening so often in the area of Colares, which is a belonging to the city of Vigia, on the coast of Pará.

The mayor of the city sent an officer to the commander of COMAR to inform him that the UFOs were bothering the fishing very much. Some of them could not exert the fishing activity anymore, because the objects navigated under their boats. At times, some objects even dived near them, in the rivers and in the sea. The local population spent the night outside. The people set up fires and used firecrackers to try to drive the invaders away. It was the panic that made the mayor contact the command of COMAR, asking for instructions, and the Brigadier General ordered that I was to investigate the sightings.

UFO Magazine - Was there at some point a participation or instruction from Brasilia (Ed.: the capital, i.e. the government) so that the situation is inquired?

Hollanda - At the time, it did not participate in the discussions. There was only one captain and he received only orders. I was no part of this proceeding and I do not know with certainty as of the decisions that had been taken. But, for the little that I know, the decision was in the hands of the command of COMAR. If it had involvement of Brasilia, I do not know about it.

UFO Magazine - How did you organize Operation Plate? How many sections, how many people, how many missions etc? And did you organize all the tasks?

Hollanda - Well, we were a team. I was at the head of it. We had five agents, all sergeants, that worked in the second division of COMAR. Moreover, we had informers on location, people in the places where the lights appeared, on the field, that helped them. At the time I divided the team in two or three different positions in the country. Clearly, we were constantly in contact with one another, through radio.

UFO Magazine - What was the immediate objective of Operation Plate? To observe flying disks, to photograph them and to contact them?

Hollanda - As a matter of fact I wanted to test this thing off exactly and completely. It wanted to explain it and clear it out. Because everybody spoke in the lights and objects and had even nicknamed them with popular names, such as "Chupa-chupa" (Ed.: "suck-suck" or "absorb-absorb"). And, the Brazilian Air Forces needed to know what was really happening, since this occurred in the Brazilian airspace. The responsibility to inquire was ours. But in the beginning of Operation Plate, what I exactly I wanted was a confirmation the events that were happening.

UFO Magazine - What motivated the local population to call the lights "Cupa-chupa?"

Hollanda - There were a series of stories of people who had been touched by a light ray. All judged that the effect of the ray was to suck blood out of them. And actually we verified some cases and we discovered that several of them, mainly women, had strangest marks on their left breast, and there were two punctures of needle around a brown spot. It looked like iodine burning. And those people had their blood sucked out, in small amount, by those lights.

Therefore they had started to nickname them "Chupa-chupa." It was always the same thing: a light came out of nothing and followed somebody, generally a woman, who was hit on the left breast. At some times they were men who were hit, with marks in the arms and (pemas.) To tell you the truth, in ten cases, there were more or less eight women and two men.

UFO Magazine - And you have recorded and checked the marks on the people?

Hollanda - Yes, it was all checked and analyzed by doctors, who went with us to the locations at the time. Sincerely, I entered in this as the devil's advocate. What I exactly wanted was to demystify this story and to say to my commander that this thing did not exist, that it was a collective hallucination. I found that some things were being seen, but that it was not extraterrestrial.

UFO Magazine - What did you think it was, then, that was being seen and attacked the people?

Hollanda - I do not know. Perhaps the plumage of an owl reflecting the light of the moon or some other thing of this sort. It was thought it might be extraterrestrial, but I did not think so. I went there for verifying that this thing was really happening. I spent at least two months to get an answer for my commander, when I came back from the mission, I had discovered nothing.

The first the two months of Operation Plate, I saw nothing that could change my opinion. At one point we spent one week in the weeds and came back only on the Sunday, we lived a little bit like a family. At each report, my commander asked:

"Did you see something?" And my response was always: "We saw strange lights, at least, but nothing extraterrestrial". In fact, we saw lights that never blinked, that passed at a low altitude, but nothing very strange.

UFO Magazine - This was during the night. What happened during the day? Were there other activities during Operation Plate?

Hollanda - Yes, we had other things to do, that were part of the objectives of the operation. We made interviews with people who had had experiences, we prepared the places to spend the night and searched "hot" spots for night watches. When we discovered that something appeared in such a place, we (...). We made a survey of the situation, and we always registered the names of the involved people in a proper form.

UFO Magazine - What procedure or methodology was used to collect information?

Hollanda - We always recorded the name of the person who had the experience, the place where it occurred, the date and time etc. We made a description of each fact that occurred in the same locality. Thus, if three cases in a night happened, people heard three witnesses. Some of the descriptions were common, the other had most strangeness. At times we received stories from things that we could not prove to be authentic, as dematerialization of entire walls or roofs, for example.

UFO Magazine - What do you mean? Do you have some example to illustrate this type of events?

Hollanda - Yes. The first lady that I interviewed in Colares, for example, told me absurd things. We came by the helicopter from Belém just to hear a woman who had been attacked by the Chupa-Chupa. We really did see that she had a mark in the left breast. It was brown, as if it was a burning, and had series of holes in a line. When we talked, told to me that a child was seated in a net trying to put a child to sleep when, suddenly, the environment started to change of temperature. She found it rather pleasant, but she could not imagine what happened next. Then, lying in the net, she saw that the roofing tiles had started to be colored, in live coal color. After that, they changed to be transparent and she could see the sky through the roof. It was as if the roofing tiles had turned into glass. She saw the sky and even the stars.

UFO Magazine - Were strange stories such as this very common during Operation Plate?

Hollanda - Very common, and it scared me a lot, because I had never heard anyone speak about such things. When I heard of such cases, I was both worried and even more curious. These people seemed to be sincere. For example, through the hole that the woman described she saw a green light shining in the sky. The lady was half asleep, until, after that, a red ray that left the UFO reached her left breast. It was strange that in the majority of the cases the people were hit at their left side. There was more: exactly at the time where we were speaking of this, a girl came to us and said:

"Look at the thing that is passing above." When I left the house, I saw the light that the young girl was pointing, flying at a reasonable speed, although the sky was sufficiently covered. It was not very quick and it blinked as it was going to the North. It looked like a satellite, except that this light turned back on its route - and satellites do not do this!

Soon after that, there was something even stranger. But I could not exactly say if it was an extraterrestrial ship. By the way, I was not there to cover up any thing that appeared as being a flying disk.

UFO Magazine - Did you use some type of radar equipment that could confirm or follow these phenomena?

Hollanda - No. All the airports have fixed radars. We did not carry anything of this type.

UFO Magazine - Were the attacks that were happening with certain frequency communicated to the Government, to the state or municipal authorities?

Hollanda - Yes, clearly. Some doctors of the Ministry of Public Health of Pará had been sent by the government to examine the people. They analyzed the burnt skins and took the patients statements, but they did not do anything more than that - never. Some victims recovered easily. Others were very terrified. Some have been nauseates, or fell asleep for days. A citizen once came to look for me and said that next to his house a light had appeared, that focuses a shining ray towards him. He told me that he has been so terrified that he ran inside his house, caught a weapon and pointed it to the light. Then stronger rays came and caused him to fall. The poor men spent two weeks with locomotion problems (Ed.: Because he fell), but did not have anything more serious.

He has not been hit by anything solid, as a shot, for example. It seems that the nature of this light was that of a very strong energy that left people paralyzed. I believe that the federal authorities were informed of this type of attack on human beings that were happening in the region, but I am unaware of any tests. I only received orders from my commander, nothing more.

UFO Magazine - If these depositions had been collected since the beginning of the Operation Plate, when were the first close encounters with UFOS in that region begin?

Hollanda - It was sufficiently significant. Certain night, our team was searching the Island of Mosqueiro, in a place called Bahia do Sol (Ed.: Sun Bay) (Publisher: a known health-resort of Belém, near Colares), therefore we had information that these things were happening there. And as we were investigating all and any indication of ufological occurrences, we settled ourselves in the place. In this period, the agents who had more time than I to devote to this operation - since "I caught the train when it was already started" -, they questioned me all the time, after they saw some lights, as if I was already convinced of the existence of the phenomenon. As I was still undecided, they said to me: "But captain, do you still not believe?" I answered that I wasn't, that we needed more tests to believe that those things were flying disks. I had not seen any ship at that time. Only light, many and varied. I was still not satisfied.

Full read-->http://ufologie.patrickgross.org/htm/colareshollanda.htm

Pimander, I don't know if it attends what you expect when you asked about more info, I tried to put together what i think it is good info about the case. If you have any more question, doubts or need something else, you are more than welcome to do it here or through a PM.

Hope you enjoy

Ps... some more links:
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2007/10/operation-saucer-new-revelations.html
http://www.rense.com/general62/admits.htm
http://exopolitics.blogs.com/exopolitics/2008/04/brazilian-milit.html
http://ufo-blogg.blogspot.com.br/2012/04/colares-brazil-ufo-invasion-1977.html
http://www.ufodigest.com/news/1007/operation-saucer.html
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/operation-saucer-official-search-ufos-155317373.html
http://andyjwells.tumblr.com/post/140690586087/operation-saucer-the-official-search-for-ufos

space otter · October 30, 2016, 04:21:51 AM

continuing the story from reply #24 and #35

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nsa-appears-to-have-missed-%E2%80%98big-red-flags%E2%80%99-in-suspect%E2%80%99s-behavior/ar-AAjAC2A?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=U348DHP
The New York Times
By SCOTT SHANE and JO BECKER
8 hrs ago

N.S.A. Appears to Have Missed 'Big Red Flags' in Suspect's Behavior

WASHINGTON — Year after year, both in his messy personal life and his brazen theft of classified documents from the National Security Agency, Harold T. Martin III put to the test the government's costly system for protecting secrets.

And year after year, the system failed.

Mr. Martin got and kept a top-secret security clearance despite a record that included drinking problems, a drunken-driving arrest, two divorces, unpaid tax bills, a charge of computer harassment and a bizarre episode in which he posed as a police officer in a traffic dispute. Under clearance rules, such events should have triggered closer scrutiny by the security agencies where he worked as a contractor.

Yet even after extensive leaks by Pfc. Bradley Manning in 2010 and Edward Snowden in 2013 prompted new layers of safeguards, Mr. Martin was able to walk out of the N.S.A. with highly classified material, adding it to the jumbled piles in his house, shed and car.

A federal judge in Baltimore ruled on Friday that Mr. Martin, 51, must remain jailed on charges of stealing government documents and mishandling classified information over two decades. Prosecutors say they will add new charges under the Espionage Act. Mr. Martin, whose arrest in August was disclosed by The New York Times this month, has admitted to taking the material but denies giving secrets to anyone else.

His actions, which prosecutors described in court as "breathtaking," have already cast a harsh light on the government's ability to police the 3.1 million employees and 900,000 contractors who hold clearances — or even the much smaller number who work inside the most closely guarded programs, as Mr. Martin did. His case appears to show serious breakdowns in personnel evaluation, technology designed to detect leaks and the basic job of inspecting people leaving secure buildings.

Dennis C. Blair, a former director of national intelligence, said he was "shocked" that Mr. Martin managed to remove classified material in bulk as recently as this year, in part because the government has spent tens of millions of dollars since 2010 on measures to prevent unauthorized activity or downloads.

"If there are breakdowns in your security system, as there clearly were with Snowden and this guy, you have to look at whatever went wrong and fix it," Mr. Blair said.

Some intelligence officials sounded a defensive note. William R. Evanina, the government's top counterintelligence official, said it may be infeasible to prevent every breach at an agency like the N.S.A., with 35,000 employees.
"I don't think it's possible," Mr. Evanina said. He credited the government with doing "an amazing job" in tightening security and called the N.S.A. "one of the leaders." Despite such efforts, he said, "if someone is intent on stealing classified data, it's very hard to stop them."

But a look at Mr. Martin's past raises a question: Did his erratic behavior ever prompt a review of his top secret clearance, which allowed him to work on some of the nation's most sensitive intelligence operations over two decades at eight contractors? His record of personal and legal troubles reads like it might have been drawn from the official list of factors that can be used to deny a clearance.

In 2000, the State of Maryland put an $8,997 lien on Mr. Martin's property for unpaid taxes that he would not pay off till 2014, a sign of chronic financial difficulties. In 2003, he was charged with misdemeanor computer harassment, a result of pestering a woman with unwanted messages. The charge was eventually dismissed.

Mr. Martin has a history of "binge drinking on a monthly basis," Judge Richard D. Bennett of Federal District Court said in a detention hearing on Friday. Alcoholism does not automatically block a security clearance, officials say, but the person must acknowledge the issue and seek treatment.

In 2006, Mr. Martin was charged with driving under the influence. In 2008, he cut off another driver and in the ensuing argument, announced that he was a police officer, according to two acquaintances who did not want to be named speaking critically of him. When it turned out the other driver was an off-duty state trooper, Mr. Martin fled. The local police charged him in the incident, but the record of the episode was later expunged.

"Those are all big red flags, and reasons why you wouldn't get a clearance," said Ross Schulman, a cybersecurity expert at the Open Technology Institute at New America, a Washington research group. "What seems clear in this case is that they dropped the ball in choosing who to allow access to their material and computers in the first place."

The year after the episode of police impersonation, Mr. Martin was hired by the contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, for whom he would work at the N.S.A. for the next six years before being moved in 2015 to a Pentagon job involving offensive cyberwarfare.

A routine five-year renewal of his security clearance in 2012 should have covered all his legal tangles and the breakup of his two marriages, in the late 1990s and 2010. Such reviews include a polygraph test, in which a standard question asks about mishandling of classified information. If such a question was asked, Mr. Martin appears to have passed the polygraph.

In recent years, intelligence agencies have begun to bolster the five-year reviews with "continuous evaluation," said Mr. Evanina, the counterintelligence chief. That means public databases showing criminal or civil cases, unpaid debts and divorces should all be scanned constantly for the names of clearance-holders, he said.

In a major upgrade to the security system after the transfer of military and diplomatic files by the former Army private now known as Chelsea Manning to WikiLeaks in 2010, the N.S.A. and other agencies installed specialized software to detect unusual conduct on agency networks or large downloads of secret data. Agencies also cracked down on removable storage devices like CDs and thumb drives, literally gluing drives shut or disabling the software required to use them.

But one former senior intelligence official suggested that Mr. Martin might have dodged those safeguards because he was assigned to Tailored Access Operations, the N.S.A. hacking unit. Because the unit develops malware to break into foreign computer networks and steal secrets, its machines are segregated from N.S.A.'s main network to avoid the possibility that a rogue program could get loose and do damage.

In the separate network, the electronic alarms that sound for unusual downloads may not operate and the ban on thumb drives does not always apply, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. "By the nature of the work he's in, you have to carve that out so as not to do harm to your own system," he said.

The last chance to stop someone from carrying off secrets is at the gates to N.S.A. facilities. Mr. Martin's lawyer, James Wyda, said in court that "there was nothing sophisticated Mr. Martin did to remove this information" from the agency. But before the lawyer could elaborate, prosecutors abruptly objected, evidently concerned about the message that security is lax.

Only the most intrusive search would detect papers or a small drive hidden under clothing, and officials fear that universal searches would be impractical and send a message of mistrust.

"You don't want to create a Stasi-like atmosphere," said Michael V. Hayden, a former N.S.A. and C.I.A. director, referring to the East German secret police. Instead, N.S.A. guards carry out random searches, which sometimes included the director, he said.

Several former N.S.A. workers said that if Mr. Martin was ever caught with a few classified pages, he might have pleaded absent-mindedness and escaped punishment. But F.B.I. agents who took 50 terabytes of data from his house found it on disks, hard drives and thumb drives. Had security guards found any of those leaving the agency, it would have set off an investigation, Mr. Martin's former colleagues said.

The N.S.A. is now conducting an internal review to track everything Mr. Martin took to its source to understand the breaches, officials said. But the case has reinforced how technology that makes it easy to store and move huge volumes of data can threaten security, Mr. Hayden said.

As more details on the case emerged last week — including prosecutors' assertion that the documents Mr. Martin took contain the names of some intelligence officers who worked undercover — Booz Allen Hamilton announced that it had hired the former F.B.I. director Robert S. Mueller III to review its security and management practices. For Booz Allen, Mr. Martin's arrest was a second devastating blow: Mr. Snowden was also an employee when he took hundreds of thousands of N.S.A. documents in 2013.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the vice chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said she expected the committee to examine the incident, both to review whether recent security upgrades at N.S.A. are sufficient and consider further improvements.

In court on Friday, Judge Bennett concluded that Mr. Martin posed too much of a flight risk to release before trial. Though there is no proof so far that Mr. Martin passed the secrets he took to others, "the harm has already occurred," the judge said, "in terms of the loss of confidence on the part of the public" in the intelligence agencies.

space otter · March 04, 2017, 10:19:41 PM

found this update a while back and saved it for here

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/nsa-contractor-indicted-over-mammoth-theft-of-classified-data/ar-AAmJWKj?li=BBnbfcL

NSA contractor indicted over mammoth theft of classified data
Reuters Reuters
By Dustin Volz
2/8/2017

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.

Martin's attorney could not immediately be reached for comment.

Martin worked for Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp when he was taken into custody last August.

Booz Allen also had employed Edward Snowden, who leaked a trove of secret files to news organizations in 2013 that exposed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the NSA.

The indictment provided a lengthy list of documents Martin is alleged to have stolen from multiple intelligence agencies starting in August 1996, including 2014 NSA reports detailing intelligence information "regarding foreign cyber issues" that contained targeting information and "foreign cyber intrusion techniques."

The list of pilfered documents includes an NSA user's guide for an intelligence-gathering tool and a 2007 file with details about specific daily operations.

The indictment also alleges that Martin stole documents from U.S. Cyber Command, the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office.

Martin was employed as a private contractor by at least seven different companies, working for several government agencies beginning in 1993 after serving in the U.S. Navy for four years, according to the indictment.

His positions, which involved work on highly classified projects involving government computer systems, gave him various security clearances that routinely provided him access to top-secret information, it said.

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.

Booz Allen, which earns billions of dollars a year contracting with U.S. intelligence agencies, came under renewed scrutiny after Martin's arrest was revealed last October. The firm announced it had hired former FBI Director Robert Mueller to lead an audit of its security, personnel and management practices.

A Booz Allen spokeswoman did not have an immediate comment on Martin's indictment.

Martin's initial appearance in the U.S. District Court of Baltimore was scheduled for next Tuesday, the Justice Department said.

(Reporting by Dustin Volz in Washington and Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Phil Berlowitz)

space otter · July 23, 2019, 02:05:32 PM

update

Quotehttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ex-nsa-contractor-sentenced-to-nine-years-in-prison-for-stealing-secret-documents/ar-AAEApDl?li=BBnb7Kz

Ex-NSA contractor sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing secret documents
Caitlin Yilek 3 days ago

A former National Security Agency contractor was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison for stealing classified material over more than two decades in what may be the largest breach of classified information in U.S. history.

Harold Thomas Martin III, 54, was arrested in August 2016 when law enforcement agents raided his Glen Burnie, Maryland, home and found he had stored a massive trove of government documents and digital files in his home and vehicle. He worked for Booz Allen Hamilton at the time of his arrest. He pleaded guilty in March.

Martin came under suspicion as the source for Shadow Brokers, a group that posted online leaked information about how the NSA hacked into the computers of foreign targets. Martin worked for the NSA unit that used the tools, but prosecutors have not alleged he leaked any of the information he retained over the years.

His attorneys said he suffered from "undiagnosed autism" and was hoarding the data and did not have any intention of harming national security.

"The manner and method of my approach was unorthodox, unconventional, uncanny," Martin said at his sentencing. "But also unauthorized, illegal and just plain wrong. One step beyond black. Please do not copy this. It is not the easy or correct path. I took shortcuts, went backwards, sideways and around things, crossing major borders and boundaries. It is not good, it's very, very BAD."

Martin will receive credit for the three years he has already served in prison.

Pegasus Research Consortium

News:

Security of Infrastructure in America (Can apply to other countries as well)

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