Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/20/nsa-contractor-harold-thomas-m.html
…
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Espionage. How does it work?
Or…When Espionage Bites Back
/s
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50TB of data or 50TB of code?
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Stolen? or copied?
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All of the code written in human history would not yield 50TB.
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“The amount of stolen data is estimated to be at least fifty terabytes, enough to fill dozens of hard drives,” prosecutors said
Or one 50TB hard drive.
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Just go back to the beginning of recorded knowledge and insert a /*
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It would be useful to know what he did with the data. Using it to expose government malfeasance: hero. Selling it to corporations or another country: traitorous slime.
I wonder why the Beast felt it necessary to discuss the PhD program partnership. This is a big perk of working for the NSA, though back when I was being recruited by the Agency the major cooperating university was Johns Hopkins. Also, I thought this was a perk available to actual NSA employees, not just to contractors - unless the arrangement was between Booz and UMBC, not the NSA.
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Comments back then probably consisted of some weird characters that don’t even exist in Unicode.
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How does “dozens of hard drives” convey any sense of scale? I could make that hundreds.
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NSA job fair coming to a community near you, soon.
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On nearly a trillion punch cards!
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Pretty soon it will be enough to fill half a hard drive!
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Guess we know how the NSA pays their software contractors: SLOC
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been shopping for hard drives recently?Wait a few years.
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Or If you used one megabyte drives, you could fill fifty million hard drives. Or ~thirty six million 1.4 MB floppies.
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Lookie! It’s my paperweight! Dad spent $750 thirty years ago on it, and people asked what he needed so much space for; 1275 MB was so much space! 
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How many eight inch floppies?
In May 2016 the United States Government Accountability Office released a document that covered the need to upgrade or replace legacy computer systems within Federal Agencies. According to this document, there is still a Series/1 that “Coordinates the operational functions of the United States’ nuclear forces, such as intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers, and tanker support aircraft.” This system still uses 8-inch floppy disks, however the agency plans to update some of the technology by the end of the 2017 fiscal year.[1]
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all of them!
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“If convicted, Martin faces a maximum sentence of one year in prison for the unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials”
He can cite the Hillary precedent.
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