Spy Agencies Should Kick the Contractor Habit

Are government cyberoperations safe when they involve people from the private sector? That's the question raised by the indictment of former National Security Agency contractor Harold Martin on 20 counts of obtaining and keeping national defense information.

While Martin held various security clearances -- including "top secret" -- between 1993 and his arrest in August 2016, he worked for seven different private companies that did contract work for the government. Meanwhile, he was hoarding government documents, lots of them. At some point, he allegedly stole three-quarters of the hacking tools used by the NSA's elite Tailored Access Operations unit. The indictment doesn't say Martin sold or handed the stolen data to anyone, but a group called Shadow Brokers recently offered some of the NSA's top-secret tools for sale -- and then "went dark," claiming it hadn't found a buyer.