Morgan Stanley staffer cops guilty plea over data breach

The Morgan Stanley staffer fired in January over a massive data breach has now entered a guilty plea in the Federal Court in Manhattan. Galen Marsh was being tried for taking hundreds of thousands of records of the bank's wealth management operation home. Some of the trove, affecting 900 individuals, then ended up on Pastebin …

[Anonymous Coward]

The plea system of justice is fucked up

Take your chances in court which expensive lawyers throw everything at you and threaten lifetime jail sentences, where you end up broke, maligned and at the mercy of 12 selected morons deciding your fate.

Or take a plea, admitting to something you didn't do.

Avoid the US.

If the cops don't shoot you, and the spooks don't spy on you, and corporate America doesn't exploit you then fire you, and the 'justice' system doesnt fuck you, you might just work yourself to death for peanuts.

[Gordon 10]

Re: The plea system of justice is fucked up

He took customer account records home. Regardless if the US justice system is f*cked seems like a slam dunk jail time to me. Doubly so if he then offered them for sale. The fact that he may have been hacked should be no defence, there would have been nothing to hack if not for his actions in the first place.

Throw the book at him.

[stanimir]

While his lawyers hope Marsh won't get time in the slammer, his plea deal includes not appealing any prison term less than 37 months

Hope (usually) is not enough.

I certainly hope (please excuse the pun) those lawyers don't get paid much all.

[Peshman]

Well, why don't we all overlook the fact that he copied the data from the company's infrastructure to his home computer. I'm sure that's what it says in the article doesn't it?

He was hacked? My 4rse!

[mark 120]

That's an interesting one. Why did he do that? Was it a result of work pressure and he needed to do stuff at home, was it a way of getting a customer list for a private enterprise he wanted to set up, or something else? If the former was it sanctioned by Morgan Stanley, or at least common working practice?

Motive makes a difference. He may well have taken the data with the best intent, or he may have had nefarious purposes in mind. Ulitmately though, it seems the data went public becuase his security was about the same level as Morgan Stanleys, only he's the one left holding the can when the breach occurred.

[Gordon 10]

I get the fact that you desperately want all banks to be evil all of the time so everything is always their fault but did it even occur to you that regardless there are always a proportion of people who are dumb/negligent/criminal and that they deserve what they get?

[Peshman]

Have you read the article? He's in clear violation of the data protection act! At least 900 Private Wealth clients personal information was copied by him from the company servers to his home PC. We bollock politicos for losing CD's full of info but you think he may have a leg to stand on? MS would have given him remote access via a VPN for him to use from home if he had to work from there. There is no way they would have sanctioned any copying of company oinfidential data to a removable device, let alone copy it to a home pc.