Re: What is Raytheon's problem?
Absolutely correct! Taking classified material off-site is generally illegal, unless you are individually authorized to do so, sign the particular documents out, have a secure container in which to transport them that is locked to your body, and have a certified secure facility to which to bring them and store them in an approved safe that is secured to something considered immovable. Barring that, you'd need to be accompanied by armed guards.
The fact that Raytheon allowed any external storage device to function on any PC with access to classified material is a huge breach of national security. Raytheon should be fined $ billions for this.
The fact that their servers logged accesses to classified document is a minimum requirement. The fact that there were no alarms when a single user downloaded many thousands of documents is unacceptable. The fact that Raytheon allowed employees or contractors to leave the premises with any type of external storage device — given that external storage devices actually function on their PCs — is outrageous.
One additional reason why the guy may have gotten such a light sentence is Raytheon's complicity — they made it so easy and their policies and procedures were so lax.
I’m not a lawyer, but there's a principle of causation in law that asks a question or makes a statement that starts with "But for...". Here, it could be, "But for Raytheon's violations of standard DoD security regulations, this document removal could never have happened." That doesn’t change the guy's guilt, but it makes Raytheon guilty as well.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
