Ex-Spy Christopher Boyce on Snowden, WikiLeaks, and NSA Backdoors
A smart young dropout is welcomed into a promising career in the top secret world of U.S. defense contracting, but he’s quickly shocked to discover the deception practiced by America’s intelligence agencies at the highest levels. Disillusioned and outraged, he takes matters into his own hands and begins exfiltrating highly-classified documents right under the nose of his employer.
Today, that might describe NSA leaker Edward Snowden. But back in 1975, it was 22-year-old Christopher Boyce, who joined TRW as a telex operator and found himself handling some of the the government’s most sensitive communications. From inside TRW’s “Black Vault,” Boyce claims he learned the CIA was actively undermining the elected, left-wing government of Australia.
But instead of leaking to the press, as Snowden, and WikiLeaks leaker Chelsea Manning, would do decades later, Boyce became a spy. He embarked on a personal mission to damage the U.S. defense and intelligence complex, supplying classified crypto keys and program information to his friend Andrew Daulton Lee, who in turn traveled to Mexico and sold the information to the KGB.
Boyce and Lee were arrested in 1977 and both convicted of espionage.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/09/boyce-qa/
