AP, 3 Sep 2010: A former low-level employee of Britain’s MI6 spy agency was sentenced Friday to one year in prison for trying to sell top-secret information to Dutch agents, with the judge calling him “a strange young man.” Daniel Houghton, 25, was guilty of “an act of betrayal” when he copied secret files, including spy agency staff lists with home phone numbers, and tried to peddle them to another government, Judge David Bean said. MI6 is Britain’s overseas intelligence service. “If the material had found its way into the hands of a hostile power it would have done enormous damage and put lives at risk,” the judge said. . . . .
. . . . Prosecutors said in court Friday that Dutch agents were suspicious about Houghton’s true identity and met with him in the Netherlands in January and determined that he had worked for MI6 and that he did possess secret documents. They then told British agents about his actions. He was arrested at a London hotel in March.
Houghton, a dual Dutch and British national, admitted to two counts of unlawfully disclosing intelligence material but denied a charge of theft. He is expected to be released shortly because he has already served nearly half of his prison time while awaiting sentencing.
‘Naive’ MI6 worker who tried to sell names of British spies walks free (London Evening Standard, 3 Sep 2010)
A former MI6 worker who tried to sell a secret list of British agents for £900,000 walked free from the Old Bailey today. Daniel Houghton, 25, contacted the Dutch secret service and handed over two lists as well as information about British spying capability. In a “personal betrayal” of his former colleagues, one list contained details of 387 named operatives and the second 39 names and mobile phone numbers, the court heard. . . .
MI6 man tried to sell colleagues’ names for £2m (Guardian, 3 Sep 2010)
A software engineer working for MI6, who tried to sell intelligence for £2m, has been given a 12-month jail sentence for his “act of betrayal”. Daniel Houghton, 25, from Hoxton, east London, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to two offences under the Official Secrets Act. He offered computer files containing sensitive information about intelligence collection and M16 staff lists to agents from the Netherlands, the Old Bailey heard. The Dutch initially thought it was a hoax, but later tipped off their UK counterparts. Houghton was arrested after arranging a meeting at a London hotel in March. . . .
. . . . Sentencing him, he said: “You were employed by the security services and attempted to sell secret material for very large sums of money. “In particular you attempted to sell staff lists, which would have disclosed the identity and homes and whereabouts of agents whose identity must be protected almost at all costs. If the material had found its way into the hands of a hostile power, it would have done enormous damage and put lives at risk.
“On the other hand, you are not an ideologue. If you had been intent on causing harm to this country’s interests, you would have chosen a different recipient than the Netherlands. These were unsophisticated offences. You made no attempt to conceal your identity.”
Houghton had worked for the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, between September 2007 and May 2009, the court heard. During this time he accessed a number of computer files belonging to the British security service (MI5) relating to the work of both agencies and marked “secret” or “top secret”. They were described as “sensitive capabilities files, important tools developed by SIS staff for the gathering of intelligence for national security purposes”.
He also tried to sell two secret staff lists, one containing 387 names and the other with the home and mobile telephone numbers of 39 people. Piers Arnold, prosecuting, said: “It was a personal betrayal of these individuals with the potential, if it had fallen into the wrong hands, to compromise individuals’ safety.” . . .
Former MI6 man sentenced for secret files leak (BBC, 3 Sep 2010)
. . . . Houghton, who worked as a £23,000-a-year software engineer, had tried to sell copies of electronic files containing details of information-gathering software and staff lists to the agents in The Netherlands. . . . . When police searched his flat they discovered paperwork marked “top secret”. A computer memory stick was found containing 7,000 files, while a hard drive with secret documents stored on it was also discovered. . . . .
MI6 worker jailed for a year for trying to sell secrets to Dutch agents for £2m (Daily Mail, 3 Sep 2010)
. . . . Mr Arnold said Houghton ‘dishonestly’ removed them from his place of work and in August 2009 tried to sell them to the Dutch Secret Intelligence Service. After a series of telephone calls it was agreed that he would fly to Holland for a meeting in January this year, at which the Dutch agents were persuaded that he had worked for the SIS as he claimed, and they tipped off MI5.
Houghton later offered to sell the files, plus the staff lists, for £2 million but eventually a fee of £900,000 was agreed upon. He said that he had copied the material onto a disc which he had taken home and copied in turn onto two memory cards stored at his mother’s address. Houghton handed over the cards to the Dutch at a London hotel on March 1 and was given a suitcase containing £900,000. In the lobby he was arrested and handcuffed by plain clothes police officers after they wrestled him, struggling, to the floor.
An assessment carried out by SIS found that if the intelligence files he handed over had fallen into the hands of a hostile nation it would have posed ‘significant risk to future SIS operations’, while MI5 faced similar risks. Copies of the files were also found on a memory card and hard drive at Houghton’s home – contradicting his claims to the Dutch agents that there were no other copies of the documents he handed over, Mr Arnold said. . . .
Daily Telegraph, 15 July 2010: There was a time when a potential recruit to the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, would be invited for sherry in the room of his Oxbridge tutor and asked whether he had ever considered doing something for his country.
The flaw in the system, as the great spy scandals of the 1950s and 1960s testified, was that it was never entirely clear which country he had in mind. None the less, this form of vetting, if rudimentary, owed everything to personal contacts and an understanding of an individual’s strengths and beliefs that was gathered over time and at close quarters.
Nowadays, a would-be MI6 officer is self-selecting and will make a direct approach via the service’s website, itself a relatively recent innovation (2005). Matters are handled by a recruitment company before the applicant gets anywhere near the portals of SIS’s not-so-secret headquarters on the Thames, one of London’s most architecturally indiscreet buildings.
The main reason is to ensure that the intelligence services are fishing in a deeper reservoir, one that is more socially and ethnically diverse. But it is also because the sort of skills that modern spying agencies require, especially IT and computer encryption, cannot be found among Classics scholars at Cambridge. . . .
. . . . Unfortunately for MI6, Houghton turned out to be one of its bad picks. After the rigorous vetting process, which can take up to a year, he was offered a job as an SIS computer expert. . . .
Daily Telegraph, 14 July 2010: For a brief, ecstatic moment, Daniel Houghton, a young man from an unassuming background in rural Devon, thought he was rich. He had pulled off the ultimate hustle, selling secrets he had smuggled out of the MI6 building in Vauxhall Cross for £900,000 in cash, stashed in a suitcase.
As the door of a hotel room in central London slammed behind him and he made his way up the corridor, adrenaline was pumping through his veins. But the moment of triumph was short lived. As he got to the lift he was surrounded by plain clothes officers from the Metropolitan Police Counter-Terrorism Command. He protested his innocence, struggling with officers who had to wrestle him to the ground to handcuff him.
“I haven’t done anything,” he said, still not believing he had been caught, and when they asked him what was in the suitcase, he told them: “I don’t know. You’ve got the wrong man.” But they had not got the wrong man, in fact he was the subject of an elaborate sting operation by MI5 – Britain’s spy-catchers had caught a traitor. . . . .
MI6 computer geek driven to treachery by James Bond fantasy (Daily Telegraph, 14 July 2010)
MI6 face questions over their security procedures after a computer expert was allowed to smuggle top secret files out of their headquarters which he planned to sell to a foreign power for £2m. . . . . Houghton, a computer programmer by training, had helped develop a cutting edge technique for intercepting emails, sources told the Daily Telegraph.
In order to drive up the price of the material he was selling, he also stole staff lists and home and mobile telephone numbers of MI5 and MI6 officers. The information, which Houghton smuggled out of MI6’s Vauxhall Cross headquarters, was labeled “top secret” and “secret.” If leaked, it would have had a “severe impact on operational capabilities and particularly the ability to collect intelligence,” one security source said.
“He knew he had a valuable secret and wanted to make money out of it. His motivation was essentially greed.”
MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, employ IT security measures which stop users copying files and conduct bag searches but their most important line of defence is the vetting of their staff. . . .
Guardian, 14 July 2010: A former MI6 officer accused of disclosing in exchange for money highly classified documents, including a list of nearly 700 members of the security and intelligence agencies, pleaded guilty today to breaking the Official Secrets Act.
In a clumsy attempt to sell top secret information, Daniel Houghton, 25, admitted disclosing the material – electronic files containing two staff lists and MI5 intelligence collection techniques – claiming “voices in his head” told him to. He denied theft.
Houghton, of Hoxton in east London, who has dual British and Dutch nationality, was arrested in March in a Scotland Yard sting as he walked to the lift of a central London hotel carrying a suitcase containing £900,000.
Plain-clothed officers stopped him in the lobby of the unnamed hotel, the court heard, and a struggle followed. Piers Arnold, prosecuting, told an earlier magistrates’ hearing: “He was eventually handcuffed and brought to his feet and arrested for theft and offences against the Official Secrets Act. He was cautioned, to which he replied ‘I haven’t done anything’.” Asked about the suitcase, Houghton replied: “I don’t know, you’ve got the wrong man.”
Last August, Houghton approached officers from the Dutch intelligence service, boasting that he had copied the electronic files, and asked for £2m for them. When he first made contact with the Dutch, he used his own mobile phone to call a publicly listed number. . . . .
Daily Telegraph, 14 July 2010: Intelligence experts fear top secret files stolen by former spy Daniel Houghton could still fall into enemy hands. Many documents containing details of secret information gathering software he devised have yet to be traced.
The former MI6 worker, who pleaded guilty to two charges following accusations that he stole top secret material, boasted he made copies of the electronic files as he attempted to sell them for £2 million to Dutch intelligence agents. As he negotiated for cash, Houghton, 25, revealed he had a second memory card containing further information hidden at his mother’s home in Devon. This has never been found. When he handed over the information to supposed Dutch spies he claimed he had given them ”everything”.
But officers from Scotland Yard’s specialist operations unit found hard copies of classified paperwork, some marked top secret or secret, while searching his shared rented flat in Hoxton, east London. They also discovered a Sony memory card containing about 7,000 files, some of them deleted, thought to be copies a list of MI6 agents and the files that he tried to sell. The police search also uncovered a portable hard drive which held secret and top secret documents. . . .
