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GCHQ Intern Sentenced to 7½ Years for Top-Secret Data Theft

Prosecutors argued that removing 61.8GB of secret intelligence from the GCHQ network compromised a counterterrorism tool

Hasaan Arshad was approaching the end of a year’s work placement with GCHQ near Cheltenham
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Overview

  • On June 13, 2025, Mrs Justice McGowan handed Arshad a 7½-year prison term, split between six years for the data breach and 18 months for child pornography offences.
  • Arshad pleaded guilty in March to unlawfully removing 61.8GB of top-secret GCHQ material during his industry placement in August 2022.
  • Prosecutors told the court that the breach destroyed a key counterterrorism tool and risked exposing the identities of 17 GCHQ colleagues.
  • In custody, Arshad admitted he took the files “out of curiosity” to finish an unfinished project and had no plan to share the data.
  • Despite full GCHQ induction and developed-vetting security clearance, his actions represented a flagrant breach of national security protocols.