{"id":818239,"date":"2026-10-30T03:22:19","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T03:22:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818239\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T03:22:19","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T03:22:19","slug":"gchq-intern-who-took-data-home-loses-bid-to-cut-sentence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/818239\/","title":{"rendered":"GCHQ intern who took data home loses bid to cut sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC told the Old Bailey last year that Arshad&#8217;s actions &#8220;lost a tool&#8221; being developed at GCHQ, risked exposing the identities of 17 GCHQ colleagues, and undermined the trust of partners, which &#8220;created a significant risk of damage to national security&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rupert Bowers KC, representing Arshad, argued the sentencing judge had made the sentence too high for a first-time offender.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said Arshad had &#8220;noble if misguided&#8221; intentions and no &#8220;corrupt motive&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bowers said: &#8220;This is an exceptional case because of the motivations and the intentions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Yes, a serious offence has been committed by someone who was reckless, but he has not committed it intentionally to harm national security.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At the Court of Appeal on Thursday, Lady Justice Cockerill said the judge had given &#8220;careful consideration&#8221; to Arshad&#8217;s &#8220;age, immaturity and neurodivergence&#8221; and had rightly taken into account the serious harm to national security which could have been caused.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC told the Old Bailey last year that Arshad&#8217;s actions &#8220;lost a tool&#8221; being developed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-818239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}