Interesting comments so far ... I'm more incensed that Obama called him a hacker. There was absolutely no hacking as he had a security clearance to work with (and apparently copy) the data he was responsible for.
Demonize him and also case your state for requiring internet monitoring in a single blow. It's done very intentionally.
While he might not be a hacker in our minds, whether he was permitted to access the documents he did is still up for debate. If he accessed them without permission, that would be enough to qualify him as a hacker under some definitions.
It's still a pretty wild stretch of the term. By that notion, trespassing through an unlocked door would make me a locksmith.
Or perhaps a cracker if you believe in the original usage of the word.
Just having security clearance doesn't mean that he absolutely didn't necessarily do any 'hacking' to get the data - he may well not have had direct access to the data in question, clearance or not.