This was a meticulously planned operation and took several months of preparation. Sources say that the engineers chose to fly in the data on hard drives, becaus

This was a meticulously planned operation and took several months of preparation. Sources say that the engineers chose to fly in the data on hard drives, because it would take a lot of time to transfer the data online without attracting attention. They then divvied up the hard drives between four passengers to avoid raising alarm bells with Malaysian customs and immigration officers. Months? I must be missing some complexity because suitcases of hard drives does not seem like it required any clandestine operations. Would have been logistically more annoying, but possibly less suspicious to mail the drives piecemeal to different addresses.