Potentially yes. It completely depends on the level of access he gave. If the systems that he gave uncontrolled and unmonitored access to are in any way critica

Potentially yes. It completely depends on the level of access he gave. If the systems that he gave uncontrolled and unmonitored access to are in any way critical (and if he didn't properly review the code produced by the contractors) then he could have created a huge security issue. If he was truly working on critical infrastructure then there's all sorts of criminal liability issues there. The issue with Aaron Swartz's case is that the prosecuters decided to throw the book at him for crimes which caused very little damage. The two cases have pretty much nothing in common beyond "computers".