"Infrastructure Analyst" was Job Title Key to the Inner Access Held by Snowden

[KoKo]

By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials refer to Edward J. Snowden’s job as a National Security Agency contractor as “systems administrator” — a bland name for the specialists who keep the computers humming. But his last job before leaking classified documents about N.S.A. surveillance, he told the news organization The Guardian, was actually “infrastructure analyst.”

It is a title that officials have carefully avoided mentioning, perhaps for fear of inviting questions about the agency’s aggressive tactics: an infrastructure analyst at the N.S.A., like a burglar casing an apartment building, looks for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world.

That assignment helps explain how Mr. Snowden got hold of documents laying bare the top-secret capabilities of the nation’s largest intelligence agency, setting off a far-reaching political and diplomatic crisis for the Obama administration.

Even as some members of Congress have challenged the N.S.A.’s collection of logs of nearly every phone call Americans make, European officials furiously protested on Sunday after Mr. Snowden’s disclosure that the N.S.A. has bugged European Union offices in Washington and Brussels and, with its British counterpart, has tapped the Continent’s major fiber-optic communications cables.

On Sunday evening, The Guardian posted an article saying documents leaked by Mr. Snowden show 38 embassies and missions on a list of United States electronic surveillance targets. Some of those offices belong to allies like France, Italy, Japan and Mexico, The Guardian said.

Much More at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/us/job-title-key-to-inner-access-held-by-snowden.html?_r=0

[dkf]

1. Wow. Just wow.

[dkf]

2. Snowden was, in a sense, part of the United States’ biggest and most skilled team of hackers."

"But as an N.S.A. infrastructure analyst, Mr. Snowden was, in a sense, part of the United States’ biggest and most skilled team of hackers."

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/us/job-title-key-to-inner-access-held-by-snowden.html?_r=0&

[KoKo]

4. And this part...I couldn't fit into the post..

Think of all those Private Contractors out there with access...and one wonders why the Govt./NSA didn't think about this complication before now. It's all outta control...

from the NYT article:

" The N.S.A.’s assessment of Mr. Snowden’s case will likely also consider what has become, for intelligence officials, a chilling consideration: there are thousands of people of his generation and computer skills at the agency, hired in recent years to keep up with the communications boom.

The officials fear that some of them, like young computer aficionados outside the agency, might share Mr. Snowden’s professed libertarian streak and skepticism of the government’s secret power. Intelligence bosses are keeping a closer eye on them now, hoping that there is not another self-appointed whistle-blower in their midst. "

[Mojorabbit]

3. That ought to put to rest the claims by members

that he could not possible have access to all this information.

[KoKo]

5. They will say he only had that access at Booz-Allen ...but, he was

seemingly very good at what he did so by the time he got there he qualified and new where to look. So..yes he had access above what some have said here on DU according to this reporting.

[KoKo]

6. ...1

[dkf]

7. Kick

[KoKo]

8. There are still those who Deny Snowden's Crediblity for Access to Information...

but he had the CREDS & Accessibility....

[randome]

9. And yet he STILL couldn't get anything but lame PowerPoint slides.

I'd say that Snowden's lack of evidence is paradoxically evidence that confidential data was out of his reach.

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