Snowden stole 'keys to the kingdom': NSA official

[n2doc]

Washington — US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden effectively stole the "keys to the kingdom" when he swiped more than 1.5 million top secret files, a senior National Security Agency official said in an interview aired Sunday.

Rick Ledgett, who heads the NSA taskforce in charge of assessing the impact of Snowden's leaks, told CBS televisions's "60 Minutes" that the contractor possessed a "roadmap" of the US intelligence community's strengths and weaknesses.

NSA chief General Keith Alexander meanwhile said that suggestions the agency was routinely eavesdropping on the phone calls of Americans was false, insisting that less than 60 "US persons" were currently being targeted worldwide.

Ledgett said of particular concern was Snowden's theft of around 31,000 documents the NSA official described as an "exhaustive list of the requirements that have been levied against the National Security Agency."

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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gKR9HbAk3zqH_35Lxovn1NcNjrjw?docId=17f92a2c-b05c-4b5d-afd6-0b734287a8f3&hl=en

[idwiyo]

1. I wonder what is it they REALLY scared about...

[gvstn]

5. This whole thing seems so ridiculous.

It sounds like they had no encryption going on. How can a spy agency that spends its days trying to break into other people's computers not encrypt their own data? They know they have 10,000(s) outside contractors accessing their database as administrators and yet use no encryption? The newspapers involved have said they are not printing anything with names of personnel which means they have names of personnel.

All I can think is that maybe when they were looking to beef up security after Snowden left and they were informed that their password database wasn't even secure and he had access to all of them too! Something just sounds like he had access to everything not just a few slideshows on how they are connecting to ATT and Yahoo.

I realize that people have been saying that air traffic control is using equipment and software from the 70's but I would think the NSA with no budget constraints could do a bit better then that agency.

[defacto7]

8. They said., "keys to the kingdom"

That could be an allegory. If he had the cypher code and the encryption "keys" he could get anything they protected. What's weird would be if everything available was under the same cypher code and keys.

[gvstn]

9. Yes

I was thinking about this the other day and besides that after 4 mos. they don't know what he got which seems unforgivable given the nature of their business (there should be records of every USB transfer which is easily implemented). My thought was that perhaps they don't encrypt their passwords or perhaps make it easy for an administrator to decrypt them and see them. I believe most systems encrypt a password and virtually no one can decrypt it and see it. Which is why your average website has a function to change or create a new password but none can actually retrieve and send you the old one. I wonder if in their quest for Total Information Awareness they set things up so that they could see current passwords just to have that insight into employee's minds. Such a list would be valuable because if someone uses their daughter's birthday as a password then when they change their password one can guess they will change it to some other significant date in their life or it will have some other family affiliation.

I don't know but they are sounding more desperate. But that could be psy-ops to make Snowden feel more in control. They seem to be getting to the Guardian with threats but British law is different and has less freedom of speech than we do so it may be the British government which is doing the dirty work.

I've said it before but I really wish Snowden had pulled a few specific records from some celebrities if he had access. Revealing a few days of Angelina Jolie's phone records or emails would break through to your average American about the intrusiveness and kept things like spying on Merkel's records secret. Jolie wouldn't sue the paper for publishing the information because she would probably understand the necessity of making the scope of the wiretapping understandable to your average Joe, and not revealing the spying on Merkel would be beneficial to America's diplomatic mission.

[jmowreader]

13. Think back: Snowden used passwords he talked people out of

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/exclusive-snowden-persuaded-other-nsa-workers-to-give-up-passwords--sources/2013/11/07/6bfa9a54-4828-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html

Before all this outsourcing bullshit happened, everyone working in The Building or at a field site had been thoroughly investigated and cleared before even being allowed near a piece of classified info. The investigation is called a Single Scope Background Investigation and it goes back seven years no matter how old you are...if you joined the army right out of high school, they are required to go to your elementary school and talk to the people who taught you fifth grade. "Yeah, Johnny was all right; got kicked out of junior high glee club for teaching the other kids Jimmy Buffett's Asshole Song, but he was a good kid other than that." Now they have private contractors and private clearance companies who probably get paid based on the number of approved clearances.

Kunia apparently doesn't have the keystroke logging routines all the other NSA facilities have - which probably explains why he wanted to go there; he knew he wouldn't get caught right away.

[defacto7]

2. I would like to know how long it took Snowden

to gather all of the 1.5 million top secret files unnoticed. Did they keep them all in one great big directory called "ALL_TOP_SECRET_FILES_ARE_RIGHT_HERE"?

[jsr]

3. No kidding.

[davidn3600]

15. Well...

Considering our nuclear launch code was "00000000" for nearly 20 years...it wouldnt surprise me if it really was that easy to steal those documents.

There are some federal agencies that are still using floppy drives. I wonder if they updated to Windows 95 yet?

It's amazing we haven't been cyber-attacked by hackers yet.

[jsr]

4. He didn't steal the Rubik's cube

[Adam051188]

6. +1

[WillyT]

7. Good... We Don't Tolerate "Kings" Anymore

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

10. + 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000/2

[Ichingcarpenter]

17. what's the German word for kingdom?

Reich
"kingdom" in German


I'm not surprise he thinks he has a kingdom.

[woo me with science]

19. +1000000 Thank you. nt

[RC]

11. The General was so busy enjoying his little fiefdom and spying on everyone else, he forgot to secure

his own house.
Between his arrogance, his paranoia and oversized ego, he neglected his own house. He was so busy congratulating himself on his accomplishments, he left his own (read our) information wide open.
He needs to be fired for his incompetence.

[Vattel]

12. Alexander has lied before about the scope of NSA programs.

So why should we believe him now?

[MisterP]

14. heh, the NSA just compared itself to Heaven nt

[Savannahmann]

16. Less than sixty world wide.

This from the agency that swore for years that it wasn't doing anything like that, and now that they've been caught collecting data on every single cell phone in the nation, swears that nobody is looking at it, or listening to it, or anything like that. Now, we're supposed to believe them when they say less than sixty is all they're monitoring.

Fine if it's less than sixty then lets talk about cutting that budget since you're spending billions of dollars to monitor sixty people that seems wasteful to me. How about we shift 75% of your budget over to taking care of our seniors, and our children, and perhaps finding homes for those homeless?

[riderinthestorm]

18. And after insisting no Americans were being spied on, now they admit Americans are being spied on.

But "only" 60 or so....

Uh huh.