

Feds Hunted for Snowden in Days Before NSA Programs Went Public - rpm4321
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/12/us-usa-security-snowden-hunt-idUSBRE95B1A220130612

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LowKarmaAccount
It looks like even Reuters engages in link baiting now. This is a non-story.
In the original Guardian article, Snowden says that the FBI was at his house
asking questions before the release, but only because they were concerned
about his disappearance.

> When Booz Allen checked in with him, Snowden said he was suffering from
> epilepsy and needed more time off. When he failed to return after a longer
> period, and the company could not find him, it notified intelligence
> officials because of Snowden's high-level security clearance, one of the
> sources said...The government did not know Snowden was the source for the
> stories until he admitted it on Sunday, the sources said.

So the Feds "hunted" for him the same way a parent "hunts" for his child that
has wandered off in a store.

~~~
wavefunction
>>So the Feds "hunted" for him the same way a parent "hunts" for his child
that has wandered off in a store.

That's a fatuous analogy. Parents aren't primarily concerned with getting to
their kid before the kid tells some "stranger" something.

~~~
nthj
You missed his point, which was that the Feds weren't worried about him
telling a stranger anything, until later.

~~~
tsotha
I doubt this is true. When someone with that kind of clearance disappears the
feds are going to put some effort into trying to figure out what's going on.
That someone may have turned him is a possibility they have to consider, among
others.

------
spikels
"This guy's really good with his fingers on the keyboard. He's really good."

Not sure about CIA or Booz but at every company I've worked at a good sys
admin can get anything.

~~~
gscott
If you have the keys to the house you might as well look around...

~~~
einhverfr
Except the sysadmin is more like a housekeeper than a random guy with keys.
Yes, they will see everything and can access just about everything.

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zxcdw
This is a strange and ambiguous statement, I think:

> _Several sources said that as a systems administrator, Snowden would have
> been unable to actively spy on people, even though he told the Guardian
> newspaper, "I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wiretap
> anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the
> President."_

What does "actively spy on people" mean in this case? As a systems
administrator, did Snowden have a way to get to the private data, even illegal
or otherwise?

To me what Snowden said, considering his position and assumed competence, what
the aforementioned sources say seems to contradict that. However, they might
just rely on saying that sysadmins don't have the legal power to do so, or
that other sysadmins would notice it even if he breached his privileges and so
on, rather than that _there is no way Snowden could have done that_.

A play on words and not revealed meanings might just be turning a fact into
fiction here, at least that would be in the best interests of NSA for sure, so
there's also the motive for such wordplay.

Or then Snowden is a liar, which I find doubtful, especially in such a clear
case and would turn up being harming for his cause.

~~~
zby
I think the key word is 'active' \- all Snowden could do is sip through
already collected data - he could not 'actively' add a new data source.

------
scrapcode
> "Snowden already had a Top Secret clearance before he joined Booz Allen in
> April, two sources said, adding that he likely obtained that clearance -
> _which involves passing a polygraph exam_..."

I know for a _fact_ that most government top secret clearances don't require a
polygraph. Not that it means shit, since polygraphs have never been proven to
prove anything. I just hate when I see things written by "credible" people
that will be taken by fact by hundreds of people when it is not entirely true.
Working in environments where all of the fine details are rarely shared, you
see this a lot in the media.

Law enforcement in general (Anywhere from city to FBI) is known to give
polygraphs before a conditional offer of employment is given. However, this is
not the case with all agency's.

~~~
jnbiche
Yeah, but he got that specific top secret clearance from his work as an
employee of the CIA. As far as I know, all CIA positions require a polygraph.

~~~
acomar
Yea, all the three letter agencies do.

------
gojomo
They've misquoted a sentence from the video interview, the same way many
others have. Reuters quotes Snowden as saying:

 _" I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authority to wiretap anyone, from
you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President."_

Meanwhile, the way his wording sounded to me (and is quoted more often
elsewhere) was:

 _" I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone,
from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I
had a personal email."_

The differences are the pluralization of _authorities_ and the addition of the
conditional-qualifier "if I had a personal email".

Of course people speaking in an unrehearsed manner may mix up tenses,
pluralization, and speak with imprecision as they shift between thoughts and
chosen emphases. But I suspect those portions of the quote Reuters messed up
were significant.

First, it sounded to me like 'authorities' was likely a term-of-art in his
intelligence-analyst line of work, meaning specific rule-artifacts in the
access system, representing a mix of 'proper credentials' and 'suitable
legal/system authorization'.

After all, NSA defenders have given the impression that even though there is a
massive amount of data collected, including on US citizens under no suspicion,
it's OK because those records sit idle, never looked at unless and until the
right conditions are met.

I have a hunch those conditions are called 'authorities'. So when you've got
records on individuals A, B, and C, and your algorithms tell you A & B are
51%-plus likely to be US citizens, but C is 55% likely to be a foreigner,
well, you can use the longstanding 'authority' allowing analysts of your grade
to do warrantless surveillance of foreigners, to start pulling things up on C,
from anywhere and everywhere (including previously-bulk-warehoused call
recordings, colloquially 'wiretaps').

And then when you see that C has been emailing B, that alone, or perhaps the
contents of those messages, might be enough to activate another 'authority' \-
suspicion, or association, or content-pattern based - which then allows at
least a peek into B's records. Perhaps that peek confirms B is a foreigner -
now the identity is marked that way, and it's all wide open. Or maybe the peek
shows B to be a citizen... well, now you've got 1 week to ask the FISA court
for a warrant. Better read fast! (Open question: if NSA decides after this
'free look' they have no interest in continued surveillance of target person
B, does the warrant for retroactive permission ever get requested? Are there
any records or repercussions from the 'free look'?)

Of course, the visibility of some target-records might be over-determined:
multiple active 'authorities' all allow viewing. Others might require some
"good at the keyboard" analyst creativity to activate: is there a past-travel,
likely-associations, prior-suspicious activity, etc. 'authority' that could be
applied? Still other 'authorities' might only be available to more senior
analysts: maybe targets who are themselves state/federal employees, elected
officials, etc. have an _extra_ sheath-of-privacy that prevents easy peeks by
junior people using the most simple and elastic 'authorities'.

Which brings us to Snowden's other carefully-qualified bombshell: "…to even
the President if I had a personal email." Let's say person B above is in fact
the US President... perhaps using a separate personal email address. (There is
of course controversy about officials having separate email accounts, but it's
almost certainly a rampant practice – see especially the recent Petreaus
affair and allegations administration officials in the EPA, HHS, or Labor
department have used secondary addresses, sometimes under alternate names, for
official business or leaking.)

Now using one of the myriad of 'authorities' a skilled analyst can utilize,
they can start pulling up warehoused records about B – the President himself –
possibly including previously recorded telephone/VOIP discussions linked with
the B identity (aka 'wiretaps').

I wonder, then, were 'a federal judge' and 'the President' just vivid
hypothetical examples? Or maybe Snowden actually pulled up, or heard that his
coworkers pulled up, private conversations of a federal judge or the President
himself, using 'authorities' that weren't especially hard to bootstrap, given
the surveillance system architecture.

~~~
malandrew
I read "authorities" as "clearance" or "permissions", not that the system had
green light the sifting of communication of a particular person. My reasoning
here is that he mentioned the President as well. It seems that any personal
account is fair game so long as you have the permissions to perform a search
in the system and you have the personal email to use as a unique identifier.

~~~
samstave
You are correct.

------
wahsd
You know, the thing that gets me most about all of this state surveillance
that Bush initiated but has been in place for decades now to a lesser and more
controlled extent, is that it is absolutely inefficient and inefficacious. The
NSA claims they have disrupted "dozens" of terrorist plots, so why not
publicize them once they are disrupted? They're disrupted, they're done. The
"terrorists" would have surely realized their plan didn't go quite as planned.

So the NSA disrupted some plots and turned an asset that simply told their
terror boss "bummer, XYZ didn't work because I lost the keys" and he's now
snitching for us. That being said, there are surely "plots" that could easily
be publicized. The thing people don't realize is that under the blanket of
classification lies a heaping pile of shit, corruption, incompetence, and
abject stupidity.

Secrecy can protect, but more often than not is simply obscures, disguises,
compounds, and perpetuates failure and corruption. Case in point, the FISA
"Court" that's rubber-stamping requests. 100% approval??? At the very least
there is a far too close relationship, which is more common than not in
Government and Military, and is a form of pernicious, systemic corruption, and
FISA requests are simply being constructed so they are guaranteed to
rationalize approval on technical terms. But I can assure you, there is deep,
systemic, putrid rot below the new coat of paint.

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chiph
So, how did they not know he had left the country? IIRC, the airlines now
report departures to DHS as well as arrivals (another 9/11-era law).

I think it unlikely that he had a false passport.

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brittohalloran
I wonder if they checked his Facebook messages and Google maps searches.

