Category Archives: Edward Snowden

NSA Leaks: Edward Snowden Stole Password, Memo Says | TIME.com

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The internal agency memo says a civilian employee has resigned after being reprimanded for giving Snowden access to his password

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth tweeted this photo, taken by the organization's Deputy Director for Russia Tanya Lokshina in the Moscow airport on July 12, 2013.

An internal National Security Agency memo offers the most detailed public account yet of how former contractor Edward Snowden obtained access to the agencys vast database of secrets. The memo, provided to members of Congress and obtained by NBC News, lends support to reports that Snowden stole a colleagues password, something Snowden has publicly denied.

According to the memo, at Mr. Snowdens request, the civilian entered his PKI password at Mr. Snowdens computer terminal. Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information.

The NSA says it immediately suspended the civilian employees security clearance, then revoked it fully in November last year. The civilian was not aware that Mr. Snowden intended to unlawfully disclose classified information, the memo said. However, by sharing his PKI certificate, he failed to comply with security obligations. The man resigned from employment with the NSA in January.

The memo also identifies an active duty member of the military and a contractor whose access to NSA information has been restricted after they were implicated in Snowdens actions, NBC reports No further details on their cases were offered.

The memo comes after a Reuters report that Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers to give him their passwords. NBC News report contradicts statements made by Snowden in a public chat in January, during which, responding to that accusation, he said the Reuters report that put this out there was simply wrong. I never stole any passwords, nor did I trick an army of co-workers.

[NBC News]

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NSA Leaks: Edward Snowden Stole Password, Memo Says | TIME.com

Did Edward Snowden have help?

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Obama's cult of personality has turned US into 'a nation of enablers'

By CHARLES HOSKINSON | 02/13/14 10:03 PM

Law professor Jonathan Turley said he's astonished by how passive Americans -- especially Democrats -- have been to President Obama's abuse of executive power, which he said has become so dangerous it's making the U.S....

By ASHE SCHOW | 02/13/14 05:04 PM

Wendy Davis now says that she has 100 percent been in the place I've always been, in regards to her position on a 20-week abortion ban. Davis spoke with the editorial board of the Austin American-Statesman...

By JOEL GEHRKE | 02/13/14 04:46 PM

MSNBC debunked a charge leveled against Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and his legal team that the lawsuit they filed against the National Security Agency was "stolen from its author." The network did so by contacting the author,...

By CHARLES HOSKINSON | 02/13/14 03:11 PM

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of Senate Republicans, sees a lot of Eric Cartman in President Obama's "phone and pen" strategy of acting without Congress' approval.

By JOEL GEHRKE | 02/13/14 02:46 PM

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Did Edward Snowden have help?

US Says Snowden Copied Security Password from Co-worker

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U.S. investigators have concluded that former national security contractor Edward Snowden collected some of the huge cache of surveillance documents he has disclosed by copying the password of a coworker who since has resigned.

Snowden has said that he did not steal the secure passwords of colleagues at the National Security Agency outpost where he worked on the Pacific island U.S. state of Hawaii. But the NSA said in a memo to a congressional panel this week that at Snowden's request, a civilian NSA worker allowed the contractor to use his encrypted digital key on Snowden's computer.

The NSA memo said Snowden then was able to capture the password, giving him even greater access to classified information on the agency's computer network.

The agency said the coworker acknowledged the security breach last June, but was not aware that Snowden planned to leak details about the extensive U.S. surveillance programs.

The clandestine spy agency said it revoked the coworker's security clearance, and he resigned last month after the NSA said it planned to fire him.

The NSA memo said an active duty member of the military and a private contractor also had their security access restricted as part of the continuing investigation of what officials say is one of the biggest U.S. security breaches ever.

NSA officials say that Snowden stole 1.7 million documents about U.S. spy programs, leaking many of them to journalists who have written numerous stories over the last several months about the surveillance.

The 30-year-old Snowden is living in asylum in Russia. American authorities have been unsuccessful in their efforts to extradite him to stand trial on espionage charges in the United States.

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US Says Snowden Copied Security Password from Co-worker

Snowden pilfered coworker’s password to access data

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Brittany Hillen

Edward Snowden's breach of NSA data prompted a sweeping internal investigation into how he managed to pull off his mission. According to an agency memo acquired by the folks at NBC News, Snowden managed to access some of the data in part by stealing one of his coworker's passwords. That coworker has since been stripped of his security clearance and has resigned.

According to NBC News, its document also shows a contractor and an active member of the military being banned from NSA facilities due to being "implicated" in having done things that could have ended up giving Snowden access to information. Their employers are now reportedly reviewing their (presumably employment) "status".

The memo's account isn't terribly detailed, according to NBC, but going by the information it does detail, Snowden got one of his civilian contractor coworkers to enter his password "onto Snowden's computer terminal. Unbeknownst to the civilian, Mr. Snowden was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information."

This is the first time something of a more official nature has surfaced on the matter, but not the first time this song has been sung. Back in November -- the same month the memo indicates the coworker was stripped of his security clearance -- anonymous sources told Reuters that Snowden had tricked multiple coworkers into providing their log in details, and that "a handful" of NSA employees have since been "removed from their assignments."

Following that accussation, Snowden denied stealing his coworkers passwords during the Ask Snowden online question-and-answer session that took place last month.

SOURCE: NBC News

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Snowden pilfered coworker’s password to access data

Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Courts

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Many commentators following the NSA scandals have been eagerly awaiting the recommendations of the US government task force on the matter, and the proposed reforms to be implemented by President Obama to bring the spy agency under control. If youre interested in this kind of thing, you can watch the presidents recent speech and nod your head approvingly when he talks about the tradition of limited government in the United States, and the constitutional limits his government is at pains to respect. Oh, and just for good measure, while youre listening to this magnificent oration being replayed to you on YouTube, the NSA will be recording your internet browser history, or possibly even hacking your computer.[1] If you decide to click on the like or dislike buttons at the bottom of the video, that little nugget of political information can be added to their metadata archives, along with the rest of your internet activities. In fact, in the 42 minutes it will take you to watch the presidents speech, the NSA will have hoovered up around 40 million records of internet browsing from around the world.[2] Perhaps yours will be among them.

It is instructive to note that all of this will be done by the same government that operates under an explicit constitutional directive purportedly protecting people from unreasonable searches and seizures and specifying that ... no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause ... and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.[3] Indeed, one of the most instructive aspects of the NSA scandal is the way the agency has succeeded, for an extensive period of time, in warding off legal challenges to the constitutionality of its surveillance programs. This is instructive from the point of view of libertarian theory, since it illustrates the degree to which the much-vaunted checks and balances within the State apparatus, highlighted in the recent Obama speech, are really illusory. In practice, the judicial and executive branches of government tend to act as a legitimizing mechanism for the actions of government agencies, with rare checks and balances and reforms coming only when the legitimacy of the system is under potent attack from some outside source.

The NSA has taken great advantage of the symbiosis between the executive and judicial branches of the State, having implemented long-running programs of lawless surveillance and phony judicial review. The modus operandi of the agency in these matters has been to hide behind various secrecy requirements which have been used to hamstring attempts at open judicial review, ensuring that scrutiny of its programs and their legal basis is kept away from the prying eyes of the public. This has included the use of secret courts, where other parties are not represented and are not privy to proceedings. It has also included the use of secrecy requirements in evidence controlled by the NSA, which prevents people from showing that they have standing to challenge the agencys programs in court, or mandates that such matters are state secrets, beyond the scope of judicial review. And of course, it has also included an extensive regime of secret judicial rulings and secret law, with proceedings conducted behind a legal wall chiseled with those two ominous words: top secret!

In fact, the Obama speech on NSA reform is but a sideshow to the real cracks that are starting to appear in the NSAs legal fortifications. More important is the recent preliminary ruling in the case of Klayman v Obama which has opened the actions of the NSA up to some long-overdue judicial scrutiny in the public courts. In the preliminary ruling in December, the US District Court for the District of Columbia found that the NSAs mass collection of metadata, as shown in its own leaked documents, most likely violates the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution. (Since this was a preliminary hearing, the judge was unable to make a more definite ruling at that time.[4]) In response to a preliminary application by plaintiffs seeking an injunction to stop the NSA from collection their metadata, Judge Richard Leon issued a scathing judgment against the NSA, dismissing several of its arguments as lacking common sense, and describing its mass surveillance technology as almost-Orwellian.[5] The Klayman case was followed up almost immediately by a contrary ruling in ACLU v Clapper, where Judge William Pauley examined the same legal precedents and arguments and found that there is no constitutional protection against the mass collection of metadata by the NSA. The ruling relied heavily and uncritically on government reports on terrorist threats to the United States, and claimed that the NSA surveillance is crucial in combating terrorism.[6]

So there you have it, the system is now in action! Obama is promising reforms! The courts have stepped in! The judges are restless! All hail the finely constructed checks and balances! If all goes well, the plaintiffs in Klayman v Obama and ACLU v Clapper will have their final hearing in court, and the NSA will have their actions assessed against the strictures of the US Constitution. Obama is promising more judicial oversight, and a public advocate for the NSA court system. Hurrah!

But still, one is left with an uneasy feeling. After all, this is far from the first case in which plaintiffs have sought to challenge the legal basis of the NSA programs, and it is long since the time Obama first took command of the national security apparatus. So what has changed? Why are there now promises of new reforms? Why has there been a breakthrough in this case, but not in previous cases of the same kind? For seven years the NSAs PRISM program was under the oversight of the same judiciary, and subject to the same checks and balances as now. For most of those years it was under the direction of the current president. Why is it that the program now ruled to be most likely unconstitutional in one case has been proceeding unimpeded for so long under the very same system of oversight and checks and balances and challenges from previous litigants have been shot down in flames in case after case?

Well, we all know what has happened to make such a difference Edward Snowden happened! The one antidote for the previously-operating regime of secret law has been the leaking of classified documents from within the NSA, revealed to the public by this whistleblower and lawbreaker.[7] Concerned that the NSA was acting contrary to the US Constitution, Snowden released a treasure trove of documents to the media, setting out the unlawful activities of the NSA, all verified in its own words. The Klayman case represents the first post-Snowden case against the NSA, a situation where the judiciary now has to come to terms with a hostile public, which is well aware of what is hidden behind the legal walls erected around the NSA. The recent Obama speech also represents the first major reaction of the US government to the prospect that it may receive an adverse constitutional ruling discrediting its pretensions to legal observance.

The Klayman case is quite a breakthrough. Many have rightly regarded the case as representing a major breakthrough in judicial oversight of the NSA, but to put it more accurately, it represents the beginning of judicial oversight. In previous cases of this kind the NSA has managed to ward off constitutional challenges to its surveillance programs by arguing that all would-be plaintiffs lack standing to sue, and by appealing to the classified status of its secret programs, and the privilege of state secrets. It has hidden behind a regime of secret judicial orders and rulings, all inaccessible to the public. The Klayman case and the ACLU v Clapper case are notable and important because they are the first of their kind where the plaintiffs have been allowed to proceed with their arguments against the NSA activities, and the examination of the legal status of these activities has been allowed to proceed. This has been possible only because the leaks from Snowden allowed the plaintiffs to show that they had personally been subject to surveillance, something that has been impossible in previous cases brought against the NSA.

There is certainly cause to be cheerful about the recent court ruling in Klayman, as it is the first instance where the NSA programs have been subjected to constitutional scrutiny in a public court. In view of the facts of the case, the preliminary findings of Judge Leon are extremely sensible, and indeed, ought to be inescapable.[8] However, the case is far from over, with appeals expected to higher courts, a final ruling on the matter, and then probably more appeals. One legal commentator has suggested that the trial judges ruling in the Klayman case is ... best understood as a kind of [friend of the court] brief to the Supreme Court ... [9]

In view of this likely path of appeal, it is instructive to understand the complicity of the US Supreme Court in the previous regime of secrecy that has been perpetrated by the NSA. The ultimate arbiter of constitutionality in the US legal system has shown itself, in past cases, to be highly protective of the government in these matters, and has previously assented to some quite absurd doctrines and arguments to prevent any meaningful judicial review. The court has repeatedly taken assurances from the US government that the opportunity for constitutional review would arise in the future, but has consistently sided with their assertions that it cannot arise for this particular plaintiff, or this one, or this one. This has meant that while the illusion of judicial control has been maintained, the court has taken a policy of de facto immunity from constitutional scrutiny. As Larry Klayman put it, most judges are just yes men who rubber-stamp the federal governments agenda.[10]

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Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Courts