Former National Security Agency systems analyst Edward Snowden speaks during a presentation . (AP)

The National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden used inexpensive and widely available software to plunder the agency's networks, it has been reported, raising further questions about why he was not detected.

Intelligence officials investigating the former contractor, who leaked thousands of documents to media outlets including the Guardian last year, determined that he used web crawler software designed to search, index and back up websites to scrape highly classified files, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

The unusual activity triggered a brief challenge from agency officials but Snowden persuaded them it was legitimate and continued mining data.

We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence, an unnamed official told the Times. The process, the official said, was quite automated.

Web crawlers, also known as spiders, move from website to website, following links embedded in each document, and can copy everything they encounter. Snowden is believed to have accessed about 1.7 million documents.

The NSA has a mandate to deter and rebuff cyber attacks against US computer systems but Snowden's insider attack was relatively unsophisticated and should have been detected, investigators said, especially since it came three years after Chelsea Manning used a similar technique to access State Department and military data which was then passed to Wikileaks.

Snowden was a technology contractor working at an agency outpost in Hawaii that had yet to be equipped with modern monitors which might have sounded the alarm. The NSA's headquarters in Ford Meade, Maryland, had such monitors, raising the question whether Snowden was either very lucky or very strategic, said one intelligence official.

According to The Snowden Files, a new book by Guardian journalist Luke Harding, Snowden moved to a job in Honolulu with security company Booz Allen Hamilton because it afforded even greater privileges.

Some members of Congress have accused Snowden of being a spy for Russia, where he has been granted asylum. He has denied the allegation.

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Snowden used simple technology to mine NSA computer networks

Granting Edward Snowden clemency, as many have urged, would send a terrible message to other potential whistle-blowers. Yes, he may have sparked an important national privacy debate, but he did so through reprehensible actions that harmed national security.

If thats a harsh verdict, I have earned the right to it. In terms of sheer media hype, I was the Snowden of my day, a disaffected ex-spy who, in the late 1970s and early 80s, rocked the security community by publishing a memoir about intelligence failures Id witnessed as a CIA officer during the last years of the Vietnam War. I did so only after the agency backhanded my repeated requests for an in-house review of our mistakes and refused to help me or anyone else rescue Vietnamese allies abandoned during the evacuation of Saigon.

Government prosecutors never accused me of betraying classified secrets. But in 1980, the Supreme Court decided that I had irreparably harmed national security by publishing my book without official approval, in violation of CIA nondisclosure agreements. This, the court said, harmed the governments ability to prevent serious leaks.

The ruling left me destitute, stigmatized and gagged for life, required to clear with the CIA all my spy-related writings, including this one, with the threat of jail time if I screw up. The First Amendment also took a hit with the rulings in my case. Now, all intelligence alumni, Snowden included, can be severely punished for merely speaking out about their work, regardless of whether what they say contains any classified information.

Yet, for all that I suffered personally, I never ran or tried to hide. And when the time came to face the music, I never bargained for mercy. I simply took my lumps, accepting them as the price we pay in a democracy for the right to speak out.

Snowden has violated these precepts. He argues lamely that he decided not to raise his privacy concerns through official channels because of harsh treatment hed received from a superior in 2009 for hacking into his own encrypted personnel files. He says he was turned off by the legal system because whistle-blowing cases have not gone well for defendants.

I could have told him that. Honest whistle-blowing is a blood sport, the only reward for which is knowing you tried to do the right thing.

Snowden also insists defensively that he doesnt want to hurt vital intelligence programs. Yet even his favored media outlets have withheld, out of concern for national security, some of the stolen documents he considered appropriate for release.

He claims his only concern is for privacy. But many of his leaks, like those exposing National Security Agency operations against Chinese targets, and those involving critics and allies in Europe and Latin America, have nothing to do with 4th Amendment protections for American citizens and everything to do with ingratiating himself with potential benefactors, from Beijing to Moscow.

Had he read though his stolen documents, moreover, he would have realized that Russia and China are as aggressive as anyone on the planet in attacking our digital firewalls. If he were to cripple the NSA, which seems to be his real purpose, he would simply be sabotaging our defenses against governments that abhor our constitutional values, including privacy rights.

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Frank Snepp: Clemency for Snowden's weasel ways sends wrong message

US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden used cheap and widely available software to gain access to top secret documents, a senior intelligence official told The New York Times. We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence, the official said, according to the Times, adding that the process was quite automated.

The newspaper reports that the findings are striking because the NSA is tasked with protecting the nations most sensitive military and intelligence systems from sophisticated cyberattacks, noting that investigators say Snowdens insider attack with web crawler software designed to search, index and back up websites should have been easily detected.

Last week, the European Parliaments Civil Liberties Committee said Snowden will answer its questions as part of an inquiry into government surveillance.

The committee has been examining US government surveillance, sparked by Snowden's leaked information about the NSA.

In a statement on Friday, committee member Jan Phillip Albrecht - who represents Germany's Greens party and has been a vocal critic of US surveillance of European citizens - said Snowden's input would be a significant and positive development in the European Parliament's inquiry into government surveillance.

To conclude the inquiry without testimony from its key witness would render the process clearly incomplete, he said, calling on skeptical committee members to drop their resistance.

On Tuesday, thousands of websites will take a stand against government surveillance by plastering protests across their home pages.

Tech companies and civil liberties organizations are hoping the demonstration, called The Day We Fight Back, will boost support for the USA Freedom Act, which would end or curtail many of the most controversial surveillance programs at the National Security Agency (NSA) and elsewhere.

The idea is to really harness the outrage of the Internet community in speaking out in one big voice on Feb. 11, said Rainey Reitman, the director of activism at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The protest comes nearly a month after President Obama announced a handful of changes to the embattled spy agencys most controversial practices. Critics said the changes werent nearly enough. The Hill

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Snowden got NSA files with cheap software

Investigators say the NSA should have easily detected former contractor's activity

NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden in a still image taken from video during an interview by the Guardian in his hotel room in Hong Kong on June 6, 2013

Edward Snowden used widely available automated software to stealclassified data from the National Security Agencys networks, intelligence officials have determined, raising questionsabout the security of other top secret military and intelligence systems under the NSAs purview.

The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that the former NSA contractor used a web crawler, cheap software designed to index and back up websites, to scour the NSAs data and return a trove of confidential documents.Snowden apparently programmed his search to find particular subjects and determine how deeply to follow links on the NSAs internal networks.

Investigators found that Snowdens method of obtaining the data was hardly sophisticated and should have been easily detected.Snowden accessed roughly 1.7 million files, intelligence officials said last week, partly because the NSA compartmented relatively little information, making it easier for a web crawler like the one Snowden used to access a large number of files.

[NYT]

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Snowden Used Cheap Software To Plunder NSA Data