Slashdot Mirror
Could Snowden Have Been Stopped In 2009?
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "The NYT reports that when Edward Snowden was working as a CIA technician in Geneva in 2009, his supervisor wrote a derogatory report in his personnel file, noting a distinct change in the young man's behavior and work habits, as well as a troubling suspicion that Snowden was trying to break into classified computer files to which he was not authorized to have access. But the red flags went unheeded and Snowden left the CIA to become a contractor for the NSA so that four years later he could leak thousands of classified documents. In hindsight, officials say, the report by Snowden's supervisor and the agency's suspicions might have been the first serious warnings of the disclosures to come, and the biggest missed opportunity to review Snowden's top-secret clearance or at least put his future work at the NSA under much greater scrutiny. Had Booz Allen or the NSA seen Snowden's CIA file before hiring him, it almost certainly would have affected his employment says Dashiell Bennett. 'The weakness of the system was if derogatory information came in, he could still keep his security clearance and move to another job, and the information wasn't passed on,' says a Republican lawmaker who has been briefed on Snowden's activities. It's difficult to tell what would have happened had NSA supervisors been made aware of the warning the CIA issued Snowden in what is called a 'derog' in federal personnel policy parlance."
This is a classic case of "who watches the watchmen" or Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Apparently, no one. It seems that anyone with top secret at the NSA can do whatever they please with no oversight or discipline. It must be a fun place to work where you can spend you days creeping on your ex-girlfriends, elected officials, and corporate CEOs. Unchecked power is a very bad thing as we move farther and father from the principle of "habeas corpus" and into the land of "it's top secret and no you can't see the evidence, trust us, were a bunch of good, trustworthy folks."
And if you haven't seen "Flying Robots", go watch it now. The NSA will want these toys overhead next, if they aren't already there.
Snowden demonstrated and proved the reality of the computing and networking. It Is much bigger than CIA, NSA, and even the USA.
Modern computing allows to organize effective mass surveillance. It is not only about the US government. The technology itself is inherently dangerous. It registers ans sees everything, and forgets nothing. The 1984 is hopelessly outdated and over-passed.
Snowden is like Jesus of the new era. He is hated, crucified, persecuted, but the jinn is out of the bottle. We know now.
He did not receive Sakharov's prize, but it had been exactly what Sakharov did, - truth at any cost.
Other red flags in his bio include:
- Claiming to have a master's degree from the University of Liverpool when he only enrolled (and never completed) classes.
- Claiming to have attended classes at Johns Hopkins University when they have no record of him.
- Claiming to have graduated the University of Maryland when they only have records of him having enrolled in an online class, and never completed it.
- Claiming to have served in the Army but being kicked out after breaking both his legs during training. He would have either been placed in a medical holding platoon until he healed, or discharged medically and therefore received a percentage of disability from the VA for life. More likely he was generally discharged under the "failure to adapt" doctrine.
What we see is a person who embellished stores about his own past, who has never been able to complete anything he started or hold down a job for more than a few months, who by nature of living in the DC Metro Area ended up with a clearance and a high-paying job. Okay, he did complete one thing: he got his high school diploma on the second try. The point is, had he grown up in any other area in the country, this guy would be stocking shelves at Wal-Mart and complaining about "the system."
We all know people like this. You would not invite him to dinner a second time, or feel comfortable if he were dating your little sister.
Blame the contracting agency that performed his background check. What likely happened, they had a quota they had to meet and were more interested in the commission than a thorough investigation.
I don't know enough about personnel internals at CIA or NSA. With what I do know, I have to view with suspicion a personnel history report that appears months after Snowden began leaking information. He's publicly humiliated the NSA, called them liars and produced some proof that they've crossed the line(s) of acceptable behavior. I would expect these agencies to produce "evidence" that denigrates his position, and I would not at first glance accept it.
They're suffering from sitting in their echo chamber too long. Since they refuse to believe Jesus is God, they just keep going and assert that even the human teacher Jesus never existed. It's convenient.
Disbelieving in his actual divinity is one thing, but moving on and assuming that the center of the largest religious movement in history didn't exist is not really going to be a position that I'd be comfortable taking, but you'll find people taking it all the time.
Is the date on the report questioning Snowden's loyalties the same as the date the material was actually entered into the electronic records? I can think of several strong reasons why the CIA might want to do some rewriting of its own history here. And certainly they have the expertise to do a good of that. In fact it would be routine for them to alter history: that is how you give a mole a credible back story.
The CIA is not just a spy agency. They are also the USA Bureau of Missinformation And Dysinformation.
I can imagine them rewriting history, but in this case I doubt it; surely it would suit them better for him to have been a normal, competent employee at that point, who then went rogue later, rather than saying "oops ... yes, we saw all these warning signs, but forgot to do anything about it for a few years. Told you so - er, I mean, we would have told you so, if we'd been more alert..."
Of course, if you're really paranoid, you'd wonder if the CIA computers had been compromised by, say, some other agency with lots of expertise at breaking into high-value targets, and this report had been planted by them, maybe to divert blame for their own failed internal security...