US doesn't know what Snowden took, sources say

[kpete]

Source: NBC




By Michael Isikoff, Matthew Cole, and Richard Esposito
NBC News

More than two months after documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden first began appearing in the news media, the National Security Agency still doesn’t know the full extent of what he took, according to intelligence community sources, and is “overwhelmed” trying to assess the damage.

Officials, including NSA director Keith Alexander, have assured the public that the government knows the scope of the damage, but two separate sources briefed on the matter told NBC News that the NSA has been unable to determine the full extent of the data he removed.

Sources said authorities believe the trove of unreleased materials includes details of data collection by U.S. allies, including the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These English-speaking allies, known along with the U.S. as the "Five Eyes," are critical to U.S. intelligence efforts.

Snowden was working for Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii as a contractor for the NSA before he flew to Hong Kong in May 2013. Documents that he had leaked then became the basis of a series of articles by Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post about the extent of the NSA’s monitoring of electronic communications. Greenwald has told reporters that Snowden has leaked him and Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, thousands of documents -- all of which have since been encrypted -- and that the encoded files have been shared with others

Read more: http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/20/20108770-us-doesnt-know-what-snowden-took-sources-say?lite

[George II]

1. I'm not surprised, and that's not a shot at the US government...

....he had access to millions of documents, he didn't "take" them, he copied them. Who knows how many he copied? We'll find out when he comes back to the US.

[Blue_Tires]

2. Just kill the NSA and DHS and be done with it...

[David Krout]

3. And we're supposed to believe NSA analysts are closely monitored?

If any NSA analyst copies something and takes it home, the NSA will be clueless unless he leaks it to the media?

[In_The_Wind]

7. That's a lousy attitude.

[azurnoir]

5. you mean the US government still doesn't know?

I remember reading in the first week or two after the story broke that the US government didn't know but now, nearly 3 months later we still don't know-sheesh who's minding the farm here?

[grasswire]

6. well, well....Itchy is on the story now.

I kinda thought NBC was taking a bye on this one.

[Ocelot]

8. Which begs the question...

If one low-level civilian employee like Snowden was able to do so much damage to the NSA's secrecy that they don't know how to counter it.... doesn't this essentially prove that the NSA's civilian contractors are so FUCKED-UP that they shouldn't be entrusted with safekeeping any of this data in the first place?

[madrchsod]

9. yup..you pretty much summed up the whole dam thing

[Turbineguy]

16. It's that "money saving" privatization that's working so well.

The republicans had it right again.

[DeSwiss]

10. That's what's scaring them shitless!

- They've done so much criminal shit they don't know what lies to tell to try and explain/cover them up!

K&R

''...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.''

The American Declaration of Independence

[Coyotl]

11. First, we must identify who "They" are.

http://www.infowars.com/the-lost-pinky-the-brain-episode-t-h-e-y-secret-societies-that-rule-the-world/

[bemildred]

12. I think we can start with Clapper and Hayden and work down and up as needed. nt

[DeSwiss]

13. If anyone is having problems identifying who ''they'' are at this stage......

...then I'd have to conclude that they have other ''overriding'' issues, totally unrelated to my point, that they should be attending to.

''The shock of discovering that most of the power in the world is held by ignorant and greedy people can really bum you out at first; but after you've lived with it a few decades, it becomes, like cancer and other plagues, just another problem that we will solve eventually if we keep working at it.'' ~Robert Anton Wilson

[Coyotl]

14. Please proceed, name names for the "so much criminal shit" you cited.

[DeSwiss]

15. Reading is fundamental.

[center]''Το ψάρι βρωμάει από το κεφάλι''[/center]

I-binned.

[Coyotl]

17. So you don't know who your own "they" is?

Or can you make the accusation against someone real and known instead of just throwing out a generic accusation against persons unknown.