Feds seeks billions from Snowden security background check firm

[struggle4progress]

Posted Thursday, Jan. 23, 2014
By James Rosen
McClatchy Washington Bureau

The federal government is seeking billions of dollars in penalties and damages from the company that did the background security check on NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

The Justice Department says in a new court filing that U.S. Investigations Services Inc., the largest of the several firms that the government contracts with to investigate current and prospective federal employees, lied about 665,000 checks it conducted between 2008 and 2012.

USIS devised an elaborate scheme in which it told the government it had completed probes of people whose backgrounds it had not, in fact, thoroughly vetted, according to a 25-page document filed Wednesday in an Alabama court as part of an ongoing civil lawsuit against the Falls Church, Va.-based firm ...

The government also hired USIS to do the background check on Aaron Alexis, another contract employee who shot and killed 12 people Sept. 16 last year at the Washington Navy Yard ...

http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/23/5509358/feds-seeks-billions-from-snowden.html

[1StrongBlackMan]

1. Again ...

the complaint has nothing to do with snowden ... Check the period being contested.

[struggle4progress]

2. Snowden's Background Check Deemed Inadequate

By Charles S. Clark
August 28, 2013

The Falls Church, Va.-based firm that performed the background check on Edward Snowden missed key concerns in evaluating the Booz Allen Hamilton contractor who went on to leak vital documents on domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency, The Wall Street Journal reported.

An official review by National Counterintelligence Executive Frank Montoya Jr. found that U.S. Investigations Services, during its 2011 background check, “did not present a comprehensive picture of Mr. Snowden” because it failed to interview a sufficient number of contacts and didn't raise potential concerns. The check did not, for example, verify Snowden’s previous work for the CIA, the Journal wrote.

Montoya, an appointee of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, presented his findings to the inspector general of the Office of Personnel Management. OPM continues to employ USIS, which is under a grand jury investigation for allegedly rushing other background checks ...

http://www.govexec.com/technology/2013/08/snowdens-background-check-deemed-inadequate/69572/

As explicitly noted by article linked in OP, the Snowden background check appears to have occurred during the 2008-2012 period discussed in the complaint

[1StrongBlackMan]

3. Oops, my bad ...

While I have no doubt, snowden's background investigation is now deemed inadequate ... I was going from an earlier report on the complaint filing. My understanding of the DoJ filing focuses on a whistle-blower's assertion that USIS used software to mark case files investigated, when they had, in fact, conducted no investigation.