Reuters: Snowden Tricked Co-Workers Into Giving Him Their Passwords
More details emerged today about how Edward Snowden managed to steal so many top secret documents — he reportedly tricked at least 20 of his co-workers into giving him their passwords.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden used login credentials and passwords provided unwittingly by colleagues at a spy base in Hawaii to access some of the classified material he leaked to the media, sources said.
A handful of agency employees who gave their login details to Snowden were identified, questioned and removed from their assignments, said a source close to several U.S. government investigations into the damage caused by the leaks.
Snowden may have persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers at the NSA regional operations center in Hawaii to give him their logins and passwords by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator, a second source said.
An absolutely shocking lapse of security at an NSA facility. If true, it’s mind-boggling that people who are working with secret information could be so lax with their passwords.
Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald is sarcastically mocking this report on Twitter:
Now that anonymous officials disseminated these claims through Reuters, let’s blindly assume they’re true http://t.co/4fkpPGQWUw
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 8, 2013
@hugorifkind But gullibly believing self-serving claims from anonymous govt officials and shoddy journalistic devices are separate issues.
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 8, 2013
Greenwald is also mocking the possibility that Snowden’s leaks may cause harm in the real world, with an exceptionally nasty tweet:
Coming today in the @Telegraph: Snowden leaks help spread famine, supernatural demons, and the SARS virus, UK officials say
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 8, 2013
Notice: there isn’t a hint of thoughtfulness in Greenwald’s responses to the question of the harm caused by Snowden. He won’t even admit the possibility; instead he revels in deriding and making fun of it.
