Snowden May Have Persuaded 20 to 25 NSA Colleagues to Give Up Their Passwords
Anonymous sources speaking to Reuters said late Thursday that Edward Snowden was able to collect all the material that he’s been leaking over the past few months by convincing “20 to 25” of his coworkers to hand over their login credentials and passwords.
Snowden, the former NSA contractor who was stationed in Hawaii before escaping to Hong Kong and then Russia after he disclosed confidential information, used his coworkers’ logins to access at least some of the documents that have drawn international attention to the nefarious activities of the spy agency he worked for.
The employees who allegedly gave Snowden their login information “were identified, questioned, and removed from their assignments,” according to Reuters, quoting “a source close to several US government investigations into the damage caused by the leaks.” Snowden apparently told his fellow employees that the credentials “were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator.”
As Ars noted last month, the NSA base in Hawaii where Snowden worked had also failed to install an “anti-leak” software program built by Raytheon, which the agency had purchased for its outposts nationwide to prevent an “insider threat.” And back in 2009, Snowden’s superiors at his former post with the CIA sent him home from Geneva because they suspected he “was trying to break into classified computer files to which he was not authorized to have access.”
More: Snowden May Have Persuaded 20 to 25 NSA Colleagues to Give Up Their Passwords