Via Kevin Drum, the NYT speculates that perhaps Snowden’s actual job at Booz Allen and elsewhere might’ve been as a well-paid thief — deliberately trying to hack into systems to test for vulnerabilities. I suspected this from the beginning and discussed it on the podcast. He’s a hacker.
It is a title that officials have carefully avoided mentioning, perhaps for fear of inviting questions about the agency’s aggressive tactics: an infrastructure analyst at the N.S.A., like a burglar casing an apartment building, looks for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world.
….A secret presidential directive on cyberactivities unveiled by Mr. Snowden — discussing the primary new task of the N.S.A. and its military counterpart, Cyber Command — makes clear that when the agency’s technicians probe for vulnerabilities to collect intelligence, they also study foreign communications and computer systems to identify potential targets for a future cyberwar.
Infrastructure analysts like Mr. Snowden, in other words, are not just looking for electronic back doors into Chinese computers or Iranian mobile networks to steal secrets. They have a new double purpose: building a target list in case American leaders in a future conflict want to wipe out the computers’ hard drives or shut down the phone system.
By the way, I pretty much agree with everything Drum wrote here:
The fuzziness surrounding this is frustrating. I’d certainly like to know more about what Snowden did for the NSA. Did he work on network security? Was he a threat analyst of some kind? Did he actively search out vulnerabilities in other networks that NSA could exploit? Did he do this only at Booz Hamilton, or did he have basically the same job previously when he worked directly for the NSA? Exactly how much does he know about the NSA programs he’s been revealing to the world?
This whole affair gives me an odd vibe. For reasons I can’t figure out, I feel like everyone is holding back information. Obviously the government is, but it sure seems as if the journalists reporting this story have also declined to tell us everything they know. Maybe there’s good reason for this. But I wish I knew what it was.
And on a related note, I’d still like to know what’s on those other 37 PRISM slides.
Like I’ve been saying from the beginning: the more they talk, the more questions I have. And not because I’m intrigued, but because they seem deliberately vague — both Snowden and Greenwald. Thus, I have zero inclination to get anywhere near this bandwagon.