The US intelligence may never know the extent of classified information that former NSA contactor Edward Snowden collected from government computers, investigative officials said after six months of probe, New York Times reports.
“They’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of man-hours trying to
reconstruct everything he has gotten, and they still don’t know
all of what he took,” a senior administration officials said
to The NYT. “I know that seems crazy, but everything with
this is crazy.”
Intelligence and law enforcement investigators remain unsure
about a full scope of secret files that Snowden stole partly
because the NSA facility in Hawaii, where the agency’s former
contractor worked, was not equipped with up-to-date employee
monitoring software.
As a system administrator Snowden possessed enough security
privileges to access data remotely, browse it freely, as well as
take it off its home servers and copy it onto portable drives.
Should the security software be installed at that time – like at
other NSA facilities - it would help the agency to detect when
and where its employees logged in and which information they were
surfing through.
As a result, the NSA, the largest spy agency in the world with
some 35,000 stuffers, has no idea which file or folder Snowden
was viewing when stationed there.
Officials have told the NYT that they believe Snowden would have
known that the Hawaii facility was lacking that security
software. They also think he was acting alone.
Investigators have also confirmed to the newspaper that Edward
Snowden was logging into classified systems using the passwords
of other security agency employees.
Snowden persuaded 25 fellow workers to give
him login keys and passwords at their base in Hawaii that
gave him access to classified materials, Reuters reported in
November, citing an unnamed source.
Also, to cover his tracks, he was also hacking firewalls
installed to limit access to certain parts of the system,
officials have told the NYT.
As a result, Snowden managed to leave the US with the obtained
documents and came to Hong Kong. From he flew to Russia, where he
is currently living under a one-year asylum.
Snowden claims
that he has given all the documents, of which he has no copies,
to a group of journalists and news organizations, including the
Guardian. But some top officials at the NSA do not believe him,
like Rick Ledgett.
But at the same time, Ledgett, who heads the task force on the
Snowden leaks, told CBS
News’ John Miller on Thursday that he believes “it's worth
having a conversation about” a possible amnesty for Snowden.
In this case, some form of absolute guarantee would be demanded
from Snowden that no further leaks would take place and that
Snowden hand over whatever documents he might still have.
“I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could
be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high.
It would be more than just an assertion on his part,” Rick
Leggett said.
However, NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander did not welcome such
possibly, saying that other government employees or contractors
with access to sensitive information could consider it a
go-ahead.