(Edits: Snowden's actual salary has been corrected to $120K, the title of the diary has changed, and it is here specifically stated by the author that any and all of this essay may be quoted and freely distributed as desired. It is a public document.)
Pardon, but we need to clear up something in everyone's discussions of Edward Snowden.
Snowden's actual job title was "infrastructure analyst." Booz Allen was openly recruiting for the position, which Snowden took a pay cut to accept. Most likely everyone figured it was because he and his girlfriend wanted to live in Hawaii. It was actually because Edward wanted to be in a role where he could freely access top security clearance data proving the NSA's nasty habit of data vacuuming on every living soul within reach, everywhere in the world.
What does an infrastructure analyst do? Well, at an ordinary company that manufactures widgets or can openers, an infrastructure analyst is one of a team of guys who have their hands on the very heart of the company network 24/7. Between them they keep it up and running, back it up, fix problems and disasters as they happen, and implement upgrades and new rollouts of software.
They see to the implementation of network policies across the board, flag violations or intrusions from within or without, set up new systems when the need arises, and if they're any good they test the system for flaws and weak points.
They often do a bit of coding to improve server performance or to trace leaks, or to test network security. Some are better at this kind of testing than others. Snowden was not just good on the keyboard, he was amazing and gifted, by all reports. Which is where and how all the trouble started.
Salaries for infrastructure analysts at widget or can opener companies start around $30K, and there's usually a probationary temp to perm aspect to the job while they see if you know your stuff. The pay scale is higher if it's an investment bank or defense contractor or a company with proprietary secrets they'd like to hold on to for a while.
Trusting someone with complete access to your company's entire network is akin to hiring someone to watch your kids and home while you go to work. You'll want great references to begin with, and you want to keep an eye on him or her until you feel confident in their skills and character.
Edward Snowden came with glowing references, a top security clearance, and was hired at $120K, which is a clear enough voucher of how highly valued his computer skills were at Booz Allen. He was a catch, for sure.
He very quickly became one of their most highly skilled computer wizards, a "go to" guy for the toughest problems. But above all else he was valued for that other thing infrastructure analysts are charged with -- testing the network, challenging the infrastructure, pushing its limits and finding ways into it that aren't in the company handbook. In a word, cracking.
Any company handling highly confidential data will have skilled people on staff or will occasionally hire hotshots from outside to try to crack their network, to steal money or data or whatever it is they don't want taken without permission. Booz Allen handled absolutely top secret information as their stock in trade, so they hired the very best computer people around to spend a good part of every day finding ways to crack their network. You can be sure that any company connected to the NSA is under constant cyber probing from outside right around the clock. They have to hire people to keep up with this probing, and to devise ways to do it themselves before the other guys do. That lets them detect and stop attacks when the outside crackers try that approach.
For an outfit like Booz Allen, it's absolutely vital to do this kind of internal testing all the time. And it's got to be done by the very best and brightest, otherwise it's a waste of time.
It's kind of a Lone Ranger position, with a lot of actual power to cause harm, if that is your intent. You have full and free access to every system, at every level, and you are there to protect it by breaking it first, before outsiders do. Anything goes. Any way you can find to get in is okay for people in Snowden's role.
This is what Edward Snowden was hired and paid $120K per annum to do. Lesser minds could take care of rolling out upgrades, replacing fried RAID arrays, watching user activity, and backing up everything. Edward was valued above all for his talent at getting into the heart of the network, past firewalls and layers of security, and extracting data without leaving a trace he had been there.
The whole idea is that if he can crack the system without being detected, so can outside hackers. It's a vital role in any network, especially one involving top secret data. He was there to probe and test the infrastructure daily in innovative ways, to break in and to cover his tracks. It wasn't just practice. He was cracking the production network, and he apparently got it figured out very soon and very well.
Because this was his literal job description, no one at Booz Allen would have thought twice about Snowden strolling around anywhere in the building and doing this kind of cracking, or even gotten excited about seeing him using a forbidden thumb drive. People in his role are allowed thumb drives to do what they do. Since he was performing the task he was hired to do, no one saw any reason to hit the red button. And again, he was well capable of covering his tracks, so there was no accumulated access trail to follow, no footprints, no red flags raised in the infrastructure to show where he'd been.
I bet this is driving the remaining infrastructure analysts at Booz Allen completely bonkers right about now, trying to figure out where Snowden actually got to. The honest answer is, they can't really know. They have to assume he had his way with everything he touched, and cleaned up his footprints afterward. After all, that was what they hired him to accomplish.
What they didn't hire him to do is to take four laptops full of highly sensitive and embarrassing documents to Hong Kong and thence to parts unknown. He's even given copies to unknown persons with instructions to release the files should anything untoward happen to him, so there actually isn't any point in capturing or killing him beyond the urge for vengeance our dear leaders obviously feel. The data is going to be released in any case.
The NSA and White House will know what Edward has in hand when they read it in the Guardian or South China Post or al Jazeera or El Nacional out of Caracas. Just like the rest of us. There's something very democratic about that, wouldn't you say? It's like we're all equals.
As always, it's a case of who watches the watchers? And who watches the watchers who watch the watchers, ad infinitum . . . Eventually, no one is watching the last guy in line, which Snowden was. He was free to take full advantage of his abilities, access and allowances, and to the lasting benefit of human rights everywhere -- he did.
Now that you know what Edward Snowden was actually hired to do all day, you can savor in its ripest blood red rage and horror the unbridled consternation and desperate panic the NSA and our government is feeling right now. The blithering desperation the White House reeks of, and is blindly acting out upon by hijacking the Bolivian President's diplomatic aircraft. They are out to do something, by golly. Who knows what other crazy stunts have already been pre-approved? From what we've seen so far, "necessary roughness" has a green light from here, boys.
What if Putin flies from Moscow to Caracas next week? Is he going to be forced to land in Vienna? That's just as stupid as forcing down the Bolivian President, and the blowback from that little stunt is going to be enormous.
The conundrum for the NSA and its corporate minions is that they absolutely need people like Edward Snowden, people who are so talented they can't genuinely be supervised, people who can crack the NSA's network as well as the best of the Chinese and Russian and Israeli and who knows who else is out there trying to get in? They need computer wizards so good at what they do that only they know how they do it.
But such people hold the keys to the kingdom. Mere contractors, yet they can steal everything you've got right in front of your open eyes and you won't even know.
And every one of them has a conscience, and every one of them knows what the NSA is really up to, and can decide to follow Edward Snowden whenever they please, with whatever data they want to take along.
Given the welcoming response of the whole rest of the world to learning the truth about America's wholesale spying on everyone everywhere in every way possible, I sincerely hope that Edward Snowden is just the first passenger on a new Underground Railroad.
European and Asian nations are already talking about setting up their own internets that will not be routed through the NSA's "secret" splitters on every trunk line in the continental USA, networks that by design cannot be vacuumed of every bit and byte that passes by. We forced their hand, and they have to do it for their own preservation.
I predict that, as more of the documents Edward has in hand are published, more and more nations will stand up against the NSA and against America's bullying tactics, and offer asylum without question to truth tellers yet to come.
Edward has followed the drinking gourd to freedom. Others will follow, to save their soul and their sanity.