The National Security Agency (NSA) should be focused on reforming its out of control mass surveillance operations, including the bulk phone records collection program that a federal judge and the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Board have said violates the law. Instead, NSA is spending countless man hours investigating how the public found out about the law breaking, smearing the whistleblower who told the public the truth (Edward Snowden), and - in classic NSA fashion - spreading around blame for whistleblowing among low-level officials.
The latest Snowden smear back in NSA's rotation surfaces in an account NBC itself describes as "sketchy." NBC nonetheless reports that Snowden may have used "an element of trickery" to gain access to information. However, rather than punishing the officials who authorized wasteful and illegal spying, NSA is bragging to Congress about punishing Snowden's co-worker:
As a result, the employee’s security clearance was revoked in November and the NSA has notified the Justice Department that he recently resigned.
The main stream media is salivating to publish and repeat any inkling of anti-Snowden material. (It is certainly easier than asking how the Intelligence Community leaders, secret court, and Presidents of both parties signed off on surveillance that violates the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of innocent Americans.)
While the original piece didn't include a statement from Snowden's legal representative, to his credit, Michael Isikoff of NBC updated the article today to include a statement from me:
In response to a request for comment, Jesselyn Radack, a legal adviser to Snowden in the U.S., said, “Edward Snowden stands by his denial on Jan. 23. NSA has a documented history of scapegoating innocent employees for its own failures, … manufacturing evidence against them and misleading Congress.”
There is no reason to take at face value anything NSA tells Congress considering its history of misleading Congress and the public. But, this sort of scapegoating is right in NSA's wheelhouse. When the
New York Times published the Pulitzer Prize-winning story on warrantless wiretapping, NSA blamed whistleblowers who had nothing to do with the
Times story - pulling their security clearances and blacklisting them from contract jobs.
The fact that NSA finds time to write a memo to Congress about accountability for the public finding out about NSA waste and illegality, but cannot give a clear answer to simple oversight questions like "does the NSA collect data on millions of Americans?" should call into question all of NSA's defensive smears of the messenger that are really transparent attempts to distract from the message.
Snowden specifically addressed the false rumor about credentials in his online chat with the public last month.
@MichaelHargrov1 #AskSnowden Was the privacy of your co-workers considered while you were stealing their log-in and password information?
With all due respect to Mark Hosenball, the Reuters report that put this out there was simply wrong. I never stole any passwords, nor did I trick an army of co-workers.
Snowden's credibility should be rock solid by now as - unlike Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander - Snowden has told nothing but the truth about NSA. Regardless, a
decidedly "un-sketchy" report in Forbes directly from one of Snowden's former co-workers - not the embattled NSA in duck and cover mode - backs up Snowden's account:
According to the source, Snowden didn’t dupe coworkers into handing over their passwords, as one report has claimed. Nor did Snowden fabricate SSH keys to gain unauthorized access, he or she says.
Instead, there’s little mystery as to how Snowden gained his access: It was given to him.
If anyone accessed passwords and data without permission, it's NSA, which has admittedly collected and stored data on hundreds of millions of innocent people under the guise of protecting national security but with no actual benefit to national security.