> even more than the Snowden disclosures.

Snowden took only documents that describe the overall global surveillance infrastructure.

Snowden had access to raw data streams for almost all SIGINT operations. System administrators like Snowden received special "root access like" clearance called PRIVAC (Privileged Access) where people allowed to be exposed to information of any classification, regardless of what their position actually needs, apparently because they are sysadmins and need to see what's going on. Snowden had 'technical' access to live feeds for all active operations, drone feeds and other information regardless of classification all over the world was wider than anyone participating in operations had.

It's not hard to imagine that there are other people with PRIVAC access who are actual spies. Just by observing important stuff and not taking anything compromises the system. If they downloaded some of that stuff, it has been open doors all this time.

Only after Snowdon's revelations NSA has added the two-man rule for sysadmins. Apparently it was too costly before. Increasing the data collection was more important than building the system.

I think there is systemic failure in US/UK intelligence organizations. They constantly emphasize offense over defense even when they know that they are very vulnerable. It's hard to show results for good defensive posture.

FYI even users with low access can view drone feeds.

Access to drone feeds from basically all CIA/DIA operations provides breath of access that compromises the security at completely different level than being part of a operation.

Fair point. Information technology needs refreshing every 3-9 years or so (Moore's Law and such, though Moore treads more lightly over algorithms than he does microchips).

People ... need a years to develop, and could potentially provide useful service for decades. Having an entire cohort of agents removed is a substantial blow.

U.S. reliance on technology is so beyond reasonable at this point that, I'd imagine there's the very real, serious liklihood of something on the level of an Enigma/Lorenz cypher botch that gives away the whole country on a platter.

It's something that I've wondered about for a while now, but really, who am I to question such things?

That's an interesting and scary idea, but keep in mind that a lot has happened since WWII. Back then industrial-mechanical cryptography was seen as this magic wand that made all communications completely inscrutable. Then the Polish and British and others went to such crazy lengths building brute-forcing machines, etc, to actually break these ciphers, and since then the idea of an infallible crypto system is out of style.

So I think the strategy is much different and much more durable now. The military designs ciphers to be resistant to theoretical future quantum computer architectures. They fund research every year to prove various properties of crypto systems. And I'll bet there are lots of fallbacks for any critical infrastructure.

nothing is impossible, but it's worth keeping in mind that nsa is the world's largest employer of mathematicians

Every new person makes any crypto system less secure ;)