Does he know this himself independently, or is he answering based on the common knowledge of this?

I suspect it's the latter because he would have no reason to have anything to do with stuxnet, and I doubt the security is that bad that any employee anywhere can find out everything about every program.

This would be more newsworthy if the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs hadn't leaked it himself. But he did, so this isn't.

Quite right.

One wonders why he'd choose to mention this instead of some other bit of information--in his position, perhaps he'd want to leak something that is already verified but with sufficient detail to show he isn't bluffing.

It was in response to a direct question in an interview so the choice was that of the interviewer, Jacob Applebaum.

I wonder if Snowden really has the ability to definitely answer this question. Someone should get fired if a guy like him, coming along after the fact, could really access definitive proof.

As a sysadmin he probably had root access to a ton of systems. Own the infrastructure, own the organization.

You can still tier access, even to users with root access by encrypting files at rest.

I find it highly concerning that a not-particularly-high-level employee was able to gain access to so much data. The amount of access and permission controls at Booz seem amateur from a distance.

People tend to imagine the wildest things with things as secretive as the NSA.

But remember this is just another $20B agency. Odds are their computer systems are as terrible as any other agency.

A random analyst was able to download millions of state embassy cables and they would still be looking for him today if he didn't trip up in private chats. Testimony in the Manning case indicates that mIRC is mission critical software. The blunt face of reality quickly deflates all the sci-fi.

That's not an apt comparison, because Manning had access to the cables by design. He exceeded his authority by releasing the information, not by accessing it.

After 9/11, which the US had enough information to stop if not for that information being held by different agencies that did not share with each other, an effort was made to make sure analysts in different agencies and branches all had access to anything that might be relevant.

He had access to millions of cables in just a few days. Every porn site has better tracking and mass download detection.

Yeah, you can, but it doesn't look like the systems were built that way. Honestly, the state of cybersecurity is pretty bad throughout both the public and private sectors. Somehow I doubt the NSA is immune to that trend.

>Yeah, you can, but it doesn't look like the systems were built that way.

Both Linux and Microsoft support file permissions. No excuse.

File permissions aren't nearly enough here. He had access to their network systems, so you'd need encryption in transit as well, and a thousand other safeguards at both the software and hardware level.

Not to mention, Snowden was an offensive cybersecurity researcher. He knew the NSA's safeguards in and out, and thus was intimately familiar with their weaknesses. He could most likely plant malware wherever he wanted. If you think security at that level is as trivial as file permissions, you haven't thought through the problem realistically.

This is all of course, speculation. My main point is that, regardless of the reasoning or other theoretical designs, current NSA systems do not appear to have fine grained unbreakable access control.

Can we ask him about JFK ;-) ?

the aliens, tell us about the aliens!

Didn't we already know this?

Yeah, I thought so too. It looks like nytimes and wired ran the story on June 1, 2012 [0][1]. I think the only new piece of information is that the NSA specifically co-wrote it with Israel, according to Snowden.

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ord...

[1] http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/?p=42451

Yep. We've known this ever since Stuxnet was discovered, not to mention that this article is a week old.

What could be of importance is seeing an official, classified document, that mentions this important fact. Let's hope we eventually get to see official confirmation on this issue.

The problem I have is that media is going to basically make anything Snowden says as the truth, even if he doesn't have any proofs of this.

He could cause a lot of serious problems if he shares his thoughts and opinions as facts.

He should've stopped after the initial NSA leaks but now, he should just be quiet because the longer he does this, the more irrelevant and pointless the whole thing become. The moment he's proven as a liar because most of his statements can't be proven, the entire thing he was trying to do becomes moot.

I'll be impressed with Snowden tells me something I didn't already assume to be true.

Why can't he just dump everything at once, instead of a new revelation every other day?

Either because he thinks that the media cycle will make his whistle-blowing irrelevant, because he's worthless after he discloses everything, or because then he'll no longer be a celebrity. Take your pick depending on your opinion.

Right now he has been noticed by almost every politician in the world. Prime ministers and presidents mention him and everyone is wondering what will happen to him. Perhaps he wants to keep the focus on him until he is granted asylum.

It makes sense to produce a slow stream of information so that he doesn't become old news. If the media starts ignoring him the politicians may not care as much.