The Guardian
just published new
revelations
on past and ongoing data sniffing by the National Security Agency
on foreigners as well as U.S. citizens. For now I do not have time
to go into those and will leave it to emptywheel
and others to comment on them.
But lets think
a bit of what all these revelations mean for the NSA and for Snowden’s
future.
Snowden had
system administrator access to a whole bunch, if not all, of network
and server equipment at the NSA. Sysadmin access means being in
total control of the machine. While a typical Unix computer like
those the NSA uses, typically logs all access events a sysadmin
can hide that he accessed a machine, loaded stuff up and down or
started or stopped this or that process.
Unless the
NSA is using some unknown super-tool to supervise and log what its
sysadmins do (and who would system administrate that tool?) it will
have no clear idea what systems Snowden actually accessed or what
he did to those machines.
It is the worst
case any Chief Information Officer can think about. What did Snowden
take? Did he leave some virus? Did he leave some logic time bomb
that could wipe out anything it reaches? Where?
The NSA’s damage
assessment team will also have lots of questions. What papers or
files does Snowden have? What does he know additionally to what
is in those files? Who might he have given those files to? Only
the Guardian and the Washington Post? What about the
Chinese and the Russians? They sure would love to have copies. What
about the encrypted “insurance files” Snowden gave to
“some people” who will be able to open and publish them
should someone capture or kill him?
There are so
many questions to ponder. Even if Snowden did not talk with the
Chinese and Russian secret services the NSA will have to assume
that he did and that they now have access to all the material Snowden
acquired including, possibly, secret U.S. communication codes.
In short: For
the next years at least the NSA is fucked. It will have to revise
all its systems and network components. This as it can no longer
trust its system administrators. It will have to go to a “four
eyes rule” for sysadmins so any access and change can only
be made by two persons working together. This will kill productivity.
Sysadmins do not work that way. A four eye rule will also require
many new system administrators – by definition a rare commodity
– all of whom will have to be highly trained and need high
level clearances.
The NSA will
have to assume that potential enemies now know exactly what it is
doing, how it is doing it and will act on that knowledge. All the
now interesting traffic the NSA watches will soon be fully encrypted.
As it is now known that the U.S. services copy all internet traffic
and have access to all service providers in the U.S. and UK, all
interesting foreign stuff that might have been found through such
access will now vanish from the NSA’s eyes. Other countries will
revise and harden their systems making the NSA’s future work much
more difficult.
The NSA’s spying
on U.S. citizen may not yet have such consequences. Unless there
is a huge case where NSA spying is directly connected to a Watergate
like scandal Congress will do nothing to reign the NSA in. But the
scandal will come. As a former East German STASI officer says:
“It
is the height of naivete to think that once collected this information
won’t be used,” he said. “This is the nature of
secret government organizations. …”
As for Snowden.
He is also fucked. There is no way out for him. The U.S. intelligence
community will try to get him now and forever. If only to set an
example. Even if he manages to get to Ecuador the country is too
small and too weak to be able to protect him. The only good chance
he has is to ask the Russians for asylum and for a new personality.
They will ask him to spill the beans and to tell them everything
he knows. He should agree to such a deal. The NSA already has to
assume that the Russians know and have whatever Snowden knows and
has. The additional security damage Snowden could create for the
U.S. is thereby rather minimal. Snowden can wait and work in the
Moscow airport transit area until most of what needs publishing
from his cache is published. He can then “vanish” and
write the book that needs to be written. How one lone libertarian
sysadmin found a conscience, screwed the U.S. intelligence community
and regained some internet freedom for the world.
Reprinted
with permission from Moon
of Alabama.
July
3, 2013
Copyright
© 2013 Moon
of Alabama
Republished with permission from: Lew Rockwell