An Apology to my European IT Team

When I was head of an IT division within lockheed (non-classified) I could have accessed anything - with admin accounts i was the sole owner of. I was ethically precluded from doing so...

At a company where there is "open access" with "logging the shit out of access (e.g. Facebook) -- then this situation could arise where an arbitrary employee could access any data, assuming they had the knowledge of where to find the info they were looking for, didn't get caught and the logging was either faulty, ignored or fictitious -- or the employee used an account other than their own to avoid suspicions.

It would be interesting,actually, to understand to what deep level of privs B.A.H - as a company - was afforded to NSA data/systems/programs/etc...

One thing I am not clear on is how this employee of a 3rd party def contractor (albeit, supposedly the biggest to the NSA) was able to access information that is considered to be so deeply secret to the USG? Is this an indication that a significantly "important" program (PRISM) was, for the most part, outsourced to be run by contractors such as Snowden within BAH?

Did Snowden systematically seek out, deftly, access to information over a long period of time through his privs afforded him as a sys ad? This to me is the most intriguing and unknown part: For how long was Snowden planning this? Was this something he truly accomplished on his own? Or was there a cast of supporting characters that we are unaware of"

If there is no supporting characters who helped him put this together - that this guy is one of the most brilliant high-school drop-outs I have heard of.

If there is a cast of supporting characters were they operating as whistleblowers in support of the seemingly patriotic reveal that we have thus far seen?

Or was there a supporting cast of characters that have helped snowden architect this whole event, masterfully - it seems, for a motive that we, the outsiders, are not yet aware: There seem to be three possible realities if this is true:

1) Snowden plus team is a smokescreen designed to purposefully air this info to further the surveillance agenda by seeing how far the world acquiesces to it. Stir up a reaction that can result in tighter controls of liberty when protesting pops up and the USG can claim that these are all threats to our national security and these efforts are vital.

2) Snowden plus team are truly patriots and heroes and are looking to stop the furtherance of USG/tyranny over individual freedom and are airing this info to allow for an open dialogue.

3) Snowden and team really are double/triple agents and are an attack on the USG directly attempting to make the USG look bad and have the US lose face/credibility...

(I am sure there are countless other potential scenarios that the NSA/USG have mapped out... I would be REALLY interested in hearing them for consideration)

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My personal opinion is simple - I am very happy this series of events has taken place as I have known of Echelon for decades - and now feel that there is 100% irrefutable proof that it is in place... what the next steps are is unclear, but I hope that it is an awakening and invigoration of people all over the world to fight to make this place a better world to live in rather than a worse one.

American businesses could and should lobby Congress to fight this and to find ways to protect US stored data, I know I wouldn't trust a Chinese cloud company not to snoop or steal business/corporate ideas and trade secrets.

But if there were assurances for US cloud businesses that this doesn't affect their business ideas accidentally or deliberately then we could set a global example on how to run cloud data storage that is safe and business friendly. There is an opportunity here for Google, Amazon, Apple etc for cloud data.

Lots of damage control to be done here for international clients. As an American I would always trust our systems more but international companies may have a very hard time trusting without the US being a shining example of how to correctly protect business data in clouds here, especially encrypted data that is automatically subject to storage/filtering if international.

If you were aware of any notable hacking incidents in China, and could claim to have privileged knowledge, then it's easy to say the NSA were behind whatever you want (just in this case, obviously the NSAs mission would imply it attempts hacking of foreign networks).

PRISM is disclosed via a powerpoint presentation. Presentation as in, a thing you tend to show to a large audience. Its highly likely he was simply given a copy of it after being shown it, since good internal education and knowledge sharing is a pretty core concept to running a successful enterprise.

The Prism scandal may have come as a surprise to US citizens, but the US has been spying foreign nationals and companies for years, and we've long known about it - haven't you heard of Echelon? It was also well known that these systems were used for industrial espionage.