Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close to home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what people they vetted and hired, why would anyone expect them to do better with someone whose resume they didn't have.<p>Not that anyone in D.C. is holding the accountable, but if someone hypothetically did want to hold them accountable, how high would their threshold for failure have to be for outcomes like this?<p>> <i>Mr. Snowden’s disclosures set off a national debate about the expansion of the N.S.A.’s powers to spy both at home and abroad, and have left the Obama administration trying frantically to mend relations with allies after his revelations about American eavesdropping on foreign leaders.</i><p>Mending relations is probably hard to do while continuing the programs and their secrecy. It probably wouldn't be that hard to mend them if they shut down the program.<p>It would save money and stop breaking the Constitution too.
Off topic kind of: It's a shame that the headlines immediately after Snowden's initial press release turned from, "The government is spying on you" to "Snowden is evading!"<p>By this I mean, It was unfortunate to see Snowden's punch dissipate with headlines that focussed on his safety and whereabouts, instead of keeping focus on the crimes committed by the US government.<p>Did anyone else notice that?
I found this line interesting: "Six months since the investigation began, officials said Mr. Snowden had further covered his tracks by logging into classified systems using the passwords of other security agency employees, as well as by hacking firewalls installed to limit access to certain parts of the system."<p>On its face, this sounds unethical for someone who made his decision on morality. Has anything more been published about this aspect anywhere (rationales, details, etc.)?
This is because they want to obfuscate as much as possible what is being done within the agency. If everything was logged, and you knew exactly who did what, it would be a lot easier to audit the agency, which is what they don't want. So they have a conflict of interest here. Make everything auditable, trackable and searchable, or risk other leaks.
Which is why there is some talk of offering him Amnesty - to find out exactly how much and what he leaked (Among other things) <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/report-nsa-mulls-snowden-amnesty-but-it-probably-wont-happen/" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/report-nsa-mulls-...</a>
"But for all of Mr. Snowden’s technical expertise, some American officials also place blame on the security agency for being slow to install software that can detect unusual computer activity carried out by the agency’s work force..."<p>Should we be surprised that they are ignoring the real problems? Neither Snowden, nor the lack of surveillance is the issue. What the documents revealed about the NSAs Unconstitutional programs is what should be alarming.
<i>The official said the State Department often described the spying to foreign leaders as “business as usual” between nations.</i><p>It's interesting the last line of the article says State often described it as "business as usual," an idiom sometimes used in reference to activities of the CIA (AKA "The Company").
Government Intelligence is an oxymoron. Anyone with a sense of security knows that the most dangerous people are the ones you see every day. Yet they allowed him to basically steal everything.