4 ms·

Anyone who has worked at the fort can assure you that's not how it works...

nvy 3y ago
Didn't he have a special PRIVACC designation that allowed him to bypass traditional "need to know" silo boundaries, under the auspices of being a sysadmin or whatever?
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
  He leaked documents from British and Australian intelligence according to his wiki page, so he obviously had broad access. I’m paraphrasing, but he’s specifically talked in interviews that he had access to almost everything.
  - andrewmutz 3y ago
    If there was stuff he didn't have access to, like super secret UFO stuff, would he know about it?
  - _kbh_ 3y ago
    > He leaked documents from British and Australian intelligence according to his wiki page, so he obviously had broad access. I’m paraphrasing, but he’s specifically talked in interviews that he had access to almost everything. Whilst this is true, he leaked only one document related to Australian intelligence, so if there was a lot of sharing between the two then Snowden clearly didn't have access to a lot of it.
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  These systems are commonly air-gapped. Unless he physically went around to the various SCIFs, where the information would be, it doesn't matter what kind of access he had.
  - nvy 3y ago
    >These systems are commonly air-gapped Do you have direct experience? Because this is contradictory to my own experience. When I was in the Air Force we had access to various classified networks at levels up to and including TS. You often needed to be in a SCIF and/or have TEMPEST-rated equipment to log in, depending on the context, but the systems are networked nonetheless.
    - BobbyJo 3y ago
      I worked in a SCIF for a short time for a defense contractor. It was a while ago, and I'm fuzzy about what I can and cannot say about how things worked in there, so I'd rather not say anything specific. What I can say is that it's trivial to keep things you don't want leaving a SCIF in the SCIF.
      - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
        I’m definitely not military, so I can’t speak from experience here. I just find it hard to believe that the military puts all of this information into decentralized air-gapped silos that are completely cut off from the outside world. Information isn’t useful when it can’t be searched, cross-referenced and analyzed. How does data enter a SCIF? because it obviously doesn’t originate there. Do people walk in with thumb drives and load it into a computer? That sounds like a security nightmare to me
        BobbyJo 3y ago
        When I was there, it could only be brought in via read-only disc, and only via authorized parties. Any writable media was prohibited from entering as far as I was aware/concerned. We weren't generating information though, we were generating products. Products (physical or non-physical) get "used" as opposed to "searched".
      - nvy 3y ago
        Fair enough. My experience is fairly recent but it might also be a military vs intelligence agency thing. All the classified/SCIF systems I used were networked, though the networks were physically segmented and most of the classified systems I used did not have internet access. Whether that counts as "air gapped" in your book I dunno, but I never came across anything like the room out of the original Mission Impossible film where the machine has no network access at all. In fact I question the utility of such a machine.
- pengaru 3y ago
  For anything like this to stay a secret this long, it's obviously not discoverable by a keyboard jockey having root privileges across the network. You don't need to know more acronyms to infer such things.
  - shadowgovt 3y ago
    Which should be considered surprising in the era of modern international communications, technology, and intel sharing. The odds of evidence of a UFO hitting the wrong comms channel and then not being seen by someone before getting scrubbed are staggeringly low. So for someone to have wide access across multiple silos and then hear nothing, one must assume either the conspiracy to hide the evidence of UFOs is supernaturally good or the conspiracy is both still using off-grid solutions to coordinate internationally and is somehow suppressing information that should be in their silo from ever landing in the wrong silo.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Reminder that we live in the same universe where China has basically entirely pwned our government networks, Russia has done a good number, and a 20 year old desk worker had the ability to post insanely high level stuff to a discord server for quite some time before anyone even noticed.

nvy 3y ago

Didn't he have a special PRIVACC designation that allowed him to bypass traditional "need to know" silo boundaries, under the auspices of being a sysadmin or whatever?

LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
He leaked documents from British and Australian intelligence according to his wiki page, so he obviously had broad access. I’m paraphrasing, but he’s specifically talked in interviews that he had access to almost everything.
- andrewmutz 3y ago
  If there was stuff he didn't have access to, like super secret UFO stuff, would he know about it?
- _kbh_ 3y ago
  > He leaked documents from British and Australian intelligence according to his wiki page, so he obviously had broad access. I’m paraphrasing, but he’s specifically talked in interviews that he had access to almost everything. Whilst this is true, he leaked only one document related to Australian intelligence, so if there was a lot of sharing between the two then Snowden clearly didn't have access to a lot of it.
BobbyJo 3y ago
These systems are commonly air-gapped. Unless he physically went around to the various SCIFs, where the information would be, it doesn't matter what kind of access he had.
- nvy 3y ago
  >These systems are commonly air-gapped Do you have direct experience? Because this is contradictory to my own experience. When I was in the Air Force we had access to various classified networks at levels up to and including TS. You often needed to be in a SCIF and/or have TEMPEST-rated equipment to log in, depending on the context, but the systems are networked nonetheless.
  - BobbyJo 3y ago
    I worked in a SCIF for a short time for a defense contractor. It was a while ago, and I'm fuzzy about what I can and cannot say about how things worked in there, so I'd rather not say anything specific. What I can say is that it's trivial to keep things you don't want leaving a SCIF in the SCIF.
    - LapsangGuzzler 3y ago
      I’m definitely not military, so I can’t speak from experience here. I just find it hard to believe that the military puts all of this information into decentralized air-gapped silos that are completely cut off from the outside world. Information isn’t useful when it can’t be searched, cross-referenced and analyzed. How does data enter a SCIF? because it obviously doesn’t originate there. Do people walk in with thumb drives and load it into a computer? That sounds like a security nightmare to me
      - BobbyJo 3y ago
        When I was there, it could only be brought in via read-only disc, and only via authorized parties. Any writable media was prohibited from entering as far as I was aware/concerned. We weren't generating information though, we were generating products. Products (physical or non-physical) get "used" as opposed to "searched".
    - nvy 3y ago
      Fair enough. My experience is fairly recent but it might also be a military vs intelligence agency thing. All the classified/SCIF systems I used were networked, though the networks were physically segmented and most of the classified systems I used did not have internet access. Whether that counts as "air gapped" in your book I dunno, but I never came across anything like the room out of the original Mission Impossible film where the machine has no network access at all. In fact I question the utility of such a machine.
pengaru 3y ago
For anything like this to stay a secret this long, it's obviously not discoverable by a keyboard jockey having root privileges across the network. You don't need to know more acronyms to infer such things.
- shadowgovt 3y ago
  Which should be considered surprising in the era of modern international communications, technology, and intel sharing. The odds of evidence of a UFO hitting the wrong comms channel and then not being seen by someone before getting scrubbed are staggeringly low. So for someone to have wide access across multiple silos and then hear nothing, one must assume either the conspiracy to hide the evidence of UFOs is supernaturally good or the conspiracy is both still using off-grid solutions to coordinate internationally and is somehow suppressing information that should be in their silo from ever landing in the wrong silo.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Reminder that we live in the same universe where China has basically entirely pwned our government networks, Russia has done a good number, and a 20 year old desk worker had the ability to post insanely high level stuff to a discord server for quite some time before anyone even noticed.