The code IS publicly available, at least the code for how they access it. For instance, there's a version of Hadoop that restricts what you can see based on yo

The code IS publicly available, at least the code for how they access it. For instance, there's a version of Hadoop that restricts what you can see based on your role, so that some Analysts with less clearance may see less. One problem is that a contract employee of the government had superuser access, probably higher access than some ranking intelligence officials, including access to target people. So, you can say, OK, open-source the access controls, the access controls are sound, they're audited, they make sense, they fit the narrative. Mr. Snowden says they are configured in a manner that is euphemistically referred to as the 'widest possible aperture' or something like that. Basically, everyone has as much access as possible so that noone is unable to perform their job tasks due to misconfiguration. This is pretty similar to the fact that most tech startups require all developers to have root on production. It's a poor practice for a company that has social games or web discussions or whatever, but it's a horrid task for an organization with a massive store of secret history about lots of individuals.