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Another interesting item I hadn't heard before is that Snowden tried to leave clues as to which files he copied, and which files he looked at but didn't take:

by jobu 12y ago

Another interesting item I hadn't heard before is that Snowden tried to leave clues as to which files he copied, and which files he looked at but didn't take: But he believes the NSA's audit missed those clues and simply reported the total number of documents he touched—1.7 million. (Snowden says he actually took far fewer.) “I figured they would have a hard time,” he says. “I didn't figure they would be completely incapable.”

cpwright 12y ago
His statement presumes it would be in the agencies interest to publicly minimize what he took rather than publicly maximize it.
- yardie 12y ago
  You minimise the damage reported to keep your job. You maximise the damage reported to get the bosses job. Geeks have been doing this for yours; i.e.. "the security breach was minimal" vs. "you should hire me, your security are ineffective."
FLUX-YOU 12y ago
When the article chose to put quotes around "touched", my thought was that Snowden was being clever and running a script that ran 'touch $file' for everything he had stolen. That's what I'm going to choose to believe, anyways. :)
- toyg 12y ago
  Almost -- I think he used "touch" to show all the documents he could take, but did something else to the ones he actually did take (maybe flipping a permission bit, granting full access to a "leakyleaky" group or something like that). Hence, authorities reporting only "the total number of documents he touched" is a failure from Snowden's point of view, because they didn't see the whole scheme. In that sense, I think he's being slightly naive there -- it's clear that, once the story got huge, Clapper and Alexander had an interest in exaggerating the number as much as possible; so for all we know, they might have actually understood Snowden's scheme but willfully chosen to ignore it.
tinalumfoil 12y ago
If one of your servers were hacked with 1.7 million confidential documents lost but the attacker left a note saying "I know it looks like I took a lot of documents, but I really only took 200 000." would you tell your boss 1.7 million documents were stolen or 200 000 documents were stolen?

by jobu 12y ago

cpwright 12y ago

His statement presumes it would be in the agencies interest to publicly minimize what he took rather than publicly maximize it.

yardie 12y ago
You minimise the damage reported to keep your job. You maximise the damage reported to get the bosses job. Geeks have been doing this for yours; i.e.. "the security breach was minimal" vs. "you should hire me, your security are ineffective."

FLUX-YOU 12y ago

When the article chose to put quotes around "touched", my thought was that Snowden was being clever and running a script that ran 'touch $file' for everything he had stolen. That's what I'm going to choose to believe, anyways. :)

toyg 12y ago
Almost -- I think he used "touch" to show all the documents he could take, but did something else to the ones he actually did take (maybe flipping a permission bit, granting full access to a "leakyleaky" group or something like that). Hence, authorities reporting only "the total number of documents he touched" is a failure from Snowden's point of view, because they didn't see the whole scheme. In that sense, I think he's being slightly naive there -- it's clear that, once the story got huge, Clapper and Alexander had an interest in exaggerating the number as much as possible; so for all we know, they might have actually understood Snowden's scheme but willfully chosen to ignore it.

tinalumfoil 12y ago

If one of your servers were hacked with 1.7 million confidential documents lost but the attacker left a note saying "I know it looks like I took a lot of documents, but I really only took 200 000." would you tell your boss 1.7 million documents were stolen or 200 000 documents were stolen?