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EDWARD SNOWDEN: INFORMATION LEAKS
Joe Obenchain
Mr.French
CIT 1
April 28, 2016
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Joe Obenchain
CIT 1
Mr. French
April 28, 2016
Edward Snowden: The Beginning of his career’s
. When Edward Snowden was born on June 21, 1983, he had no clue what his life would turn out to be. He didn't know that he would turn out to be one of the largest whistle blowers ever. He didn't even know what that meant. He didn't know what asylum meant, or even more that he would be asking for and needing it. In 2004, he enlisted in the United States Army Reserve as a Special Forces candidate in the category 18X which is an Active Duty Enlistment Option but did not complete training because of a leg injury. He wanted to be in the army because he wanted to help to free people from things that were occurring during the Iraq war. Snowden was employed for less than a year in 2005 as a Security Specialist at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language. To become a computer security specialist here, you must have a high security clearance, take and pass a polygraph test and an extensive background check. In 2006, Snowden attended a job fair for intelligence agencies and ended up getting a job at the CIA in the global communications division in the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. In 2009, Snowden started working as a contractee for Dell that handled/managed computer systems for lots of government agencies. He started to work at an assigned National Security Agency Facility
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at Yokota Air Base near Tokyo to teach military officers to defend their computer systems from Chinese hackers. The four years he worked as a contractee for Dell, lead him to supervising NSA computer systems upgrades. In 2011, he went back to Maryland, where he worked with Dell for the CIA for about a year. He was contacted by the Chiefs of the CIA’s tech branches because Snowden started downloading documents that told how the CIA planned or had already started to spy on people with the programs they had. The estimated amount of documents that were downloaded was between 50,000 and 200,000 These documents were given to Glenn Greenwald (Author) and Laura Poitras (Movie Director). Most of the documents were downloaded when Snowden was working with Dell. In 2012, Dell moved Snowden to Hawaii to work as a technologist for the National Security Agency's information sharing office. Before he left the U.S in 2013, he had been hired for 15 months inside the NSA’s Hawaii Regional operations center, which maintains electronic monitoring in North Korea and China. On March 15, 2013 he said he had reached his breaking point when the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper directly lied to Congress about what their agency was intending to do, which was mass surveillance. After that Snowden quit his job at Dell even though his annual salary was $200,000. He took a pay cut to work at Booz Allen (information gathering firm) in order to release details about the NSA’s plan for electronic surveillance. Snowden convinced 20 to 27 workers to give him their login information for him to be able to do his job as a network administrator. The NSA sent a memo to Congress stating that Snowden had used the art of trickery to collect tens of thousands of classified documents. There are still arguments to this day that ask if this was a hoax or fact. But one thing for sure is he managed to get these documents. Booz Allen terminated his employment on June 10, 2013. A colleague with Snowden said that he
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had administrator privileges with unlimited access to the NSA’s network. He also stated that Snowden was offered a position to be on the NSA’s hacker team, but denied it to go work with Booz Allen. In May, 2014, the U.S government released a single email that Snowden had sent discussing on how the NSA is operating is illegal. The NSA was created when the 9/11 attacks happened and has since then used the fear of the United States citizens to be able to spy, hack and gather intelligence that it is still going on now. The exact size of how much data he revealed to the public is unknown, but it is known that he released over 15,000 Australian intelligence documents,58,000 British intelligence documents and 50,000 to 200,000 NSA documents. Later it was discovered it was 1.7 million documents that had been taken. Snowden had said before he would send out a document to give to anyone he would read it and make sure that he wanted to disclose the information for the public. James Risen, a news reporter had said that Snowden had not immediately decided that he was going to leak anything in the NSA but instead gradually started moving in that direction. Snowden first gave this information to a reporter named Glenn Greenwald and went under the alias Cincinnatus. Glenn was 1st contacted by Snowden by an encrypted email service saying he had sensitive documents that he would like to share. Snowden then contacted documentary film maker Laura Poitras and told her that she is more than likely considered a target to the NSA and other agencies because she makes controversial films. Laura Poitras asked Glenn Greenwald to meet her in New York City, this is when Snowden started providing them with the leaked documents. One of the few documents leaked was a 41 slide PowerPoint about a program called PRISM, a data mining tool that uses stored information such as passwords, messages and text messages. In May 2013 Snowden was permitted temporary leave from the NSA base stationed in Hawaii for "epilepsy treatment". On
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May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong, where he was staying when the articles based on the leaked documents were being released to Glen Greenwald. Later Glen had said to a journalist that 9,000 to 10,000 documents had been sent to him by Snowden. On October 10, 2013, the information leaks had created tension between our allies because of the NSA's spying programs. It was found out that the U.S had started spying on France, Germany, Spain, Brazil and over 35 world leaders. One of these leaders was the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said "spying" among friends was unacceptable. The NSA and 16 other spying agencies have a black budget that pays off private companies so that they can spy on people even more. They were allotted $52 billion in the year 2013. A NSA mission named SIGINT 2012-2016 confirmed their plan to expand on surveillance. Their goal is to have mastery of global communications and global network and know who is doing what in a seconds notice on anyone, anytime , anywhere. A book made by Glenn Greenwald in 2014 named "No Place To Hide" explained the NSA's goal was to "collect it all, process it all, exploit it all, partner it all, sniff it all and know it all". In 2014 it was discovered that the NSA was planning to set up a huge malware ring with a piece of code called turbine. Turbine can hack into multiple computers at one time using telecommunications. Snowden used TOR to leak information when he was in China and Hong Kong because of the strict laws in place to keep the Chinese people under control and not talk about the government in any way, shape or form.TOR is a anonymous browser that spoofs the IP address of a user so they don't have to worry about the government spying on them. It is very similar to Firefox in the way it looks and the way it works. It encrypts the real IP address multiple times, then sends it through virtual circuits then it hops through the TOR relays from one country to another and once it gets to the web site you want to view it decrypts its self by
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hopping through the TOR relays again and there is the website you wanted to go to. On June 23, 2013. In 2013 Snowden was granted temporary asylum in Russia. lawyer Douglas McNabb stated "as long as he stays in Russia he is safe". This was the Snowdens last choice from being captured by the U.S because of international law. He tried to go to Latin America for asylum, but the U.S was forcing planes down so that they could look for Snowden so he decided that Russia would be the easiest place to get to for asylum and the safest place he could be. There were 4 countries that would allow Snowden to go permanent asylum and those are Moscow and Venezuela, Bolivia or Nicaragua. But they all have some kind of United States jurisdiction for international law so he decided to stay in Russia. The United States wanted to see if they could get him out of there by bribing Putin but it did not work. The U.S has falsely accused Snowden of being a Russian spy and transfer data to the Russian government which is completely false. But the truth is the government don't like that their information had been compromised. When the NSA started spying on people reports from the media explain that 90% of Americans are innocent of any terroristic activities. What I see is the NSA is more corrupt than politics that run the United States and use the people like puppets to follow into their cooperate greed and agenda. The Snowden effect is where people start opening their minds to new ideas about the security information field this includes #OP_Wallstreet where protesters from a rally to protest the government and how they operate illegal acts protected by the U.S constitution. Anonymous is one of the groups associated with the freedom of internet privacy. Anonymous was made back in 2003 when the popular website 4chan.com was getting started. When you posted something on 4chan you could choose to login and post it as your alias or you could post it as Anonymous so no one knew who you were, this is where anonymous got its name. It started out as raiding(a
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lot of people annoying someone) facebook accounts and posting porn and spamming, but then turned into an internet hacktivist(the art of hacking for a reason of vigilantism). They then began to take down websites such as the church of scientology because they were harassing the members of Anonymous this started OP_Scientology