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48 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS reason why NSA documents remained secrets, as all intelligence workers at Dell were told when they signed their oath to protect NSA secrets, was that the unauthorized release of communications intelligence documents would violate U.S. espionage laws. Even so, there was no shortage of activists overseas, such as Assange, who would be willing to publish NSA documents revealing its global sur- veillance activities. Cyberpunks, as these activists called themselves, tended to be hostile to the NSA because they believed (correctly) that it monitored their activities on the Internet. This anti-NSA view was well represented at the Chaos Computer Club convention in Berlin in 2012. In addressing these cyberpunks, Assange and his followers at WikiLeaks declared that the main enemy in cyberspace was the NSA. The NSA documents Snowden had taken were far more explosive than anything Assange had posted to date because they contained NSA intelligence source material. In the late fall of 2012, Snowden further tested his newly found powers. Using an alias, he reached out to some of the leading hack- tivists. It opened a door for him to the darker side of cyberspace. | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 48 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019536