HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019543.jpg
Extracted Text (OCR)
Hacktivist | 55
cyber signatures of foreign parties suspected of hacking into U.S.
government systems.
He also made efforts to directly contact Sandvik. She recalls
first hearing from Snowden in November 2012. He first wrote to
her under the alias Cincinnatus but later supplied his real name
and mailing address in Hawaii because he wanted her to mail him
authentic computer stickers from the Tor Project that he could use
as “swag,” as he wrote her, to attract further interest in Tor software
in Hawaii. As a result, she knew his identity seven months before he
went public in Hong Kong. He would later tell Sandvik from Mos-
cow that he had been “moonlighting” by working to advance the Tor
Project. He added, with some understatement, that his moonlighting
was “something the NSA might not have been too happy about.”
On November 18, 2012, while still working for Dell at the NSA,
his dual role led him to begin organizing a “CryptoParty” aimed at
finding new recruits for Tor. The CryptoParty movement had been
started in 2012 by Asher Wolf, a radical hacktivist and anarchist liv-
ing in Melbourne, Australia. She promoted the get-togethers not
) unlike the Tupperware parties of the 1950s. The party organizer, ©
usually with a representative of the Tor Project, advertised the party
on the Internet. Attendees were encouraged to bring their own lap-
tops so they could install Tor as well as encryption software in them.
The attendees would then be instructed on how to use it. Finally,
those converted to Tor software would be told to proselytize about
its virtues by holding their own CryptoParty. Wolf's idea was to use
these gatherings to expand the realm of Tor.
Snowden called his fete the Oahu CryptoParty. It had its own web
page. He told Wolf that it would be the first CryptoParty in Hono-
lulu. She wrote back advising him to “keep it simple.” (Wolf later
said she did not know he was working at the NSA.)
Snowden apparently had no inhibitions in staging a party that the
leadership of the NSA might consider subversive of its battle against
Tor. He even invited fellow NSA workers in Hawaii, as well as others
in the local computer culture. He asked Sandvik, who was living in
Washington, D.C., at the time, to participate, proposing that she co-
host the party with him. He scheduled it for December 11, 2012, in
Honolulu. According to Sandvik’s account, Snowden informed her
| | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.z.indd 55 ® 9/29/16 5:51 Pa | |
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019543
Extracted Information
Document Details
| Filename | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019543.jpg |
| File Size | 0.0 KB |
| OCR Confidence | 85.0% |
| Has Readable Text | Yes |
| Text Length | 2,494 characters |
| Indexed | 2026-02-04T16:38:36.793462 |