HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020243.jpg

91 downloads. Making the transfer even more difficult, he was working as an analyst-in-training in an open-plan office with security CCTV camera. To be sure, there were also service computers with open ports used by the system administrators. They, after all, had to perform maintenance and back-up work. Even though Snowden was no longer a system administrator, he might still have been able to steal or borrow a service computer. Yet, despite all the NSA’s and Booz Allen’s security measures, he managed to download hundreds of thousands of level 3 documents to an unsealed computer. He also took some less-sensitive documents from the administrative file (which contained mainly Level 1 documents) at the end of April. These late acquisitions included the now famous warrant from the FISA court issued on April 25 2013. He completed the operation on Friday May 17, 2013, the last day he would ever enter the NSA facility. He transferred the data he had amassed on the service computer, including the lists of the computers in Russia and China that the NSA had succeeded in penetrating, onto thumb drives. Finally, he coolly walked past the security guards at the exit, who only seldom performed random checks on NSA employees. He had carried out the entire operation with such brilliant stealth he left few, if any clues behind to how obtained 24 of his colleagues’ passwords, moved the data from many different supposedly-sealed computers to an opened service machine or how he downloaded these documents to multiple thumb drives without arousing suspicion. In fact, the theft would not be discovered by the NSA for fifteen days. His escape was also well-prepared. Lindsay Mills had departed that morning for a planned two week visit to the outer islands. This trip allowed him to pack his belongings without saying anything to her that might be difficult to explain to the authorities. He simply left a note she would see on her return, and could show to authorities saying that he was away on a “business trip.” He also called to say good-bye to his mother and sister, who had been planning to visit him in Hawaii that month. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_020243