New Snowden Revelation: Terrorists Attempting To Infiltrate CIA 250
cold fjord writes "The Washington Post reports, 'The CIA found that among a subset of job seekers whose backgrounds raised questions, roughly one out of every five had "significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections," according to the document, which was provided to The Washington Post by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The groups cited most often were Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda and its affiliates, but the nature of the connections was not described in the document. So sharp is the fear of threats from within that last year the NSA planned to launch at least 4,000 probes of potentially suspicious or abnormal staff activity .... The anomalous behavior that sent up red flags could include staffers downloading multiple documents or accessing classified databases they do not normally use for their work, said two people familiar with the software used to monitor employee activity.'"
Re:One in five? Really (Score:5, Informative)
No. You misread it.
Its saying that of the subset of those with suspicious backgrounds one in five is "linked" to terrorism.
We don't know how big that 'subset' is. It could be (and probably is) quite small. Of 5000 applicants, there might be 20 with "suspicious backgrounds", and of that 20 there might be 4 who they linked to terrorism. The "1 in 5 with links" are of the 20 that were already flagged as suspicious, not the entire pool of applicants.
Re:Snowden beware (Score:5, Informative)
Given that he has clearly and proudly violated the National Security Act, he is already liable for the death sentence.
No, he is not. There are various offenses under the National Security Act, and the ones of which Snowden is being accused are not eligible for the death penalty.
Re:Paranoia... (Score:5, Informative)
Paranoia... or actual infiltration?
Or maybe just a bunch of hype.
First thing that jumps out is the 4,000 re-investigations. According wikipedia it is estimated that the NSA has over 30,000 employees. I am going to pull some numbers out of my ass here: Let's say 25% have secret clearances and another 50% have top-secret(TS) clearances and the remaining 25% are support staff that don't need clearances. Secret clearances get re-investigated every 10 years, TS gets re-investigated every 5 years. It does not matter what TLA you work for that is standard. So (30K * 0.25 / 10) + (30K * 0.50 / 5) = 4500 re-investigations per year.
That makes 4,000 re-investigations per year on the low side of completely unremarkable.
Second thing is the wording quoted from the unnamed official:
"Over the last several years, a small subset of CIA's total job applicants were flagged due to various problems or issues," one official said in response to questions. "During this period, one in five of that small subset were found to have significant connections to hostile intelligence services and or terrorist groups."
Get that? 1 out of 5 of some unknown small subset. So we have absolutely no idea of the scale at all. It could be just 1 guy. Plus he lumped in "terrorist groups" with "hostile intelligence services" (which is basically all of them). So for all we know there were ZERO terrorists trying to infiltrate the NSA.
Given the 'facts' in the article there is no story here.
Re:No need for that anymore... (Score:2, Informative)
I understand your viewpoint. If it makes you feel any better, the US has been accused of imperialism as well for a very long time regardless if it made sense or not. Vietnam was claimed to be imperialism, and probably Korea, as well as various actions in the Caribbean in the years before WW2.
Part of what has undermined the British military is the growing burden of social spending. The same is starting to happen in the US. Many people in the US and around the world will cheer now, but eventually I think it is likely they might start to understand the drawbacks when a crisis comes and the US is truly impotent. Then it is likely to be a lot less fun.
Cheers [youtube.com]