4/3/2014 An NSA Coworker Remembers The Real Edward Snowden: 'A Genius Among Geniuses' - Forbes

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An NSA Coworker RemembersThe Real Edward Snowden: 'AGenius Among Geniuses'

The Electronic Frontier Foundation hoodieEdward Snowden often wore to work inhis NSA Hawaii office. (Credit: FredericJacobs via Flickr, Creative Commons)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation hoodie

Edward Snowden often wore to work in his

NSA Hawaii office. (Credit: Frederic Jacobs via

Flickr, Creative Commons)

Perhaps Edward Snowden’s hoodie

should have raised suspicions.

The black sweatshirt sold by the civil

libertarian Electronic Frontier

Foundation featured a parody of the

National Security Agency’s logo, with

the traditional key in an eagle’s claws

replaced by a collection of AT&T cables,

and eavesdropping headphones

covering the menacing bird’s ears.

Snowden wore it regularly to stay warm

in the air-conditioned underground

NSA Hawaii Kunia facility known as

“the tunnel.”

His coworkers assumed it was meant

ironically. And a geek as gifted as

Snowden could get away with a few

irregularities.

Months after

Snowden

leaked tens of thousands of the NSA’s most highly

classified documents to the media, the former

intelligence contractor has stayed out of the

limelight, rarely granting interviews or sharing

personal details. A 60 Minutes episode Sunday

night, meanwhile, aired NSA’s officials descriptions

of Snowden as a malicious hacker who cheated on

an NSA entrance exam and whose work computers

had to be destroyed after his departure for fear he

had infected them with malware.

But an NSA staffer who contacted me last month

and asked not to be identified–and whose claims we

checked with Snowden himself via his ACLU lawyer

Ben Wizner—offered me a very different, firsthand

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Andy Greenberg

Forbes Staff

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I'm a technology , privacy , and information

security reporter and most recently the author

of the book This Machine Kills Secrets, a

chronicle of the history and future of

information leaks, from the Pentagon Papers to

WikiLeaks and bey ond. I've covered the hacker

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detours into digital miscellania like switches,

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4/3/2014 An NSA Coworker Remembers The Real Edward Snowden: 'A Genius Among Geniuses' - Forbes

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portrait of how Snowden was seen by his colleagues

in the agency’s Hawaii office: A principled and ultra-

competent, if somewhat eccentric employee, and

one who earned the access used to pull off his leak

by impressing superiors with sheer talent.

The anonymous NSA staffer’s priority in contacting

me, in fact, was to refute stories that have surfaced

as the NSA and the media attempt to explain how a

contractor was able to obtain and leak the tens of

thousands of highly classified documents that have

become the biggest public disclosure of NSA secrets

in history. According to the source, Snowden didn’t

dupe coworkers into handing over their passwords,

as one report has claimed. Nor did Snowden

fabricate SSH keys to gain unauthorized access, he

or she says.

Instead, there’s little mystery as to how Snowden gained his access: It was

given to him.

“That kid was a genius among geniuses,” says the NSA staffer. “NSA is full of

smart people, but anybody who sat in a meeting with Ed will tell you he was in

a class of his own…I’ve never seen anything like it.”

When I reached out to the NSA’s public affairs office, a spokesperson declined

to comment, citing the agency’s ongoing investigation into Snowden’s leaks.

But over the course of my communications with the NSA staffer, Snowden’s

former colleague offered details that shed light on both how Snowden was

able to obtain the NSA’s most secret files, as well as the elusive 30-year old’s

character:

Before coming to NSA Hawaii, Snowden had impressed NSA officials by

developing a backup system that the agency had widely implemented in its

codebreaking operations.

He also frequently reported security vulnerabilities in NSA software. Many of

the bugs were never patched.

Snowden had been brought to Hawaii as a cybersecurity expert working for

Dell’s services division but due to a problem with the contract was reassigned to

become an administrator for the Microsoft intranet management system known as

Sharepoint. Impressed with his technical abilities, Snowden’s managers decided

that he was the most qualified candidate to build a new web front-end for one of

its projects, despite his contractor status. As his coworker tells it, he was given full

administrator privileges, with virtually unlimited access to NSA data. “Big mistake

in hindsight,” says Snowden’s former colleague. “But if you had a guy who could do

things nobody else could, and the only problem was that his badge was green

instead of blue, what would you do?”

As further evidence that Snowden didn’t hijack his colleagues’ accounts for his

leak, the NSA staffer points to an occasion when Snowden was given a manager’s

password so that he could cover for him while he was on vacation. Even then,

investigators found no evidence Snowden had misused that staffer’s privileges,

and the source says nothing he could have uniquely accessed from the account has

shown up in news reports.

Snowden’s superiors were so impressed with his skills that he was at one point

offered a position on the elite team of NSA hackers known as Tailored Access

Operations. He unexpectedly turned it down and instead joined Booz Allen to work

at NSA’s Threat Operation Center.

Another hint of his whistleblower conscience, aside from the telltale hoodie:

Snowden kept a copy of the constitution on his desk to cite when arguing against

NSA activities he thought might violate it.

The source tells me Snowden also once nearly lost his job standing up for a

coworker who was being disciplined by a superior.

Snowden often left small gifts anonymously at colleagues’ desks.

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Andy GreenbergForbes Staff

4/3/2014 An NSA Coworker Remembers The Real Edward Snowden: 'A Genius Among Geniuses' - Forbes

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He frequently walked NSA’s halls carrying a Rubik’s cube–the same object he

held to identify himself on a Hong Kong street to the journalists who first met with

him to publish his leaks.

Snowden’s former colleague says that he or she has slowly come to understand

Snowden’s decision to leak the NSA’s files. “I was shocked and betrayed when I

first learned the news, but as more time passes I’m inclined to believe he really istrying to do the right thing and it’s not out of character for him. I don’t agree with

his methods, but I understand why he did it,” he or she says. “I won’t call him a

hero, but he’s sure as hell no traitor.”

–

Follow me on Twitter, email me, anonymously send me sensitive

documents or tips, and check out my book, This Machine Kills

Secrets: Julian Assange, the Cypherpunks, and Their Fight to

Empower Whistleblowers.

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