The U.S National Security Agency may have the most advanced surveillance programs in the world and yet many wondered how Edward Snowden managed to get away carrying all the the most confidential data the agency has. Well the explanation is simple-- he is a sysadmin.
A former U.S official told the Register that Snowden was one of the most brilliant contractors of the NSA as he could infiltrate electronic systems and walk out with at least 20,000 documents.
Another source told NBC that its all just about the agency being outdated. "It's 2013 and the NSA is stuck in 2003 technology."
Snowden, as one of the agency's "system administrator," was granted special privilege to lift restrictions on accesses. For instance, NSA prohibits its employees to copy files to external storage but as sysadmin he could easily do that without asking permission from anyone. If his supervisor asks why he was doing it, he could easily brush it off by saying he was repairing the drive or doing some maintenance.
He could also use other employees' access to access files restricted to him, which sound like internal hacking, and gain sensitive information then copy it to thumb drives. His activities wouldn't be tracked as well because he was logged in as a "ghost user." Despite NSA's effort to track his actions, they are still unsuccessful.
Another problem was that he could still access the NSA database even if he is 5,000 miles away as he is also familiar with the computer's remote terminal.
Now that we have a background of what an NSA sysadmin can do, it makes sense that NSA director General Keith Alexander recently announced their plan to reduce the number of sysadmins by 90 percent to limit the number of people who will have the same power as Snowden.
NSA currently have 1,000 sysadmins including contractors like Snowden.
