Live Q and a with Snowden on the Guardian

If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.

I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.

Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we're finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception.

They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?

A Capitol Hill lawmaker sparked a string of conflicting statements about the limits of U.S. surveillance after claiming during a hearing last week that he was told officials can listen to phone calls without a warrant.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler made the comments during a hearing Thursday, but has since appeared to walk them back as the intelligence community denied the claim.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013...#ixzz2WW0q18MO

The unprecedented leak of top-secret documents by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden raises far-reaching questions about the government?s rush to outsource intelligence work to contractors since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Never before have so many U.S. intelligence workers been hired so quickly, or been given access to secret government information through networked computers. In recent years, about one in four intelligence workers has been a contractor, and 70 percent or more of the intelligence community?s secret budget has gone to private firms.


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The government has built a national security and intelligence system so big, so complex and so hard to manage, no one really knows if it's fulfilling its most important purpose: keeping its citizens safe.

Booz Allen Hamilton, which hired the 29-year-old Snowden three months ago to work at the NSA, has been a leader among more than 1,900 firms that have supplied tens of thousands of intelligence analysts in recent years, including technologists and field spies.

But in the rush to fill jobs, the government has relied on faulty procedures to vet intelligence workers, documents and interviews show. At the same time, intelligence agencies have not hired enough in-house government workers to manage and oversee the contractors, contracting specialists said.

On Monday, lawmakers said they will examine Snowden?s hiring and the growing use of private companies for intelligence work.

?We?ll be going over every inch of this,? said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who expects confidential briefings on the leak in the next few days. Public hearings are likely as well, he said.

Schiff said the committee long has worried about the cost of outsourcing but now will scrutinize the security risks more closely. ?Now I think we?ll be looking that through an entirely different lens,? he said.

Intelligence officials, government auditors and contracting specialists have warned for years that the vulnerability to spies and breaches was rising, along with contracting fraud and abuse.

?When you increase the volume of contractors exponentially but you don?t invest in the personnel necessary to manage and oversee that workforce, your exposure increases,? said Steven Schooner, co-director of the government procurement law program at George Washington University. ?This is what happens when you have staggering numbers of people with access to this kind of information.?

The reliance on contractors reflects a major shift toward outsourcing over the past 15 years, in part because of cutbacks in the government agencies and commitment to smaller government by the George W. Bush administration.

Most of the work went to the largest contractors, including Booz Allen Hamilton, which had $5.8 billion in revenue last year. Almost all of Booz Allen?s work was for the government, and nearly a quarter of that was for intelligence agencies.

In the first few years after 2001, when the competition for qualified job candidates was the fiercest, it was not unusual for companies to give signing bonuses of $30,000 or a new car for workers with top-secret security clearances.

I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.