NSA says Snowden copied co-worker’s password
WASHINGTON — Former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden gained access to at least some classified documents he later disclosed by copying a password from a co-worker who has since resigned, the NSA reported to Congress. Snowden has previously said he did not steal any passwords.
The unnamed civilian employee who worked with Snowden resigned last month after the government revoked his security clearance, says a letter that NSA legislative director Ethan L. Bauman sent this week to the House Judiciary Committee.
A military employee and a private contractor also lost their access to NSA data as part of the continuing investigation, Bauman said, but his letter did not disclose what lapses they might have committed.
Bauman’s memo, dated Monday, provides some of the first details about what authorities said they have learned about how Snowden retrieved so many classified documents before passing them to news organizations. Top U.S. national security officials have acknowledged they don’t know many files Snowden took before he fled the U.S. to seek refuge in Russia.
Snowden, a former NSA contract systems analyst, has denied stealing computer passwords or tricking coworkers into giving him their passwords.
“I never stole any passwords, nor did I trick an army of cowo rke r s , ” Snowden said during a public question-session last month on the Free Snowden website.
But the NSA letter suggested Snowden tricked at least one co-worker and copied the employee’s password without his knowledge.
The civilian NSA worker told FBI investigators last June that he allowed Snowden to use an encrypted digital key known as a Public Key Infrastructure certificate to gain access to classified information on NSANet, the agency’s computer network. The system connects into many of the NSA’s classified databanks. The memo said that Snowden previously had been denied access to the network.
After the co-worker entered his secure PKI password, Snowden “was able to capture the password, allowing him even greater access to classified information,” Bauman told lawmakers.
He said the civilian NSA employee didn’t know that Snowden intended to reveal any classified information. It wasn’t clear from the memo how much classified information Snowden had collected before using the co-worker’s password.