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Following the Texeira leak, I have a question which I do not see covered at all in any of the press. Has been there any investigation started into the security structure failures that led to these leaks? It is obvious that it is a systemic failure - a glorified janitor shouldn't have an access to top secret documents, and most of these documents didn't have much business to be on National Guard airbase anyway, they don't have anything to do with whatever Air Force is supposed to be dealing with. Somebody is responsible for the security on Otis Air National Guard Base - and that somebody screwed up big time. Do we know about anybody being places on leave, suspended, demoted, whatever it is? What is the usual procedure in the Army when something like this happens? How much consequences could be expected to people responsible for preventing such things from happening?
My understanding is that he was low-level IT for classified networks, specifically JWICS.. That would mean access to terminals which can pull down such documents rather than actual, physical copies.
In a civilian installation, there are lots of rules about access control for classified networks. I would expect most of them to hold even though the airbase is already an elevated environment. If there was supposed to be a buddy system, no one left alone with a terminal, then either there was an accomplice or said system wasn't enforced. If there were record reviews which should have caught his activity, someone could take flak for that. Other than that, hard to say if anyone higher up the chain gets blame. The most likely outcome is close scrutiny and the addition of half a dozen new procedures to learn.
My guess is that there was not. Folks like Snowden were in facilities where SCIFs are busy. Likely multiple people there working together all day sort of thing. IIRC, that's why he had to go the route of sneaking them out via a writable CD that he labeled "Lady Gaga", thinking (correctly, apparently) that the people around him wouldn't be suspicious of it. Similarly, I believe lots of facilities that see significant use have a person whose sole job is just running the room. They schedule folks to use it, make sure the equipment is working, are around to help out if there are difficulties, and are just sort of there, so they could potentially see any mischievous behavior.
On the other hand, Massachusetts Air National Guard? Probably low volume usage. This dovetails with the questions like, "Why do they even have access anyway?" because I have to imagine it's not used that much. One of those, "Well, we have the terminal here, just so that when the occasional bloke does need something, he doesn't have to drive an hour down the road to another site." Obviously, choosing to maintain low volume terminals has risks like this. And I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have a buddy system.
Even with a buddy system, they have to choose some set of people to have the authority to open up the room in the first place, and I doubt there are technological controls to make sure that those guys take a buddy in at the time. If he was one of the few people who used it for legitimate purposes, I wouldn't be surprised if he was given that authority; he has the proper clearance, after all. If so, then what are the real technological controls that can be put in place to ensure that he takes a buddy in with him? Most likely, if he had authorization to open the SCIF, even if they had a buddy system, I imagine he pretty much just had to write down someone's name to claim that they were there. Obviously makes a record that could be discovered as fraudulent, but what are the chances of that? He could just go in at times when basically no one else is around, write down a fake buddy, and even just take his phone in with him to take pictures of stuff.
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The pictures seem to show printed documents in a rather large format -- I'm sure you could find this kind of printer at a secure intelligence location, but I should think that there'd be some kind of special controls around it?
My work laptop won't even take a USB stick -- how else is he getting the documents out? Leaving aside the fact that photographic devices should also be controlled in such places, the images I saw didn't really look like phone snaps blown up a Walgreens -- they take up a big chunk of his kitchen table!
Certainly an audit trail, but it appears he made no attempt to cover his tracks anyway. Probably not any controls to prevent people from using it... and certainly none that would keep the IT guy out.
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By stuffing the printouts down his shirt?
One would think that people at a SCIF would notice if their classified documents were going missing?
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Or just folded up and put in a briefcase or bag. Most places they don't search the employees on the way out every day. (There are apparently some places like that, but not all. I imagine it would be even harder to get people to do the work if that were done).
I would expect military intelligence, even its discount NG variant, to have security protocols in place that handle that.
Our class actually smuggled a few notebooks with confidential data out of ROTC for exam prep, but that required actual conspiracy by multiple cadets and could've been stopped by simple measures like not letting us bring non-classified notebooks to confidential classes.
I don't know the military/national guard side, but it wouldn't surprise me if they often didn't. I've worked on the civilian side. If a person with a clearance wanted to walk out the door with a classified document, there was nothing at all to stop them or even detect them.
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Did he get the documents from his own terminal or other people's terminals?
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