(This story comes from NBC's 'Investigative Reporting' Division. Who knew?)
According to intelligence community sources says NBC, the United States two months later still does not know the extent of what documents Snowden has and is 'overwhelmed' trying to find out. Despite assurances from Gen. Keith Alexander, two other sources tell NBC that the NSA has not been able to determine which documents he took and how many of them.
At the Aspen Security Forum Gen. Alexander told NBC reporter Pete Williams that the NSA knew what Snowden had taken and that he had taken "a lot". But an NSA spokesman later told the other sources this wasn't exactly completely true:
On Tuesday, NSA spokesperson Vanee Vines said Alexander's Aspen answer was not intended as "a hard, 'We know everything, completely,' answer to Williams' question."
Adding further vagueness the spokesman said:
"He did not say the assessment had been completed in absolute terms," Vines added in an email. "The Director answered a question about his general sense."
The NSA blamed their shitty technology on the problem:
NSA had poor data compartmentalization, said the sources, allowing Snowden, who was a system administrator, to roam freely across wide areas. By using a “thin client” computer he remotely accessed the NSA data from his base in Hawaii.
One U.S. intelligence official said government officials “are overwhelmed" trying to account for what Snowden took. Another said that the NSA has a poor audit capability, which is frustrating efforts to complete a damage assessment.
Just what kind of a shoestring two-bit operation are they running here? Do they need more
money? Well now perhaps we know why David Miranda was
detained. And the US was '
informed' in advance of the UK's plan to do so. When all the high-tech spying fails, there's always the good old-fashioned thug approach.