This is a calculated smearing, by "[government] officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity". It's blatant PSYOP. Obviously, audit trail systems are worthless if they allow deletions at will (and without, hah, a trail).
If it's a 'blatant' smear, what would be it's agenda? The main thing anyone could take from this is that the NSA's systems are broken or that they're incompetent and can't be trusted to know who's stealing their data. Also that Edward Snowden isn't stupid.
I mean, it could be a smear from an agency who are hostile to the NSA for some reason (that stuff happens; like Valerie Plame, or the notion that Watergate was the result of the FBI leaking against the CIA and the White House). It's hardly likely to be from the NSA or the Whitehouse, who are currently in damage limitation mode; contrasting their own incompetence with that of the guy they're up against doesn't seem like a smart move...
That might be the message to us, but the way this news article (press release, rather) is written, the majority of the population will think Snowden is a hacker that circumvented the movie-level-sophistication systems of the NSA. Also see the friendly reminder at the end, that Snowden just took all kinds of material without first-hand experience of the systems described therein.
Comments
This is a calculated smearing, by "[government] officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity". It's blatant PSYOP. Obviously, audit trail systems are worthless if they allow deletions at will (and without, hah, a trail).
If it's a 'blatant' smear, what would be it's agenda? The main thing anyone could take from this is that the NSA's systems are broken or that they're incompetent and can't be trusted to know who's stealing their data. Also that Edward Snowden isn't stupid.
I mean, it could be a smear from an agency who are hostile to the NSA for some reason (that stuff happens; like Valerie Plame, or the notion that Watergate was the result of the FBI leaking against the CIA and the White House). It's hardly likely to be from the NSA or the Whitehouse, who are currently in damage limitation mode; contrasting their own incompetence with that of the guy they're up against doesn't seem like a smart move...
That might be the message to us, but the way this news article (press release, rather) is written, the majority of the population will think Snowden is a hacker that circumvented the movie-level-sophistication systems of the NSA. Also see the friendly reminder at the end, that Snowden just took all kinds of material without first-hand experience of the systems described therein.