Wasted space: Insider spying threats hunted

Subject: Wasted space: Insider spying threats hunted Mon Sep 02, 2013 1:59 am

The U.S. government suspects that individuals with connections to al-Qaida and other hostile groups have repeatedly sought to obtain jobs in the intelligence community, and it reinvestigates thousands of employees a year to reduce the threat that one of its own may be trying to compromise secrets, according to a classified budget document.

Wasted space: Insider spying threats hunted 5224006e1f206.preview-300

Wasted space: Insider spying threats hunted 5224006e1f206.preview-300

The CIA found that among a subset of job seekers whose backgrounds raised questions, roughly one out of every five had “significant terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” according to the document, which was provided to The Washington Post by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The groups cited most often were Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaida and its affiliates, but the nature of the connections was not described in the document.

So sharp is the fear of threats from within that last year the NSA planned to launch at least 4,000 probes of potentially suspicious or abnormal staff activity after scrutinizing trillions of employee keystrokes at work.

The behavior that sent up red flags could include staffers downloading multiple documents or accessing classified databases they do not normally use for their work, said two people familiar with the software used to monitor employee activity.

The spy agencies’ detection systems never noticed that Snowden was copying highly classified documents from different parts of the NSA’s networks.

Snowden is in Moscow, where he was granted temporary asylum.

Contractors such as Snowden, an NSA spokeswoman said, were not included in the plans to reinvestigate 4,000 security clearances.

CIA officials said the number of applicants ultimately tied to terrorist networks or hostile foreign governments was small but declined to provide an exact number or the reasons the broader group of applicants initially raised concerns.

http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/national-world/insider-spying-threats-hunted/article_83493fb0-fcab-5252-af95-5bd4e96105ef.html

Wasted space: Insider spying threats hunted

Wasted space: Insider spying threats hunted

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