If Edward Snowden Can So Easily Leak Secrets, What Else Could NSA Agents Do?

Sunday, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old NSA contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), revealed himself to the world as the NSA's leaker. In a Guardian interview with Glenn Greenwald, Snowden shared his political and philosophical motivations, but also provided readers a glimpse into his education and position on the US intelligence totem pole. Snowden was open about his low-level status, which perhaps makes his leak all the more astonishing. How could such a new staffer release such powerful documents? And what could someone more connected do?

In an article published on Slate, Farhad Manjoo was perhaps the first to fixate on Snowden's unlikely role as a leaker, given his lack of a college degree and glorified IT guy status at BAH. And yet, according to Snowden himself, he had incredible access to a full range of NSA information on domestic surveillance initiatives.

Where Manjoo missed an opportunity, however, is in considering what Snowden's easy access and exit means when applied to NSA's extensive team of analysts and agents, many of whom have significant skills as hackers. The much bigger question, given Snowden's access and leak, is this: what else could NSA agents and contractors be doing with data mines?

Snowden noted that he could have gone to the black market sell NSA secrets to states. China, for instance, would love that sort of intel, as would Russia. Spy agencies want to know how other spy agencies operate and what intelligence they collect. It's part of the looking glass world of tradecraft.

Imagining the various scenarios of what NSA analysts and contractors could do with this information is troubling. If Snowden could access anything and everything, then simply waltz out of Booz Allen Hamilton so easily, and decamp in Hong Kong, a range of possibilities exist. The reality is that we don't know NSA analysts motivations. When it comes to hiring processes for spy agencies, Americans place full trust not only in politicians but spy agency bureaucrats. NSA analysts could be anyone, with any type of political, social and economic philosophies. If the history of espionage has taught us anything, it is that spies often switch allegiances or play the system for their own benefit.

For every big news story like the Cambridge Five's Kim Philby or the sultry Russian spy Anna Chapman, there are several spy flaps that remain unknown. Often sweeping spy scandals under the rug is a question of national security. If China manages to lift vital intel from the NSA, for instance, it is highly unlikely that they will say anything about it. Likewise, the NSA, probably would not admit a fuck-up.

Snowden's leak proves that nearly anything could happen with intel gathered by NSA's data mining. It could, as noted above, make its way to states, or into the hands of rogue figures who deal in information. And who is to say that NSA agents wouldn't be tempted to engage in corporate espionage? If they have access to emails and other databases (Skype, Facebook), that access and resultant information is worth a lot on the free market.

As President Obama noted in a recent press conference, the NSA's surveillance technology is very much aimed at overseas communications. The data mining operations' tentacles stretch across oceans and continents. Snowden said the NSA has a station in Japan, so it's reasonable to believe that US allies serve as homes to other NSA stations. Couldn't the NSA's global data reach, made possible by Palantir, Narus and Verint's hardware and software, create a means by which powerful state and corporate interests could better enforce their will upon less powerful countries?

Somewhat similarly, what is to stop an NSA analyst from taking a deep look at emails of certain publicly-traded companies, then quietly, and with great restraint, using that inside information to make some money on the side?

As we learned with the Department of Justice's wiretapping of Associated Press, journalists are not immune to state surveillance. This raises an interesting possibility. The NSA could monitor journalists, watching as a big story takes shape. From there, government officials, acting on this data, could craft a preemptive piece of state propaganda or PR to dull the revelatory blow of any big story. And, as with the AP scandal, surveilling journalists is a great way to find whistleblowers. Well, those who don't use anonymizing tools such as Tor anyway.

But, none of the foregoing addresses one of the most obscene NSA data mining scenarios: using keywords to identify not just radical Islamists, but the domestic surveillance of America's very own political dissidents. Some groups, like the Environmental Liberation Front (ELF), have used explosives to fight American capitalism. There is some wisdom in keeping tabs on their actions. But, surveilling anarchists, or anyone who makes certain keyword searches or particularly radical comments on Facebook or Gmail, is paranoia in the extreme. True, there are jackass anarchists who believe destruction is the great means of change. But most anarchists are mild-mannered and collaborative. More into building things than tearing shit down. Do they deserve to be spied upon and harassed because of a label?

It all reeks of the FBI's infamous and often illegal COINTELPRO program. Terrified by the pinko commie threat, the FBI—on the directive of US politicians—was tasked with disrupting America's domestic communists and other radicals. By the late 60s and early 70s, COINTELPRO had morphed into a disgusting covert operation to totally dismantle any and all politically dissidence in the counter-cultural movement. Hippies, Black Panthers, the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society)—they all felt the pressure of COINTELPRO.

This, as I see it, might well be NSA's data mining legacy. The telecommunications surveillance can, quite reasonably, be excused as vital in the fight against Islamic terrorism. But its utility extends far beyond the immediate directive. It will be one of the most important tools in making sure that this country is always safe for the axis of political corruption and corporatocracy.

These are just few things that I can imagine being done by NSA analysts with access to data. It's the things we cannot imagine that should be of concern, because the NSA spends its days thinking of the myriad ways in which they can use their information goldmine.

Ironically, maybe American businesses will lead the charge against the NSA's data mining activities. If companies believe that their communications, which might include trade secrets, aren't safe because the NSA, with all its access, is porous, then they're bound to put up a stink. But, Americans shouldn't bank on that. Everyone needs to make some noise to change America's state surveillance culture.