From Keith Alexander’s Intelligence Committee testimony yesterday:
Testifying before a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander said that his agency employed or contracted with around 1,000 system administrators.
“There are system administrations throughout NSA and in all our complexes around the world,” Alexander said. “And there is on the order of a thousand system administrators, people who actually run the networks, that have in certain sections, that level of authority and ability to interface with the system.”
I think we can all agree this is a dangerous breach of security. But the consequence will obviously be tighter security and, ultimately, far fewer Snowdens coming forward with leaks.