On 18 February 2014 07:45, Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
...
The coverage I've read so far seems to suggest
that he had legitimate access to the data and didn't exploit implementation details of the security system (Well the technical implementation. Arguably he exploited implementation weaknesses in the social structure that made him a trusted entity in the system with no checks against mass downloading). But again, who knows what really happened.
--bawolff
Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
This is the impression I had as well. Snowden's been described in various reports as a sysadmin, and supposedly had "top secret" clearance.
As for the software, we already know about Intellipedia (intelligence community) [1], Bureaupedia (FBI) [2], and Diplopedia (State Department) [3] - all apparently using MediaWiki. So it doesn't surprise me that the NSA are using it too.
Pete / the wub
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureaupedia [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplopedia