There seem to be differences of opinion about the NSA story on Edward Snowden at http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nsa-speaks-out-on-snowden-spying/ if you missed it. There are still a few people out there who believe Snowden was a patriot trying to expose a bad government who spies on its own people. I don't like NSA, but most of those who believe that Snowden did what he is accused of because he had a patriotic streak are misguided, at best.
If you follow this story on 60 Minutes, you will notice a couple of things: (1) Snowden planned to work for NSA long before he was hired by them. The story says he hacked the computer of the person who put together the screening criteria for new people. That is careful planning and way beyond those "How to Get a Job in a Government Agency" articles. (2) He used different names of people to steal information because he knew the systems he was on were monitored. (3) He stole 1.2 million pages of material, which is time-consuming and risky. He put himself at risk every day, planned it out, and got away with it for the time being. (4) The Intelligence Community was worried that the controls on computer systems would allow this to happen in other places.
This isn't the way patriots work. This is the stuff of spies. In the old days, spies could get a few files and get them out of the country. Now they just take computers.
You would think, that computer security would be the best at places that have the most to lose. Amazon books:
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