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212 | HOW AMERICA LOST ITS SECRETS

he was too deeply compromised to quit. He continued his espionage work for another eight years. (Whitworth, who was arrested by the FBI in 1985, was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 365 years in prison.)

The Internet provided an almost ideal environment for false flags because its users commonly adopt aliases, screen names, and other avatars. The threat officer explained how easy it would be for the KGB to adapt such a false flag when dealing with a dissident system administrator working for U.S. intelligence. As the threat officer pointed out in his report, the KGB had used false flags in the late 1980s to surreptitiously recruit members of the “German Hanover Hackers,” a community of anarchistic hackers who breached computer networks for fun and profit. Until then, these hacktivists stole corporate and private passwords, credit card information, and other privileged documents as a form of freelance espionage. Because of their fervent anti-authority ideology, the KGB disguised its recruiters as fellow hacktivists. The KGB succeeded in getting the Hanover hackers to steal log-in account identifications, source codes, and other information from U.S. government computer networks.

The weak link of system administrators became increasingly relevant as the NSA moved further into the digital age. By the beginning of this century, its growing networks of computers were largely operated by civilian technicians, including system administrators, infrastructure analysts, and information technologists, who were needed to keep the system running. Despite the warning by the threat officer, the NSA became more and more reliant on these outsiders as it reorganized to meet its new mandates for surveillance of the Internet in the war on terrorism.

The NSA had to compete with technology companies, such as Google, Apple, and Facebook, for the services of experienced IT workers. Though Booz Allen had been providing technically trained specialists to the government since the 1940s and ’50s, congressionally imposed salary caps put the NSA at a disadvantage to private firms in its recruitment efforts. As a result, it increasingly contracted with private firms to find talent, especially in the rush for data-based intelligence following 9/11. Booz Allen, to meet increased demand, recruited civilian technicians from many unconventional areas,

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