The FBI has raided the home of a suspected “second leaker”.
The unnamed person, who had been suggested and confirmed in the Laura Poitras documentary “Citizen Four”, has apparently been identified by the FBI.
According to Yahoo news, the accused leaker turned over sensitive documents about the US Government’s terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The FBI recently executed a search of the suspect’s home and federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia have opened up a criminal investigation into the matter, according to sources.
The department confirmed its overall commitment to pursue leak cases, saying that investigators were pursuing it, but were “not ready to charge yet”.
The second leaker was discussed by Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald in the documentary, while other journalists Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux, who authored the terrorist watch list story, said that the new source described in the film provided them with a document that “outlines the rulebook for placing people on a variety of watch lists.” The source is “an extremely principled and brave whistleblower” who made his disclosures “at great personal risk,” Scahill said. He also confirmed yesterday that he had not been notified by federal officials about the investigation.
He said: “The Obama administration in my view is conducting a war against whistleblowers and ultimately against independent journalism.”
Tim Cushing, writing for Techdirt, said that it is “highly unlikely” that this case will slide if the leaker is caught.
“First off, there have been no statements from anyone with the requisite amount of power that the US Government has softened its stance on Snowden’s leaks,” he said.
“As far as they’re concerned, he’s still a criminal. The documents leaked by the second leaker may not have been as sensitive as those leaked by Snowden, but they still contain information the Government wished to withhold.”
Cryptographer and CTO of Co3 Systems, Bruce Schneier, said: “I think this is ‘Leaker #3’ on my list, even though it’s probably the “second leaker” discussed in the documentary.”
He deemed the first leaker to be Snowden, this to be the third and the second to be the person who is passing secrets to Jake Appelbaum, Laura Poitras and others in Germany about the Angela Merkel surveillance story, the TAO catalog and the X-KEYSCORE rules.
“
My guess is that this is either an NSA employee or contractor working in Germany, or someone from German intelligence who has access to NSA documents,” Schneier said.
“Snowden has said that he is not the source for the Merkel story, and Greenwald has confirmed that the Snowden documents are not the source for the X-KEYSCORE rules. I have also heard privately that the NSA knows that this is a second leaker.”
Join the IT Security Guru for the next webcast on Thursday 30th October at 11am, where we discuss ‘The Next Great Threat to Security’ and dealing with major flaws https://t.co/V5dWgXcLMY
