The National Security Agency’s oversharing problem

In the days after the attacks on September 11, 2001, the National Security Agency underwent a transformation from an organization that operated on a "need to know" basis to a "need to share" culture. In the process, the agency threw out many of the procedures and controls that might have stopped Edward Snowden from walking out the door with thousands of secret documents. But after the WikiLeaks scandal, the NSA began trying to ratchet back on its internal promiscuity with information classified at the highest level -- Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI). Ironically, it was part of this effort that allowed then-contractor systems administrator Snowden to download thousands of documents from the Agency's highly classified internal Web servers -- documents that were openly available to him because of his security clearance and duties assigned.