A Contract Employee blows the lid off privacy invasion?

How does a contract employee like Snowden have access to information regarding US citizens? Seems like they'd keep that program strictly in-house. But it makes me wonder- IF the rumors are true, then maybe many of the secrets regarding UFOs may be partly in the hands of contractors.

The US doesn't build their own toys, but they do have some cozy relationships with EE&G, Lockheed, Northrup and and scores of others. These contractors are bound by secrecy agreements, perhaps allowing the Uncle Sam to honestly say "we" don't have any such program, device or aircraft.

This may all be conspiracy paranoia, but a similar method was/is used for black ops. An operative would be "sheep dipped", stated as retired from the military, then hired by some go-between in the service of the 'Company". This provided plausible deniability, allowing them to honestly claim no ownership if anything was exposed.

Extraneous sheep dipping video:
Contracting the UFO program in say- Bigelow Aerospace would give the authorities their plausible deniability, and protect the information collected from the scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act.

Something wrong with the link, can't view the video

As I understand his statements, he was a contractor for Dell among others, in service to the NSA. So, he worked networking and security by what he's stated. I guess that put him in the right seat with the keys to the kingdom. At least for those limited areas he had business to work in.

I'm going to guess the UFO areas are special compartmentalized information (SCI) and so highly classified, even the code word clearance, itself, is classified.

Then again, I didn't know what Yankee White was until a few years ago. Shows how much isn't super secret but isn't common knowledge either.

Some officials said the U.S. government might need to reconsider how much it relies on outside defense contractors who are given top security clearances. As of October 2012, about 483,000 government contractors has top-secret security clearances, according to a report issued in January by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

ca.news.yahoo.com... via Drudge

It is a bit surprising that they would give so many 3rd party people such high level access and authority. The lines between government and industry seem quite blurred here.

ETA: Honestly, its kind of surprising more leaks haven't occurred in such a seemingly loose environment.

A 2010 Washington Post report found "close to 30 percent of the workforce in the intelligence agencies is contractors."

Some 5 million people hold a government security clearance, according to a 2012 report by the Director of National Intelligence. About 1.4 million people have top-secret clearance, and half of those are the employees of private businesses.

Some 480,000 contractors held top-secret credentials as of last year, and 2,000 companies supply contractors to the intelligence agencies. Among the largest of those companies is Booz Allen Hamilton, a privately owned consulting company located in Virginia.

abcnews.go.com...

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


That guy, should his story be accurate, would have had almost unbridled access to their information. From what I've gathered he was rather high on the food chain in the department that oversaw and handled the installation of a lot of their systems. He would have very easily known any vulnerabilities or administrative access codes to gain access. I know several contractors who built the secret data nets into the ISP server farms for AT&T and Comcast, Cox and Brighthouse. Those guys can still monitor what's running on those systems if they wanted, simply cuz they built them and know how, when and where to gain access without anyone knowing.

reply to post by EViLKoNCEPTz


The gov't and it's economical policies have so weakened the economy that a good job is hard to find.

Money for your life, your family, your hopes and dreams - and the way the gov't "compartmentalizes" everything.

What would you do? Spill the beans of something you have figured out at your high-paying job, to then, not only worry about your life, but your wife's and kids?

We need to get rid of this gov't - and let the whistleblowers have the "leaders" - you know who I mean - obozo, biden, frankenstien, brennan, hagel, hillary, kerry - let the whistleblowers have their personal wealth, and let the criminals rot in jail.

reply to post by Happy1


If you mean me personally, I have ways of leaking stuff without it ever being tied back to me. I may even have to test that out one day if anything ever falls in my lap through my job that needs to be exposed. My job is fairly boring, but I do sometimes find myself in places that require me to sign NDAs or get high level security clearances.

I just wouldn't leak anything directly myself but I have a rather large network of anonymous contacts that it could be passed through to be leaked and no one would ever know where it originated. Now that wouldn't work if I was the only person with access to the information but with my job I wouldn't be as I would be a third party and the employees of whatever company/.gov entity I gained the information from would be the primary suspects. Especially since my job doesn't usually require me to access data directly.

reply to post by Heliophant

You've provided some good information, and the numbers suprise me. With that many external employees, I'm amazed any secrets are kept.

Looking at some of the lapses in inter-agency sharing in terorism cases, it seems the US government is mostly good at keeping other branches in the dark. Maybe any information on UFOs is the same, and whatever knowlege the government has is fragmented and inaccessible to other agencies (or contractors).

Semi-related news:

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites, disclosed to the media, or otherwise in the public domain remains classified and must be treated as such until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. government authority,” wrote Timothy A. Davis, Director of Security in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence), in a June 7 memorandum.

“DoD employees and contractors shall not, while accessing the web on unclassified government systems, access or download documents that are known or suspected to contain classified information.”

DoD Warns Employees of Classified Info in the Public Domain
Its not secret anymore, but don't look at it!