The backstory on this seems to be: in the process of compiling the Panetta report, staffers for the Senate Intelligence Committee reviewed a huge number of top-secret cables; the only place they were allowed to do that was in a CIA office building, on equipment provided by CIA. Somehow (another NYT story alludes), CIA came to believe that Senate Intelligence had gained access to more documents than intended, so they rifled through the computers they'd provided.
(Even if this is what happened, it's still very bad; I don't understand how CIA gets to mess with its oversight committee in any way.)
The Times reported that the CIA created a special network share with the cables that the staffers were supposed to review, and that the staffers "had penetrated a firewall inside the C.I.A. computer system that had been set up to separate the committee’s work area from other agency digital files".
That sounds overblown to me. The SSCI committee hires from the same general pool as the rest of the Hill -- ambitious PoliSci grads, lawyers, and the like. They pay the same crappy wages too. They aren't getting Kevin Mitnick.
My guess is that some incompetent windows admin didn't set the permissions right and they were able to click on network neighborhood and access the files in question.
Maybe - but remember, we're talking about the CIA. My encounters with anyone potentially related to the agency has been that they're quite competent, to say the least. When considering an agency such as the CIA, it's safe to say that incompetence only occurs in areas where competence is not a priority, incompetence is on purpose, or where the situation is beyond the competence of anyone.
So my guess is they applied little care to the oversight committee and handed them a sheet of what not to do, such as attempt to browse external web sites. The staffers did so anyway, and now are "penetrating" the firewall that didn't even exist except on paper. The agency now has a reason to restrain activities of oversight staffers that they didn't have before (for violating policy).
> So my guess is they applied little care to the oversight committee and handed them a sheet of what not to do, such as attempt to browse external web sites. The staffers did so anyway, and now are "penetrating" the firewall that didn't even exist except on paper. The agency now has a reason to restrain activities of oversight staffers that they didn't have before (for violating policy).
That sounds likely, but that also sounds like incompetence on the CIA's part. It also seems absurd for the CIA to decide what the CIA overseers can see.
it's safe to say that incompetence only occurs in areas where competence is not a priority, incompetence is on purpose, or where the situation is beyond the competence of anyone.
Such as setting up file-access auditing on sensitive files, like what they (or Booz Allen Hamilton, their contractor) didn't do? Hard to believe basic Microsoft sysadmin training concepts evade their competency filter.
According to this[1] it was more that the senate committee staffers found an internal CIA report (the 'Panetta review') that contradicted information CIA had made available to the committee (about their torture-enhanced interrogation practices, presumably, and their destruction of the video evidence on the same, under the rationale that transcripts in the cables provided sufficient detail so that the retention of the 'torture tapes' was unnecessary.)
A tit for tat escalation then followed.
As the article ([1]) puts it:
> All of which is to say the SSCI busted the CIA for lying in their official response to the Committee. And as a result, CIA decided to start accusing the Committee of breaking the law. And now everyone is being called into the Principal’s office for spankings.
There's some other interesting reading at the same site[2] about acting General Counsel of the CIA, Robert Eatinger, who referred the Senate Intelligence Committee investigators for investigation by the DoJ and helped provide legal advice on the destruction of the 'torture tapes'.
Even given this pretty lamentable story, it's still hard to understand Feinstein's new stance on privacy. Perhaps, as some have commented, it's all about getting the committee's report released in time for the elections?
I thought it was an internal CIA report ordered by Panetta while he ran the CIA. The oversight committee became interested in it because it supposedly confirmed transgressions that the CIA was simultaneously denying to the committee.
Somehow the committee came in possession of the report. The CIA is arguing that while viewing computer documents at the CIA,committee investigators hacked the CIA network and obtained the Panetta report.
My reading is the multiple breaches of the agreement (between oversight committee & CIA) is the sore point.
That said, I'm impressed the CIA hired outside contractors to sift the millions of documents being reviewed. The oversight committee's access had to be finely constrained, but some it's okay for some Joes and Janes to do the clerical work? Weird.
(Even if this is what happened, it's still very bad; I don't understand how CIA gets to mess with its oversight committee in any way.)