How about because it wasn't just a matter of a couple of months?
Before that, he was put through the long, involved process of
security clearance. For a high-security clearance, that also
involved interviews with numerous people who knew him.

Ron makes a fundamental presumption that the background check was actually carried out in a competent manner.

Perhaps not so much (emphasis mine):

• 87 percent of background checks are never fully completed. OPM uses the information it has to make a judgment on whether to approve these checks.


• There are no uniform guidelines across the government for different levels of clearance. This means that top-secret clearance at one agency means something completely different at another.


• Within each agency, there are no strict guidelines for determining security clearance.


• USIS, a private contractor, conducts 65 percent of all U.S. government background checks.


• USIS, which conducted a background check on Snowden, is now under investigation by OPM’s IG for failing to conduct proper background checks.

The short answer is that there are so many people in high levels of our government who would not qualify for clearances if they were peons like us. That has resulted in a two-track process: one track for us working stiffs, where they do investigation the way they're supposed to, and another track for the Sandy Bergers. Somehow Snowden got into the Sandy Berger track. How? The way things are going, we are unlikely to ever find out.

Having had clearances and been part of various friends background checks, the checks basically are concerned about 2 things are you blackmail able and did you in general lie on your form. Top Secret is more in depth and gets into polygraphs. But is pretty much the same idea. Did you lie and can someone blackmail you.
So in that doing horrible things only counts against you if you care if people find out. Remember they are looking for people who will have to lie to everyone they know about what they do for a living. So honesty can't be a top priority.

I have held a top secret clearance, and have worked with nuclear weapons security.

In short, one of the reason the security, especially in the age of computers is so poor. is that the security proceedues are designed for a bricks and mortar paperwork system, and not the internet age.

Most of the politically appointed supervisory ass kissers are too dumb to know that their system is wide open to anyone who gains access to a password to any computer on the system.

This is the same problem that exists with the TSA. They can't provide any real system security, so they do this big song and dance to make things look like they are secure to the next idiot supervisor up the line, when in reality, they got nuthin.

Have you read the Guardian interview/Q&A with Snowden? He makes some politically very intelligent, thoughtful and mature commentary - I have met many 'techies', but I've met almost none who are capable of speaking on such topics with anywhere nearly that level of concise clarity and philosophical sophistication ... he may be a techie, but he isn't 'goofy'.

As someone who works in the industry though, it also doesn't surprise me that they 'could allow' someone like that so much access, because I know how difficult it is - virtually impossible - to run an operation like that WITHOUT exposing a lot of 'dumb techies' to lots of information they probably shouldn't have access to - it's actually simply impossible, you ultimately have to blindly trust your 'goofy techies'. The real world is NOTHING like the movies where they have these fancy "top secret" software systems capable of restricting access to this or that on a very fine-grained level ... the real world is more like, I don't know, the software equivalent of a shop floor or car mechanic operation.

This is actually part of the problem with these systems of mass-surveillance ... it's technically basically impossible to truly protect the information properly. So sooner or later, there'll be a mass-leak of the info - and then what.

most people don't wanna know how sausage is made, cuz, yeah, nasty.

importantly almost ALL interactions between large corporations and governments are based on contracts and trust.
Company A trusts contractor B, becasue B has a contract with them that says that if anything 'bad' happens, B owns it, and will have to pay up, LARGE.

So B does their best to vet their guy, but sometimes B's guy is ACTUALLY working for a small-disadvantaged firm called C, and they say this guy is the best. They ALSO assume a ton of liability.

Get the govt involved and there may also be criminal penalties along with the civil...

But like MANY things in our society, conscientious people are that, and unscrupulous people are that.

Snowjob himself said to the press that he got the job specifically to see if there was anything to find, so there was a ton of malice aforethought.

That he did uncover something monsterous, that I had always thought was prolly the case, but had no clue of the extent, is a REALLY IMPORTANT THING.

What he, himself did, is a separate issue, and he will pay big for it. That the check process is bogus, has to be fixed... and there will prolly need to be audit oversight of subcontractors for that too.

But the real thing is that the govt. is checking itself, and asking us for trust. to which we say. "Um, No?. When have you EVER earned that?"

Does it bother anyone how public this all is, almost as if it's theatre of the absurd?

What is it that our attention is being diverted from? If this was truly a problem, boya would already have disappeared. What cover could possibly be worth trashing any prestige the administration still has in the world?

I have a colleague who wants to get a security clearance to increase his job prospects but is having trouble finding a company willing to pay the ~$30K it costs these days to complete the process. Snowdon may be a rare commodity and readily snapped up for that reason.

How could the NSA allow this to happen? Easy. Bradley Manning was a soldier. Sarcasm aside, some lessons are hard, and some people are stupid.

The bank I worked for was extremely locked down for most everyone. You couldn't install software at all. Most things were done online (internal server). The exception was the tech folks. When we got laid off or last job was to see how much information we could still get after all our access was revoked. For about 50% of us, it was all of what we could get before. One of the hardcore developers, if his machine had a live connection to the internal network he had access to everything he tried. The auditors were not pleased....they expected us to have no access and IT figured there might be a little whole here or there.

The higher ups can't make the computer systems work. Simple as that. The techies make stuff run and produce answers.

We should not trust them any more because the explanation is so simple.