Information security

The Man in Charge of Stopping the Next Snowden




Evanina is also responsible for preventing, or at least mitigating the damage from, new insider leaks. The IC has begun spying on itself more effectively, setting up methods to monitor “patterns of life” — not just of people, but data as well. He says the intelligence community has done “a great job of putting sirens and bells on the movement of data,” applying the same level of scrutiny to a systems administrator as a major operative.

Some of this was conceived years before Snowden made off with the files. Executive Order 13587, issued in 2011, ordered the ICto develop ways to continuously evaluate everyone who holds a Top Secret clearance. The goal is to automatically scan for things like arrests, foreign travel, even worrisome social media content (that’s public-facing, not hidden behind privacy settings), and other potential red flags in real time, as opposed to every five years, as standard background checks do.