The NSA still does not know the full extent of what former NSA contractor Edward Snowden took from its system two months after he fled with the classified material to Hong Kong, according to a report by Michael Isikoff, Matthew Cole, and Richard Esposito of NBC News.
One U.S. intelligence official told NBC that government officials “are overwhelmed" as they try to account for the scope of the leak.
Ironically, the NSA's poor audit capability is reportedly frustrating efforts to complete a damage assessment.
NBC reports that authorities believe the trove includes details of data collection by the "Five Eyes"— U.S., England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – which comprise the English-speaking core that is critical to U.S. intelligence efforts.
Snowden's leaks have already mentioned New Zealand, Australian, U.S. and UK spying operations.
"I did not do an exact count, but he gave me 15,000, 20,000 documents. Very, very complete and very long," Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has been reporting on the leaks, told the Brazilian Senates foreign relations committee.
Greenwald has also said that some of the documents constitute "the instruction manual for how the NSA is built."
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