The White House on Thursday defended the Obama administration’s record of preventing spying and government leaks of classified information, but said modern communication technology is making it harder to fight these leaks.
The arrest of a National Security Agency contractor for alleged code theft, which the Justice Department disclosed Wednesday, is renewing a debate over whether the government took the necessary steps to prevent classified leaks after infamous NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked reams of information about the nation’s surveillance system in 2013.
“This is something that our government has been confronting for a long time,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said. “It’s something that in some ways is even more complicated given modern communications technology tools that make it easier to pass this information along.”
While there are a lot of “benefits” to “enhancing information sharing,” Earnest said, “there is also a risk — and that risk is [something] that we are working very diligently to mitigate.”
The Obama administration has prosecuted more leak cases than the three previous presidents combined, but has arguably experienced more severely damaging insider information thefts.
Earnest was responding to a reporter’s question about why the reforms the government instituted after Snowden’s leak of classified information about the U.S government’s sweeping surveillance system wasn’t enough to stop the same company from an alleged theft of additional classified national security information.
Both Snowden and the alleged leaker announced this week, Harold Thomas Martin III, worked at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.
Pressed on whether this case is as or more serious than the Snowden case, Earnest declined to speculate.
“It’s certainly too early for me to draw that kind of connection or open up that kind of assessment,” he said. “But our investigators at the Department of Justice are conducting their own independent investigation, and they will do so with a sense of urgency because they recognize how significant the stakes are in cases like these.”
The FBI arrested Martin on Aug. 27, according to the DOJ complaint that was unsealed Wednesday. Martin, a Glen Burnie, Md., resident, was charged with theft of government property and unauthorized removal and retention of classified materials by a government employee or contractor.
That property included “source code” used to break into computer systems of numerous U.S. rivals, such as China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, the Justice Department said.
