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NGA employee accessed sensitive data, faces charges
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A Federal court in Virginia charged Brian Keith Montgomery, an analyst assigned to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, for unauthorized access to classified computer information, reports Kevin Poulsen on wired.com's Threat Level blog. NGA is the spy agency charged with satellite intelligence and map making.
According to court documents, Montgomery was allegedly able to gain access to a classified computer system used for an undisclosed terrorism investigation to which he was not authorized access by using a password that he had been authorized for another, unrelated NGA classified computer system. Montgomery ignored repeated warning messages informing him that his access was not authorized, alleges the government.
If the allegations prove true, such actions violated the 'need to know' principal of classified information protection: even if an individual has the appropriate security clearance, access to information is denied unless the individual has a 'need to know' for her or his official duties.
For example, an NGA official with a TOP SECRET clearance is not authorized to see TOP SECRET Central Intelligence Agency information, unless, of course, the NGA official has a legitimate need to see TOP SECRET Central Intelligence Agency information to do her or his job.
Court documents offer little insight into how far afield from his assigned duties Montgomery might have gone with his alleged extracurricular secret-looking, or why he may have done it.
But there is one tantalizing mention of the Fort Meade, Maryland-based 902nd Military Intelligence Battalion, a military intelligence unit that has been linked to domestic intelligence operations against US citizens. A Defense Criminal Investigative Service agent stated in a court document that Montgomery's actions “caused harm to the U.S. Army and the FBI” and could have set back an unspecified terrorism investigation.
Regardless of what sensitive information Montgomery allegedly discovered, information security managers at NGA and other US intelligence agencies share the blame for this internal leak of information. Access to sensitive information shouldn't just be protected by an on-screen security warning message, it should be blocked outright.
If computer-savvy parents know how to do this, surely the guardians of America's most sensitive intelligence information can do it too.
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