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Can FBI check 650K emails? Snowden says yes

How hard is it to check hundreds of thousands of emails? Not that hard. (© Gajus via Fotolia)
How hard is it to check hundreds of thousands of emails? Not that hard. (© Gajus via Fotolia)

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and his supporters are questioning whether the FBI could have sifted through 650,000 emails quickly enough to clear his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, just nine days after they were discovered.

But the FBI and cybersecurity experts say it can be done with database scanning software – and one of those experts is none other than Edward Snowden, the fugitive whistleblower who’s hoping to get a presidential pardon.

The debate unfolded today in the wake of FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that a search through a laptop used by Clinton aide Huma Abedin turned up nothing to change “our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Secretary Clinton.”

In other words, the FBI investigation into Clinton’s emails remains closed, with no charges sought.

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U.S. accuses Russia of email meddling in politics

Email flurry
The U.S. government links the Russian government to campaign email intrusions. (© Gajus via Fotolia)

The U.S. intelligence community is formally accusing the Russian government of playing a role in email hacks aimed at casting the Democratic Party in an embarrassing light and influencing the presidential election.

In a statement issued today, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said this year’s email disclosures by DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks were consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts.

“We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the agencies said.

The statement also noted that most of the recent attempts to probe state-level election systems have been traced to computer servers operated by a Russian company. “However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian government,” the federal agencies said.

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‘Snowden’ rallies whistleblower’s defenders

Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "Snowden"
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Edward Snowden in the movie “Snowden.” (Credit: Open Road Films)

Whether you see him as a patriot or a traitor, it’s a big week for Edward Snowden, who was forced to seek asylum in Russia after revealing the magnitude of the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance program.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and a host of other supporters have just launched a full-court press to get Snowden a pardon from President Barack Obama. And Oliver Stone’s biopic, “Snowden,” is hitting theaters across the country and around the world – even in Russia.

GeekWire’s crew saw the movie at a Seattle showing sponsored by the ACLU, so you can imagine that the audience scored Snowden high on the patriot scale.

After the movie, Shankar Narayan, director of ACLU of Washington’s Technology and Liberty Project, noted that Snowden’s revelations helped the national ACLU challenge the NSA over its surveillance programs. He also noted that the controversy continues.

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Edward Snowden’s former boss speaks out

Edward Snowden (Photo: Praxis Films)
Edward Snowden (Photo: Praxis Films)

The cybersecurity expert who hired Edward Snowden for his last job is laying out his lessons learned – but admits it would have been hard to stop the man who spilled some of the National Security Agency’s most closely held secrets.

“Knowing what I knew at the time, l would have hired him again,” Steven Bay, a former cyberintelligence analyst for Booz Allen Hamilton, said today in Seattle at the IEEE Computer Society’s “Rock Stars of Cybersecurity” conference.

“Knowing what I know now, obviously, I wouldn’t,” he added.

Bay said today’s talk marked the first time he discussed his side of the Snowden story in a public forum.

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