Russia’s Ukraine Moves Evaded NSA Surveillance. Snowden Was In Russia. Coincidence?

How did Russia evade NSA surveillance during its Crimea incursion and while amassing troops near Ukraine? Russia apparently has recently obtained the ability to avoid United States eavesdropping, and it has the United States very nervous.

In July, primary Snowden source Glenn Greenwald told The Associated Press that Snowden “is in possession of literally thousands of documents that contain very specific blueprints that would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it.”

So it’s either a coincidence that the Russians figured out how to evade NSA surveillance while hosting the NSA-trained hacker, or else it implies that Snowden may have provided the Russians with access to NSA files.

Snowden told James Risen of The New York Times that he gave all of the classified documents he had taken from the NSA’s internal systems to the journalists he met in Hong Kong and kept no copies himself. However — as Greenwald’s statement in July shows — there are clear issues with that claim, and it is still unknown when he gave up access to the cache.

It is also unclear how many documents Snowden ended up taking — officials say he accessed 1.7 million files — or whether the “vast majority” of the intel he took is related to military operations (as opposed to strictly surveillance).

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