A Single Point of Failure

CHAPTER 23 A Single Point of Failure A single point of failure (SPOF) is a part of a system that, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working. —Wikipedia Grower DESCRIBED anyone who was the sole repository of secrets that could undo the NSA’s intelligence gathering as “the single point of failure.” While still shielding his own identity in May 2013, he wrote to Gellman that U.S. intelligence “will most certainly kill you if they think you are the single point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them the sole owner of this informa- tion.” Such a person of course would be of even greater interest to adversary intelligence services if they were aware of the payload of secrets that person was carrying because they could use it to unravel the NSA’s sources and methods. Snowden saw himself as that “single point of failure.” We know that while still in Hong Kong he said he had obtained access to com- puters that the NSA had penetrated throughout the world and in Moscow he added that he had had “access to every [NSA] target, every [NSA] active operation,” against the Chinese. “Full lists of them,” which, if he chose to share them, could make China “go dark.” To be sure, he did not refer to Russian intelligence activity in | | Epst_9780451494566_2p_all_r1.indd 241 ® 9/30/16 8:13AM | | HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019729