Snowden’s Ex-Employer Among Few Companies Able to Store NSA Data
Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp., the contractor Edward Snowden worked for when he took more than a million documents about U.S. spy programs, is one of the few companies that could handle storing bulk phone records for the National Security Agency.
President Barack Obama today proposed the possibility of having a third party, rather than the NSA or phone companies, keep the information about billions of phone calls made each day. Several analysts said Booz Allen, based in McLean, Virginia, may be one of the few companies capable of handling the job because of its experience working on classified contracts.
“There’s zero upside to the carriers holding customer data for the government and no amount of money will make it worthwhile,” Roger Entner, an analyst with Recon Analytics based in Dedham, Massachusetts. Some companies, such as Booz Allen and Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC:US), specialize in the work, he said.
The NSA now obtains and stores metadata such as numbers and duration of calls under standing orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Obama today gave his attorney general and intelligence leaders 60 days to develop a plan for storing those records outside of government spy agencies.
The task of storing, securing and providing access to that data is “probably the most sensitive, visible international job imaginable,” said Rodney Joffe, a senior vice president and senior technologist at Neustar Inc. (NSR:US)
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http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-01-17/snowden-s-ex-employer-among-few-companies-able-to-store-nsa-data
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