When The Guardian revealed the source of the NSA leaks Sunday, he turned out to be a twenty-nine year-old who was essentially a contracted IT guy for the agency without a background in national security policy, despite earlier claims by the Washington Post that they came from a “career intelligence officer.”

While leaker Edward Snowden says that he was a spy for almost his whole adult life, his background suggest he wasn’t an agent so much as systems admin or engineer for most of it. He reportedly attended a Maryland community college to get enough credits for a high school diploma and was studying computing, but never completed the course work and later received a GED. He then enlisted in the Army in 2003 and become a security guard at a covert NSA facility at the University of Maryland. From there he leveraged his computer skills to get a job doing IT security with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), leaving in 2009 to become a private contractor serving at a variety of NSA locations — That’s the role where he became “hardened” as he watched President Obama advance “the very policies” he thought would be reined in.

Some of Snowden’s claims seem far fetched — like that he personally had “the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the President” — but as one of the guys doing internal network security for the agency, Snowden did likely have a fairly far-reaching ability to access documents and chatter flowing through the system. IT security folks need to have a certain level of authority to dig down and look at what’s happening in order to investigate possible security breaches and determine their sources, although there should be an auditing system in place to determine how often someone is looking at things they have no reason to be accessing.

It seems that Snowden used his network authority to gather the documents that he is now leaking, although access to the content of those documents may not have been necessary to his day to day procedures. Considering Snowden’s personal views on internet freedom and privacy (his laptop sports stickers from digital civil liberties advocacy organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF] and anonymous browsing tool Tor), it’s probable that some of the things he saw shooting over the networks set off alarm bells, thus eventually leading him to make the decision that allowing the general public access to the information was worth the personal repercussions of leaking them.

Indeed, Snowden describes the experience as having “an awareness of wrongdoing” that came from being in a position of “privileged access” where he was exposed to “a lot more information on a broader scale” than the average NSA employee. And as an IT guy, Snowden’s access to information combined with his understanding of the capacity of data collection possible and its long-term implications were also different than those of the average NSA employee. He wasn’t just worried that data was being collected, but that it would eventually be used selectively to derive sinister conclusions from the actions of people living innocent lives.

But as an IT guy rather than, say an intelligence officer, Snowden’s divorce from the actual context of the policies has led to some disconnects between initial coverage of the leaks and what appears to be the actual workings of the programs they describe. For example, while it was first claimed that PRISM allowed “direct access” to the servers of leading tech companies, later clarifications from the Director of National Intelligence suggest it was a more restricted computer interface with a legal functionality to request content data. But it’s easy to see the IT guy reading a slide that says “collection directly from the servers” of tech companies and interpret that as “direct access to servers,” especially if he was never briefed on the exact functionality.

However, the larger takeaway here is that as all sectors of our society have become more reliant on computer networks, system admins and IT professionals at large generally have much broader access to the information been carried across those networks than even the people directly responsible for the content flowing through the system. It’s certainly scary that the NSA wasn’t more careful about their custodial and auditing systems. But at its heart it looks like the reason the NSA documents are coming out now is the same reason you don’t want to look at porn at work: Your IT team sees all.

Five are dead after a gunman rampaged through Santa Monica, CA, on Friday, ending at the local community college. The Santa Monica shooting marks the tenth mass shooting on a school campus in California since 1976.

The suspect, 23-year-old John Zawahri, was known as an angry young man with a “fascination with guns” that worried family friends. Zawahri was born in Lebanon but has lived in the U.S. for at least 10 years. In a press conference on Sunday, police said the troubled young man had planned out the attack and likely hoped to kill hundreds. The spree lasted 10 minutes, ending when police shot and killed Zawahri on the scene.

Zawahri allegedly killed his father and brother and burned down their house before heading toward Santa Monica College, armed with a ballistic vest, an AR-15 assault rifle and a duffel bag filled with an estimated 1,300 rounds of ammunition, magazines, and a .44 revolver. He shot and wounded a woman driving by his house, then carjacked another woman. On the way, he shot at pedestrians and a city bus, injuring 3 people.

Once he arrived at the community college, Zawahri gunned down a groundskeeper, 68-year-old Navarro Franco, killing him immediately, and his 26-year-old daughter, Marcela, who died in the hospital on Sunday. Witnesses say students scattered, jumping out windows and running for their lives. He then shot an unidentified woman in her 50s outside the library, went inside and fired 70 rounds at students who had been studying for exams. Police ultimately shot and killed him in the library.

Zawahri had a run-in with the law in 2006, but police could not give more details as he was a juvenile at the time. A law enforcement source told CNN that Zawahri had been hospitalized for mental issues after talking about wanting to hurt someone.

It is not clear where Zawahri got a hold of his AR-15 — the same weapon used in the Aurora theater shooting and the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre last year. Technically, certain AR-15 rifles are prohibited in California, but critics have said the law is rendered essentially toothless by loopholes and legal challenges. In May, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed a new law to give law enforcement more funding to crack down on illegal assault weapons owned by convicted criminals and people with serious mental illnesses.

Many have already expressed shock that such violence could occur in a sleepy, affluent town like Santa Monica. But similar towns in southern California have suffered through random mass shootings in recent years. A 20-year-old man went on a shooting spree across suburban Orange County just a few months ago, killing four. Eight died in a hair salon shooting in Seal Beach, CA, three years ago. And in 2005, four others were killed in a rampage in the small town of Thousand Oaks, not far from Santa Monica.

Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in December, more people have been killed by guns than the total number of American troops killed in the Iraq War. Though Congress failed to pass an enormously popular proposal to expand background checks in April, the Center for American Progress has identified several ways federal enforcers can crack down on illegal gun sales and stop shootings before they happen.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) — the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee — pledged to release transcripts of interviews with Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials that Republicans insist demonstrate that the agency’s targeting of conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) status was directed by the Obama administration.

Cummings made the remarks on CNN’s State of the Union, a week after Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) appeared on the program and insinuated that the White House directed IRS agents to single out tea party and patriot groups for additional scrutiny. Issa has refused to provide evidence that substantiate that claim.

“I wrote Chairman Issa on Thursday and I wrote to him this morning. I want those transcripts to be released,” Cummings said. “I’m willing to come on your show next week with the chairman with the transcripts if he agrees to do that. If he doesn’t, I’ll release them by the end of the week.”

Cummings insisted that the interviews will prove that “the White House was not involved in this,” pointing out that the Cincinnati IRS manager of the screening group, a career veteran at the agency who identified himself as Republican, told investigators that Washington did not direct the targeting. “I do not believe that the screening of these cases had anything to do other than consistency and identifying issues that needed to have further development,” the individual told investigators according to portion of the transcripts released by the Democratic staff on the House Oversight Committee.

Rather, the scrutiny began in 2010, after an IRS screener identified a tea party group applying for nonprofit status as “high profile” and asked his boss, the conservative Republican, for additional guidance. That individual, Cummings said, sent the case to the Washington technical office so that it can be treated consistently.

“Based upon everything I’ve seen the case is solved,” Cummings said. “And if it were me, I would wrap this case up and move on to be frank with you.”

In a recent poll for his Senate campaign, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA.) compares the Internal Revenue Service to a terrorist group, asking voters, “When you go to your mailbox or answer your phone, who do you fear more?” The poll, posted on Broun’s campaign website, lists “IRS” and “Al-Qaeda” as the two possible responses.

The poll suggests Americans should fear the IRS as much or more than they fear Al-Qaeda, presumably because of the recent scandal involving the IRS targeting conservative groups applying for 501 (c)(4) status. The IRS has apologized for what it has called the “inappropriate” and “insensitive” targeting of conservative groups, and has vowed that the targeting has stopped. The government is investigating the case, which affected about 500 organizations with terms such as “Tea Party,” “Patriots” or “9-12 project” in their names. Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, is a terrorist group that has been responsible for the deaths of thousands of people.

At a Republican and Tea Party gathering outside the capitol in May, Broun made it clear that he strongly opposes the IRS’s conduct. “It is the strong arm of the government that is trying to affect elections, to try to stop the freedom of speech that we are guaranteed under the First Amendment, and all Americans should just shudder and shiver at the prospects of a government out of control, too big, spending too much money,” Broun said.

Of course, the poll is not the first time Broun has made controversial comparisons or remarks. In 2001, he compared progressive Americans to Al-Qaeda, saying “the progressives and the socialists” want to “destroy [America] from the inside.” In 2008, he called then-President-elect Barack Obama a Marxist and compared him to Adolph Hitler (comments he later apologized for). He’s also referred to the theory of evolution as “lies straight from the pit of hell” and global warming as a “hoax” with “no scientific evidence.”

I will never forget having the honor of being a few feet away from Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) on the floor of the House as he cast the deciding 218th vote for healthcare reform. This great public servant had been fighting for universal healthcare for the length of two of my lifetimes, and showed no sign of slowing down. (While some colleagues gave me a look of pity for casting what they saw as a difficult vote, Dingell looked me in the eye and said, “You are fortunate to get the opportunity to be part of something that matters, and you won’t regret this.”)

This week, Dingell becomes the longest serving member of Congress in the history of our nation. While headlines are focusing on his longevity, articles are rightly focusing on the substance of his accomplishments. He is a veteran of World War II and of some of the most contentious political battles back home. He presided over the passage of Medicare and championed the Civil Rights Acts, knowing the latter would cost his party crucial seats in the South. He managed to be a staunch supporter of the auto industry and a major force behind key environmental legislation protecting Clean Air and Clean Water. He has been quiet titan for fairness and dignity that combines a Midwestern charm with a mastery of House procedure and old fashioned politics to get things done.

One could easily celebrate Dingell by looking backwards at his decades of accomplishments, but what amazes me is how much Dingell has to contribute to America’s direction going forward. A Midwestern populist, he has gained more wisdom than ideology through his six decades. Views that seemed a bit reactionary in the 1990s – opposing the repeal of Glass Steagell and accelerating the decline of America’s industrial base – now seem ahead of their time. He warned about “too big to fail” in 1999, because he had not forgotten why these rules were passed in the first place. While accused of being naïve to think America would still make and grow things, it is now those critics who seem naïve to have thought that every factory worker could just become a computer programmer and that the American middle class would track the financial sector more than others.

Too often we celebrate the Greatest Generation only with nostalgia instead of listening to what they can teach us about our future. After witnessing world wars and great depressions, civil rights movements and stagnation, and the explosion and steady decline of the American middle class, John Dingell yet has much to say worth the listening. One of the many things he taught me during our brief time together in Congress is that we can never let principles like basic fairness, promises like retirement with dignity, or planning for America’s competitiveness be categorized as old-fashioned. That is just an excuse not to fight for their relevance today. And because Dingell has always chosen the fight over the excuses, we are a stronger, more decent country and American community.

Our guest blogger is Tom Perriello, a former member of Congress from Virginia and President and CEO of Center for American Progress Action Fund.

President Obama enthusiastically defended his administration’s use of Bush-era programs to capture the communications “metadata” and online activity of the public on Friday, insisting that the programs are “striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy.” “There are some trade offs involved,” Obama said. “[T]he modest encroachments on privacy…it was worth us doing.”

The comments represent the president’s first public response to reports that major telecommunications companies, including Verizon and AT&T, are turning over all of their records to the government “on an ongoing daily basis” and that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the FBI are also datamining the servers of nine technology companies, “extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.”

Deriding the public “hype” over the programs, Obama said that the nation’s security agencies are operating “under very strict supervision under all three branches of government” and claimed that his administration has expanded oversight and increased some of the safeguards to protect privacy rights. “It’s not as if I don’t have a personal interest in making sure my privacy is protected,” he added.

The federal government is “looking at phone numbers and durations of calls” to identify patterns that could produce “potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism,” Obama said, but intelligence officials can only access names and the content of conversations if they “go back to a federal judge, just like they would in a federal investigation.” “Every member of Congress has been briefed on this program,” he added, “it has been authorized since 2006 by broad bipartisan majorities.”

Obama also indirectly acknowledged the existence of PRISM, a top secret program that allows intelligence officials to search online actives. It does not appear to apply to U.S. citizens (though their privacy coud be “incidentally” compromised) and requires authorization from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) .

“The two programs originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress, bipartisan majorites have approved them. Congress is continuously briefed on how they are conducted, there are a full range of safeguards involved and federal judges are overseeing the full process throughout,” Obama said, noting that lawmakers are able to voice concerns about the programs.

However, two Democrats who have condemned the surveillance — Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Mark Udall (D-CO) — say they have been unable to express public outrage over the measures, which are still classified. “I believe that when law-abiding Americans call their friends, who they call, when they call, and where they call from is private information,” Wyden said in a statement on Thursday. “Collecting this data about every single phone call that every American makes every day would be a massive invasion of Americans’ privacy.” Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed outrage over the revelations and pledged to introduce legislation limiting the government’s surveillance capabilities.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), who helped draft the PATRIOT Act, is exploring options to narrow a provision of the law that allows the National Security Agency (NSA) to obtain telephonic metadata on nearly all Americans. The comments are the first indication that Congress may act to restrict the government’s ongoing data collection since the Guardian published a secret court order compelling Verizon to turn over its records on a “on an ongoing daily basis” and the Wall Street Journal reported that AT&T and Sprint are also sending their records to the government.

“I have a big problem because the business records part of the Patriot Act, which is what was used to justify this, was designed for specific investigations,” Sensenbrenner told Fox News on Friday. “We’re seeing big government in action, just like George Orwell predicted but maybe a few years later,” he added.

Section 215 of the Patriot Act allows the government to order businesses to turn over “the production of any tangible things” if it can prove that “there are reasonable grounds to believe” that the tangible things sought are “relevant to an authorized investigation . . . to obtain foreign intelligence information. . . or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” The government has been obtaining metadata records from telephone companies for years and has used three-month secret warrants fromt the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) court since 2006.

Sensenbrenner indicated that he will draft legislation to “change that part of the business records part of the Patriot Act before it expires in 2015″ to more narrowly tailor it and will question FBI Director Robert Muller about the program when he appears before Congress next week. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) also plans to offer a bill designed to close the “business records” provision.

“This is a dragnet. It is an overreach and we’ve got to find out this is justified, simply because the NSA wants to do some data mining,” Sensenbrenner said. On Thursday, he wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder complaining that, “I do not believe the released FISA order is consistent with the requirements of the Patriot Act.”

The congressman initially dismissed critics who warned of government abuse of the Patriot Act in 2005 and 2006, but first admitted that the FBI may be abusing the law in 2007.

In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama sponsored a bill to require the government to prove it has “specific and articulable facts” that a targeted individual is an “agent of a foreign power” before accessing records.

The Guardian newspaper revealed on Wednesday night that the National Security Administration (NSA) is collecting information about the telephone records of millions of Americans through a warrant obtained in a secret court under authority granted in the Patriot Act. This is the first public confirmation that widespread surveillance of Americans, initiated under President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, has continued under the Obama administration. The program captures phone numbers and other information, but not the content of the conversations.

Warrantless surveillance began shortly after the September 2001 terrorist attacks. The Bush administration began a secret surveillance program in 2001, asking AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth to turn over communications records to the National Security Agency (NSA). The agency’s goal was “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, the USA Today reported in 2006.

Program fell under court supervision in 2007. Following public uproar, the administration placed the program under the surveillance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In 2008, Congress expanded the Act to allow both foreign and domestic surveillance “as long as the intent is to gather foreign intelligence.” The measure also provided “retroactive immunity to the telecom companies that assisted the Bush administration.”

Congress extended the law through 2017. In December of 2012, Congress voted to reauthorize The FISA Amendments Act until 2017. The Act “allows federal agencies to eavesdrop on communications and review email” with a warrant from the secret FISA court. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), a critic of the program, offered an amendment during floor debate that would have required the NSA disclose an estimate of how often information on Americans was collected and require authorities to obtain a warrant if they wish to search for private information in the NSA databases. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Wyden, along with Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), wrote, “We believe most Americans would be stunned to learn the details of how these secret court opinions have interpreted section 215 of the Patriot Act.” Wyden and Udall also noted that the administration promised August 2009 to establish “a regular process for reviewing, redacting and releasing significant opinions” of the court, though “not a single redacted opinion has been released.”

What the Verizon order says. The secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordered Verizon — which has 121 million customers — to turn over metadata “on an ongoing daily basis” for a three-month period between April 25, 2013 and July 19, 2013. The order does not require Verizon to turn over the content of the calls, but it must share information about the numbers dialed, received and length of call.

What civil libertarians say. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) criticized the administration’s order, noting that “From a civil liberties perspective, the program could hardly be any more alarming.” “It’s a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents,” Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director, said in a statement. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) also criticized the order. “This bulk data collection is being done under interpretations of the law that have been kept secret from the public,” he said. “Significant FISA court opinions that determine the scope of our laws should be declassified. Can the FBI or the NSA really claim that they need data scooped up on tens of millions of Americans?”

What the Patriot Act says. The order falls under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows the government to make broad demands on telephone carriers for information about calls. Under the law, the government isn’t required to show probable cause, but rather, “there are reasonable grounds to believe” that the tangible things sought are “relevant to an authorized investigation . . . to obtain foreign intelligence information. . . or to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities.” An expert told the Washington Post that the order “appears to be a routine renewal of a similar order first issued by the same court in 2006.” The order is apparently “reissued routinely every 90 days and that it is not related to any particular investigation by the FBI or any other agency.”

How the government is responding. The White House responded to the Guardian story by insisting that the data is a “critical tool in protecting the nation from terrorist threats to the United States.” “It allows counter terrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States,” an official said. Officials say they will investigate the source of the leak to the Guardian.

On June 10, George Zimmerman will begin trial for the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, who he shot unarmed on the street of a Florida gated community last year. But before the trial begins, Zimmerman’s defense team has aimed to portray Martin as a pot-smoking, violent teen — information the judge ruled inadmissible at the outset of the trial.

ThinkProgress spoke to three law experts in Florida on the issue, and they saw no reason that this information any indicator of Zimmerman’s guilt. By appearing on Fox News before the judge ruled on it, O’Mara saw the likelihood it would be barred and attempted to reach the jury through other channels. For instance, he broadcast a photo on Fox of a black hand holding a gun, allegedly from Martin’s phone.

“I think they are trying to poison the jury,” University of Miami Associate Professor of law Tamara Lave, a practicing attorney of 10 years, said. “I think he’s been trying to do this all along to win in the court of public opinion so he can win in the courtroom to get prosecutor to dismiss.” Unable to imagine “in good faith” he’d believe the evidence would be admitted, Lave also questioned why he would discuss it on national television when he knew the outcome.

At the pretrial, Zimmerman’s attorneys claimed a video recording on Martin’s phone was of his friends “beating up a homeless guy.” It turns out it wasn’t: it was two homeless men fighting over a bicycle. Zimmerman’s attorneys apologized for the mischaracterization on Sunday, a full five days after the pretrial.

Still, these details can prejudice potential jurors before a fair trial.

“It could have been a strategic maneuver to put things out there about the victim,” Florida attorney Spencer Charif said of one of the reasons this may have happened. “Sometimes the retraction in the newspaper is much smaller than the headline. 10 people think the video is harmless and 100 people think Trayvon had something.”

Charif, who has been a state attorney for three years and in private practice for seven, said that he “never had a video of another fight come in the defense case. I don’t know how that would have been relevant.”

According to Suzanne Villano, a Florida public defender of six years, this type of evidence is typically not probative — meaning, it does not prove the point of the case, but relies instead on its shock value.

A poll conducted last year showed a stark racial divide among people who think Zimmerman unjustly killed Martin; 91 percent and 59 percent of African-Americans and Hispanic Americans believe it was unjust, compared to 35 percent of white Americans. So the scrutiny of Martin’s records — which are promoted on sites like Drudge — are “terms that mean something,” Lave said. “Saying things to people about the value of Trayvon‘s life, that it’s worth less. ”

What the jury will try to determine is whether Zimmerman was reasonable or not to use deadly force. The possible outcomes that O’Mara is aiming for is an acquittal, or a hung verdict. And Villano said from her experience as a public defender juries “are very much moved by physical evidence and didn’t like to evaluate a testimony of a witness.”

In this case, the lawyers representing Martin’s family said the so-called evidence O’Mara fought to include was intentionally fabricated.

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that some Obama administration officials utilize non-publicly listed e-mail addresses in addition to their publicly listed ones. But a ThinkProgress Freedom of Information Act request revealed that this common practice was also utilized by the George W. Bush administration and in no way shields those accounts from public records laws.

Some administration critics, including Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), have tried to make political hay over former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s use of a secondary e-mail address which bore the name “Richard Windsor.” Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) told Fox and Friends that the use of “secret” secondary e-mails by administration officials could violate public records law, as investigators might not be able to subpoena accounts they did not know about.

The EPA released to ThinkProgress a list of E-mail addresses used by the four people who served as Administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency during the Bush administration. Each had a public address (using the typical agency format of lastname.firstname@epa.gov) and a private one:

• Christine Todd Whitman: towhit@epa.gov, Whitman.Christine@epa.gov
• Marianne Lamont Horinko: toduke@epa.gov, Horinko.Marianne@epa.gov
• Michael Leavitt: mol@epa.gov, Leavitt.Michael@epa.gov
• Stephen L. Johnson: tocarter@epa.gov, Johnson.StephenL@epa.gov

The AP story gives the impression that this is unprecedented, making no mention of the use of the multiple addresses by previous administrations.

U.S. Senators and Representatives also typically have non-published e-mail addresses, though Congress exempted itself from Freedom of Information laws. It seems obvious that political figures of both parties would need an unlisted e-mail address that cannot be easily guessed for communications with advisers and colleagues — just as cabinet secretaries private cell phone numbers would not be publicly available, though their main office number would be.

Despite Alexander’s concern, the release of this information shows that both the public and private email addresses are public record and that any legitimate FOIA request or subpoena for records would include those sent to and from both addresses.