| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019553)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019553" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 2447 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| String Puller | 65 |
| 2006 she had been kept on a list that caused authorities to search her |
| at airports. As a result, she took elaborate countermeasures to evade |
| any possible surveillance of her communications. |
| Snowden knew about this incident because Greenwald described |
| it in great detail in a blog that Snowden read (as he later told Green- |
| wald). "Poitras is now forced to take extreme steps—ones that ham- |
| per her ability to do her work," Greenwald wrote. "She now avoids |
| traveling with any electronic devices. She uses alternative methods |
| to deliver the most sensitive parts of her work—raw film and inter- |
| view notes—to secure locations. She spends substantial time and |
| resources protecting her computers with encryption and password |
| defenses. Especially when she is in the US, she avoids talking on |
| the phone about her work, particularly to sources. And she sim- |
| ply will not edit her films at her home out of fear-obviously well |
| grounded-that government agents will attempt to search and seize |
| the raw footage." She claimed, as she told journalists, she was the |
| victim of "Kafkaesque government harassment." |
| Snowden was duly impressed with her concerns about govern- |
| ment surveillance, which he agreed was ubiquitous. Indeed, he later |
| described her as "more paranoid when it comes to electronic security |
| than I can be." He meant it as a compliment. Such functional para- |
| noia or "operational security," as Greenwald would call the precau- |
| tions that she took, dovetailed with Snowden's growing conviction |
| that universal encryption was necessary to defeat the surveillance |
| state. It also made her the perfect channel for Snowden to safely pass |
| some of the classified documents he stole to Greenwald and other |
| journalists. |
| It was not difficult to get her to cooperate in his plot. He wrote, |
| for example, "The surveillance you've experienced means you have |
| been 'selected' —a term which will mean more to you as you learn |
| how the modern SIGINT [signals intelligence] system works." Just |
| as she had been "chosen" by her work to act as his conduit, accord- |
| ing to Snowden, she had been chosen by the NSA as a target because |
| of her work. The idea of her being "selected" by an invisible signals |
| intelligence agency, the NSA, could only excite her longtime con- |
| cerns about being watched by the government. |
| "Your victimization by the NSA system means that you are well |
| Epst_9780451494566_ 2p_all_r1.z.indd 65 |
| 9/29/16 5:51 PM |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019553 |
|
|
