I think the point is that wget (’‘wget’’) leaves a fingerprint in access logs (’‘access logs’’) via the User Agent (’‘User Agent’’) string - that look unlike any legitimate browser activity the NSA might allow.
I would expect the NSA to anticipate the possibility that someone (probably a Chinese spy, but also a disaffected employee) could gain access and attempt to download their whole database.
Thousands of rapid fire download requests from any source should by rights trigger an automatic Predator Drone strike on the geolocated position of the next chump who got the same dynamically assigned IP address as SnowdenManning. The NSA will have already written the code to do that somewhere. Why was it not deployed? (compare with arxiv.org’s policy: click here but not here).
How did SnowdenManning manage to get permission to run ‘‘wget’’? I reckon he told them he was doing ‘‘load testing’’ and they let him … sneaky bugger.
