It really speaks to the level of corruption and disorganization that this situation was able to go on for so long. Or that a clearly corrupt bunch that seemed willing to do anything had such access.
I'm not sure if that last sentence should be taken to refer to Congressional Democrats or the Pakistani Muslim IT brothers in their employ who are at the center of an access scandal. And a bunch of other scandals.
Awan ran technology for multiple House Democrats, and soon four of his relatives — including brothers Abid and Jamal — appeared on the payroll of dozens of other members, collecting $4 million in taxpayer funds since 2010.
“They had access to EVERYTHING. Correspondence, emails, confidential files — if it was stored on the Member system, they had access to it,” the former House Information Resources (HIR) technology worker with first-hand knowledge of Imran’s privileges told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
“There were some things – like access to the House email system that were totally controlled by the technicians at HIR. In order for certain permissions to be granted, a form was required to ensure that there was a paper trail for the requested changes. Imran was constantly complaining that he had to go through this process and trying to get people to process his access requests without the proper forms. Some of the permissions he wanted would give him total access to the Members’ stuff.”
“IT staff at HIR can be tracked for every keystroke they make,” the worker said. But by comparison, “when these guys were granted access to the Member’s computer systems there is no oversight or tracking of what they may be doing on the Member’s system. For example they could make a copy of anything on the Member’s computer system to a thumb drive or have it sent to a private server they had set up and no one would know.”
So we have some rather dubious people with access to everything on the system of Dems working on high level committees. And it's a safe bet that they were no more secure about it than Hillary. On top of that you have Capitol Police, a sinecure position, investigating this, instead of the FBI or the Secret Service.
The central IT staffer said any suggestion that the brothers’ access didn’t span the full gamut of congressional intrigue was silly because they were the ones giving out permissions.
“When a new Member begins, they guide them on everything from which computer system to purchase to which constituent management system to go with and all other related hardware purchases. Then they install everything and set up all the accounts AND grant all the required permissions and restrictions,” the staffer said.
“In effect, they are given administrative control of the Members’ computer operations. They then set up a remote access so they can connect from wherever they are and have full access to everything on the Member’s system.”
You had Pakistanis with a backdoor to the systems of key figures who oversaw national security agencies. This is really bad. And yet keeping the investigation out of sight will bury it.