[1] https://cdn.securelist.com/files/2017/10/Guerrero-Saade-Raiu...
We (US, Soviet Union, etc) had this figured out in the 60s when we were primarily using human intel. [1] Except the danger that now, instead of walking out with rolls of film covering a few thousand pages, someone can take everything they have access to in < 24 hours.
My only explanation is all those long-won counter-intelligence lessons were thrown out when the Young Turks showed up with their "we can do it all and more via software" ways. Because they delivered (and you've probably seen this in your org) they were excluded from having all the pain-in-the-ass rules applied to them.
It seems our intelligence agencies now look exactly like our commercial software -- more featureful, more agile, less secure, less stable.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._A._Robertson https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intellig... https://www.salon.com/2015/09/26/how_to_explain_the_kgbs_ama...
But the gist of what you are saying is correct, a lot more interconnection, a lot more software, using standard (albeit locked down) desktop operating systems. I think there was a realisation that the ultra-compartmented sharing-via-paper approach was killing effectiveness.
What I haven't seen in any of the SB leaks is evidence of access to core NSA systems via implants or a very trusted source. All the powerpoints could all be individual data spills, collected over time. All the TAO tooling could be stuff that sat on the dev system behind some bastion host, ready to be pushed to staging servers. Personally, I would only let binaries get that far out, but operational exigencies occur, high side operators can be phished, etc.
Of course, given a defective Congress, what should the IC have done? Limit their use of computers? Stop sharing information? Encrypt everything on servers and decrypt client side via special hardware? Have someone watch the admins as if they are all wannabe traitors? Disperse honeypot systems and canary docs everywhere? Tripwire the heck out of every system? Fit explosive collars on systems administrators?
Well, all those things and more have now been contemplated. Everything except 'stop collecting'.
I doubt the SB are going to willfully release anything so sensitive in a dump.
Don't expose your methods and procedures, compartmentalize your assets and change your behaviour...
The Q Group will probably be more successful using old-school methodologies.
It's on purpose. After 9/11, the intelligence agencies were lambasted for not sharing information. They were told the next one (a) couldn't happen and (b) would be their fault if it did. Lots of other motivations for the expansion in power, too. One side effect of this was compartmentalization was weakened a lot across the board. Over time, the security strength of things such as cross-domain solutions and endpoints had been dropping. The rush to get everything in that could benefit the mission increased that further.
Yeah, they're probably more vulnerable now than they ever were with more information to take with less chance of detection. Government and private sector. Their people like Roger Schell and Brian Snow warned them for a long time. Private contractors warned them. Those such as Aesec, BAE, and Green Hills even built and paid for evaluations of the kind of tech they said they wanted. They just used it less and less with stuff easy to hack being used more and more. In Snowden's case, the level of security was worse than a lot of enterprises with far less money.
The full history of intelligence collection during the Cold War has not yet been fully declassified.