The Snowden effect: Fear in corporate America

Edward Snowden isn’t just a nightmare for the National Security Agency. He also epitomizes a little-mentioned but intense ongoing fear of corporate America — that any lone renegade among millions of trustworthy employees could abuse access to private customer data for idealistic or villainous purposes.

“At our company, nobody has any idea exactly who has what access,” an information technology specialist for a major bank told POLITICO. “There are safeguards, but by the time anyone knows what someone’s done, the violator could be off to Hong Kong with Brad Pitt’s credit card statements and sell them to TMZ. It’s easier to imagine it than it is to fully prevent it.”