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New leaker suspected

August 6, 2014

A new classified document about the US intelligence community has been released causing some officials to suspect that a new leaker is feeding information to journalists.

https://p.dw.com/p/1CpRi
Image: picture alliance/ZUMA Press

Concerns about a second leaker came after The Intercept, a news site that has access to documents from whistleblower Edward Snowden, published new revelations Tuesday about the scope of the US terrorism watch list.

The Intercept published a 12-page classified text saying it was "obtained from a source in the intelligence community."

The documents cited are dated from August 2013, which has some US media speculating that a new leaker besides Snowden had begun to send classified material from inside the US intelligence community to the media.

The document reveals information on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database (TIDE) and the Terrorist Screening Database. The databases include people who are known terrorists, are suspected of having ties to terrorism or are, in some cases, related or associated to known or suspected terrorists.

Citing the document, The Intercept reported that 280,000 of the 680,000 people - or 40 percent - who are on the terrorism watch list have "no recognized terrorist group affiliation." The site also reported that since US President Barack Obama took office, the number of suspects on the "no-fly list," which bans them from aviation, has increased ten-fold to 47,000.

One of The Intercept's founding editors is Glenn Greenwald who has written many reports based on Snowden-provided documents. Last Friday, Greenwald turned down an invitation to testify before the German parliament later this summer about the NSA spying scandal.

hc/shs (AFP, AP, Reuters)