[justinjlynn]

Snowden was a member of a group with what is known as "PRIVAC", or privileged access, capabilities. To my amateur understanding, this type of access is granted to systems administrators or other users of information systems who may see things they aren't otherwise cleared to see in the course of their normal duties. Additionally, it was reported, though denied by Snowden, that Snowden used other colleagues' credentials to access information for collection and later disclosure.