U.S. intelligence agencies fear Edward Snowden has achieved celebrity as a leaker and could be inspiring others to disclose classified national security information . One indication of that may be in new documents published this week by the Intercept , the website begun by Glenn Greenwald , who published Snowden 's leaks . Government officials believe the documents , labeled `` Secret , '' came from a Pentagon-run computer network called SIPRnet that government agencies used to share classified information . Investigators are looking for the leak . Rep. Adam Schiff , a member of the House Intelligence Committee , called it the `` copycat phenomenon '' and noted it was a big concern . `` The degree that people have been lionizing Snowden , it encourages people to make a name for themselves by leaking , '' Schiff told CNN in an interview . Schiff said the issue has come up in intelligence briefings that he could n't talk about . `` It 's a concern we 've discussed : That Snowden has become the model for other leakers , '' he said . Snowden inspired by others . Snowden has said that he was inspired by others who disclosed secrets , including Daniel Ellsberg , who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971 . He also has said that he considered the former Army private , now called Chelsea Manning , a hero . Manning leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan . Like Snowden is now by the Obama administration , Ellsberg was demonized at first by the Nixon administration . Decades later Ellsberg is widely praised for revealing the government 's secret dealings in Vietnam and neighboring countries . Snowden , who has lived in exile in Russia for a year to avoid U.S. criminal charges , has encouraged others to come forward . In the year since his leaks on U.S. surveillance practices , the Obama administration has tried to improve security at the agencies handling the nation 's secrets . NSA security tightened . The National Security Agency , where Snowden worked as a contractor , has tightened its computer security aiming to ensure no one can carry out a theft of the size of which was attributed to Snowden : 1.7 million documents . The Director of National Intelligence has issued rules across all related agencies to try to better track contact with the media . At the same time , the administration is bowing to countervailing pressure to limit how prosecutors pursue leak investigations . It is now reining-in aggressive tactics , such as declaring journalists co-conspirators with leakers and subpoenaing journalists to reveal sources . The spate of leak scandals stems in part from the government 's move since the September 11 , 2001 , terror attacks to more broadly share information . Some of the 9/11 hijackers were being tracked by one or more federal agencies . But the failure to share information across various agencies is one reason why the 9/11 attacks succeeded , officials have said . Schiff said the lesson learned then was to `` break down the silos '' of information . That effort , perhaps went too far . `` Beginning with Manning , you see people having access to things they had no reason to access to , '' Schiff said . `` The pendulum is clearly swinging back in the other direction . '' Millions get clearances . A recent GAO study concluded the Pentagon approved as many as 3.2 million people for access to secret and higher-level classified information between 2006 and 2011 . Schiff said there were far too many people with security clearances . At the same time , he said the government 's national security work requires some secrecy . Revealing the methods by which security agencies try to prevent terror could show terrorists how to evade detection and thereby increase the risk of a disastrous attack . Intelligence agencies are `` kind of damned if they do and damned if they do n't , '' he said . Obama , Congress working on changes to NSA . Opinion : NSA and your phone records : What should Obama do ? Review board finds potential abuses in NSA phone , internet surveillance .
Intel agencies fear Edward Snowden has achieved celebrity as a leaker . The NSA is also concerned that Snowden's revelations could damage its ability to collect intelligence on foreign targets. New documents published this week by Glenn Greenwald raise new questions .