The US Intelligence Community has a Third Leaker

Ever since The Intercept published this story about the US government's Terrorist Screening Database, the press has been writing about a "second leaker":

The Intercept article focuses on the growth in U.S. government databases of known or suspected terrorist names during the Obama administration.

The article cites documents prepared by the National Counterterrorism Center dated August 2013, which is after Snowden left the United States to avoid criminal charges.

Greenwald has suggested there was another leaker. In July, he said on Twitter "it seems clear at this point" that there was another.

Everyone's miscounting. This is the third leaker:

• Leaker #1: Edward Snowden.

• Leaker #2: The person that is passing secrets to Jake Appelbaum, Laura Poitras and others in Germany: the Angela Merkle surveillance story, the TAO catalog, the X-KEYSCORE rules. My guess is that this is either an NSA employee or contractor working in Germany, or someone from German intelligence who has access to NSA documents.

• Leaker #3: This new leaker, who The Intercept calls "a source in the intelligence community."

Harvard Law School professor Yochai Benkler has written an excellent law-review article on the need for a whistleblower defense. And there's this excellent article by David Pozen on why government leaks are, in general, a good thing.