In the wake of the Edward Snowden leak, the National Security Agency (NSA) has put in place a "two-man rule" that requires two people to be present for the transfer of sensitive information.

"NSA has instituted a two-person rule for systems administrators who have the highest privileges," an NSA spokesperson said via email.

The news was first reported by the Associated Press, which spoke to NSA chief Keith Alexander on the sidelines of the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

Alexander told the news service that the NSA is currently testing out this two-person rule within the agency, and would roll it out at the Pentagon and other intelligence agencies at a later date. One item on the agenda is coming up with rules for sites that currently only have one system admin, he told the AP.

The move comes after Snowden, an NSA contractor, stole documents and provided then to The Guardian in order to highlight what he claimed was evidence of a surveillance state. Snowden fled the U.S. to Hong Kong prior to the release of the documents and later flew to Moscow, where he has remained while seeking asylum from various countries.

One of the more headline-grabbing leaks that Snowden provided to the paper outlined a program known as PRISM. The documents published by The Guardian suggested that it provided the government with direct access to the servers of U.S. companies like Yahoo, Facebook, Google, and Apple. Those firms have denied providing the feds with access to their servers, and say they only turn over data when required by a legal court order.

The controversy prompted a lawsuit from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and several other groups, which sued the NSA, arguing that the agency's data collection processes violate the law and the Constitution.

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