I have read access to an HDFS path 'XXX', when I execute some statements like "LOAD DATA INPATH 'XXX' into table YYY ..."
An error occurs:
ERROR: AuthorizationException: User 'ZZZ' does not have privileges to access: 'XXX'
Why a "LOAD DATA" statement need more privileges than "READ"?
Issue is that the LOAD DATA command physically moves the file from the path you specify in the INPATH to the location specified when creating the table. Now if it has to move the data it need RW permissions on the source folder & hence the error.
Search here for LOAD DATA : Apache Docs
HTH.