Edward Snowden

Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a US former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who leaked details of top-secret US and British government mass surveillance programs to the press.

Working primarily with Glenn Greenwald of London's The Guardian, which published a series of exposés based on Snowden's disclosures in June 2013, Snowden revealed information about a variety of classified intelligence programs, including the interception of US and European telephone metadata and the PRISM and Tempora Internet surveillance programs. Snowden said the leaks were an effort "to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."

On June 14, 2013, US federal prosecutors filed a sealed complaint, made public on June 21, charging Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person; the latter two allegations are under the Espionage Act.

Snowden's leaks are said to rank among the most significant breaches in the history of the NSA. He is currently in the process of seeking asylum from U.S. prosecution.

Childhood, family and education
Snowden was born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. His father, Lonnie Snowden, a resident of Pennsylvania, was an officer in the United States Coast Guard, and his mother, a resident of Baltimore, Maryland, is a clerk at a federal court in Maryland.

By 1999, Snowden had moved with his family to Ellicott City, Maryland, where he studied computing at Anne Arundel Community College to gain the credits necessary to obtain a high-school diploma, but he did not complete the coursework. Snowden's father explained that his son had missed several months of school owing to illness and, rather than return, took and passed the tests for his GED at a local community college. Snowden worked online toward a Master's Degree at the University of Liverpool in 2011. Having worked at a US military base in Japan, Snowden reportedly had a deep interest in Japanese popular culture and had studied the Japanese language and later Edward Snowden also worked for a Japanese anime company. He also said he had a basic understanding of Mandarin and was deeply interested in martial arts, and listed Buddhism as his religion.

His father has published an open letter praising his son’s contributions in exposing the United States’ surveillance operations.

Career
On May 7, 2004, Snowden enlisted in the United States Army as a Special Forces recruit but did not complete the training. He said he wanted to fight in the Iraq war because he "felt like [he] had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression." However, he said he was discharged four months later on September 28 after having broken both of his legs in a training accident.

His next employment was as a National Security Agency (NSA) security guard for the Center for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland, before, he said, joining the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to work on IT security. In May 2006 Snowden wrote in Ars Technica, an online forum for gamers, hackers and hardware tinkerers, that he had no trouble getting work because he was a "computer wizard." In August he wrote about a possible path in government service, perhaps involving China, but said it "just doesn't seem like as much 'fun' as some of the other places."

Snowden said that in 2007 the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was responsible for maintaining computer network security. Snowden described his CIA experience in Geneva as "formative", stating that the CIA deliberately got a Swiss banker drunk and encouraged him to drive home. When the latter was arrested, a CIA operative offered to intervene and later recruited the banker. Swiss President Ueli Maurer commented, "It does not seem to me that it is likely that this incident played out as it has been described by Snowden and by the media." The revelations come at a sensitive time for US-Swiss relations as the Swiss government attempts to pass legislation allowing for more banking transparency.

Snowden told The Guardian he left the agency in 2009 for a private contractor inside an NSA facility on a United States military base in Japan. NSA Director Keith Alexander has said that Snowden held a position at the NSA for the twelve months prior to his next job as a consultant. Individuals occupying these positions may have been required to obtain a Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information clearances, which requires a special background investigation. Snowden would have been subjected to drug testing and required to take a polygraph test. The company USIS completed a background check on Snowden in 2011.

Snowden described his life as "very comfortable", earning a salary of "roughly US $200,000." At the time of his departure from the US in May 2013, he had been working for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton for less than three months inside the NSA at the Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center in Hawaii. While intelligence officials have described his position there as a "system administrator", Snowden has claimed he was an "infrastructure analyst", which meant that his job was to look for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the world. Snowden was employed on a salary of $122,000. He said he had taken a pay cut to work at Booz Allen, and that he sought employment in order to gather data on NSA surveillance around the world so he could leak it. The firm said Snowden's employment was terminated on June 10 "for violations of the firm's code of ethics and firm policy."

According to Reuters, a source "with detailed knowledge on the matter" stated that Booz Allen's hiring screeners detected possible discrepancies in Snowden's résumé regarding his education since some details "did not check out precisely", but decided to hire him anyway; Reuters stated that the element which triggered these concerns, or the manner in which Snowden satisfied the concerns, were not known. The résumé stated that Snowden attended computer-related classes at Johns Hopkins University. A spokesperson for Johns Hopkins said that the university did not find records to show that Snowden attended the university, and suggested that he may instead have attended Advanced Career Technologies, a private for-profit organization which operated as "Computer Career Institute at Johns Hopkins." A spokesperson for University College of the University of Maryland said that Snowden had attended a summer session at a University of Maryland campus in Asia. Snowden's resume stated that he estimated that he would receive a University of Liverpool computer security master's degree in 2013. A spokesperson for the university said that in 2011 Snowden registered for an online master's degree program in computer security and that "he is not active in his studies and has not completed the program."

Before leaving for Hong Kong Snowden lived with his girlfriend in Waipahu, Oahu, Hawaii. According to local real estate agents, Snowden and his girlfriend moved out of their home on May 1, leaving nothing behind.

Political views
Snowden has said that in the 2008 presidential election he voted for third-party candidates. He has claimed he had been planning to make disclosures about NSA surveillance programs at the time, but he decided to wait because he "believed in Obama's promises." He was later disappointed that Obama "continued with the policies of his predecessor." For the 2012 election, political donation records indicate that he contributed to the primary campaign of Ron Paul.

Snowden is widely believed to be the author of hundreds of archived online postings under the pseudonym "TheTrueHOOHA" (TTH), which may document Snowden's views on various political topics. In a January 2009 entry, TTH exhibited strong support for the United States' security state apparatus and said he believed leakers of classified information "should be shot in the balls." However, by February 2010 TTH was framing privacy debates in Constitutional terms: "I wonder, how well would envelopes that became transparent under magical federal candlelight have sold in 1750? 1800? 1850? 1900? 1950?." The last known public posting by TTH was made on May 21, 2012.

On June 17, 2013, Snowden's father spoke in an interview on Fox TV, expressing concern about misinformation in the media regarding his son. He described his son as "a sensitive, caring young man... He just is a deep thinker." While he was in agreement with his son in his opposition to the surveillance programs that he revealed, he asked his son to stop leaking and return home. In accounts published in June 2013, interviewers noted that Snowden's laptop displayed stickers supporting internet freedom organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor Project. Summing up his activities in a clandestine interview with the South China Morning Post, he said, "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American."

Media disclosures


Snowden first made contact with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in January 2013. According to Poitras, Snowden chose to contact her after seeing her report on William Binney, an NSA whistleblower, in The New York Times. She is a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation along with journalist Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald, reporting for The Guardian, said he had been working with Snowden since February, and Barton Gellman, writing for The Washington Post, says his first "direct contact" was on May 16. However, Gellman alleges Greenwald was only involved after the Post declined to guarantee publication of the full documents within 72 hours. Gellman says he told Snowden "we would not make any guarantee about what we published or when... Snowden replied succinctly, 'I regret that we weren't able to keep this project unilateral.' Shortly afterward he made contact with Greenwald."

Snowden communicated using encrypted email, using the codename "Verax", meaning truthful in Latin. He asked not to be quoted at length for fear of identification by semantic analysis.

According to Gellman, prior to their first meeting in person, Snowden wrote, "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end." Snowden also told Gellman that until the articles were published, the journalists working with him would also be at risk from the United States Intelligence Community, whom Snowden said "will most certainly kill you if they think you are the single point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them the sole owner of this information."

In May 2013, Snowden was permitted temporary leave from his position at the NSA in Hawaii, on the pretext of receiving treatment for his epilepsy. On May 20, Snowden flew to the Chinese territory of Hong Kong. He was staying in a Hong Kong hotel when the initial articles revealing information about the NSA that he had leaked were published. Among other specifics divulged, Snowden revealed the existence and functions of several classified US surveillance programs and their scope, including notably PRISM (surveillance program), NSA call database, Boundless Informant. He also revealed details of Tempora, a British black-ops surveillance program run by the NSA's British partner, GCHQ.

Snowden explained his actions saying: "I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things [surveillance on its citizens]... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded."

Snowden's identity was made public by The Guardian at his request on June 9. He explained his reasoning for forgoing anonymity: "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong." He added that by revealing his identity he hoped to protect his colleagues from being subjected to a hunt to determine who had been responsible for the leaks.

United States
The U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, described the disclosure of PRISM in a filed report as "reckless." The NSA formally requested that the Department of Justice launch a criminal investigation into Snowden's actions. On June 14, 2013, prosecutors charged Snowden with espionage and theft of government property. General Keith Alexander, the Director of the National Security Agency, said that the agency would work with the director of national intelligence to put in place measures to block people from taking information out of their system.

In June 2013, the US Army blocked access to parts of the Guardian website related to government surveillance programs for thousands of defense personnel across the country. A spokesperson described the filtering as a routine "network hygiene" measure intended to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information onto the Department of Defense's unclassified networks.

Reactions to Snowden's disclosures among members of Congress have been varied. Some, such as Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) questioned the constitutional validity of the federal government surveillance on its citizens and suggested Snowden should benefit from immunity from prosecution. Others, such as Speaker of the House John Boehner and several senators and representatives who work with the intelligence community, called Snowden a "traitor" and accused him of putting Americans at risk.

According to a Gallup poll conducted June 10–11, 2013, 44 percent of Americans thought it was right for Snowden to share the information with the press while 42 percent thought it was wrong. A USA Today/Pew Research poll conducted June 12–16 found that 49 percent thought the release of information served the public interest while 44 percent thought it harmed it. The same poll found that 54 percent felt a criminal case should be brought against Snowden, while 38 percent thought a criminal case should not be brought. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted June 12–16, 43 percent said Snowden should be charged with a crime, while 48 percent said he should not be.

A We the People petition on the White House website, asking for "a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes [Snowden] has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs" attained 100,000 signatures within two weeks.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, who received the leaked documents, praised Snowden, who he said had done a service by revealing the surveillance on the American public. John Cassidy, also of The New Yorker, called Snowden "a hero", and said that "in revealing the colossal scale of the US government's eavesdropping on Americans and other people around the world, [Snowden] has performed a great public service that more than outweighs any breach of trust he may have committed." CNN columnist Douglas Rushkoff also called Snowden's leak an act of heroism. Amy Davidson, writing in The New Yorker, was thankful for the "overdue" conversation on privacy and the limits of domestic surveillance.

Chris Hedges and Michael Moore, Glenn Beck, Matt Drudge, Alex Jones, and Michael Savage praised Snowden for exposing secret government surveillance. Other commentators were more critical of Snowden's methods and motivations.

The editors of Bloomberg News argued that, while the government ought to prosecute Snowden, the media's focus on Snowden took attention away from issues of U.S. government surveillance, the interpretations of the Patriot Act, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court actions, all of which are "what really matters in all this." Greenwald accused the media in the U.S. of focusing on Edward Snowden instead of focusing on wrongdoing by Clapper and other U.S. officials. Alex Berenson, a former The New York Times reporter and a writer of seven spy novels, argued that the federal government should have flown a representative to Hong Kong to invite Snowden to give testimony in front of the U.S. Congress and receive a fair criminal trial, with a view to preventing further unintended disclosures of classified information to other countries.

European governments
British Foreign Minister William Hague admitted that Britain's GCHQ was also spying and collaborating with the NSA, and defended the two agencies' actions, branding them 'indispensable'. Meanwhile, UK Defence officials issued a confidential DA-Notice to the BBC and other media asking the media to refrain from running further stories related to surveillance leaks including US PRISM programme and the British involvement therein.

European governments reacted angrily, with German and French leaders Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande branding the spying as 'unacceptable' and insisting the NSA stop immediately, while the European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding sent Washington an official list of questions and demanded an explanation. There were also calls in Europe for upcoming EU–US trade talks to be suspended.

Human rights organizations
Human Rights Watch said that if Snowden were able to raise the issue of NSA mass surveillance without facing espionage charges, then he would not have left the United States in the first place.

Widney Brown, Senior Director of Amnesty International, feared that if Snowden was forcibly transferred to the United States, it would put him at "great risk" of human rights violations.

China and Hong Kong
According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP) a poll of Hong Kong residents conducted while Snowden was still in Hong Kong showed that half of the 509 respondents believed the Chinese government should not surrender Snowden to the United States if Washington raises such a request. According to the poll, 33 percent of Hong Kong residents think of Snowden as a hero, 12.8 percent described him as a traitor, 23 percent described him as "something in between".

On June 15, while Snowden was still in Hong Kong, Hong Kong chief executive CY Leung said: "When the relevant mechanism is activated, the Hong Kong SAR government will handle the case of Mr Snowden in accordance with the laws and established procedures of Hong Kong. Meanwhile, the government will follow up on any incidents related to the privacy or other rights of the institutions or people in Hong Kong being violated." Hong Kong politician Albert Ho denounced the "unlawful, unjustified and unscrupulous" interference, and demanded the "the whole truth ... an unconditional apology ... and an assurance this interference will stop." Hong Kong pan-democrat legislators Gary Fan and Claudia Mo said that the perceived U.S. prosecution against Snowden will set "a dangerous precedent and will likely be used to justify similar actions" by authoritarian governments. During Snowden's stay, the two main political groups, the pan-democrats and pro-establishment camp, found rare agreement to support Snowden. The DAB even organised a separate march to Government headquarters for Snowden.

On June 20, the SCMP reported People's Daily and the Global Times editorials from the previous day stating respectively that the central Chinese government was unwilling to be involved in a "mess" caused by others, and that the Hong Kong government should follow the public opinion and not concern itself with Sino-US relations. A Tsinghua University communications studies specialist, Liu Jianming, interpreted that the two articles as suggesting that the PRC government did not want further involvement in the case and that the HKSAR government should handle it independently.

After Snowden left Hong Kong, Chinese-language newspapers such as the Ming Pao and the Oriental Daily expressed relief that Hong Kong no longer had to shoulder the burden of the Snowden situation. Mainland experts said that although the Central Government did not want to appear to be intervening in the matter, it was inconceivable that the Hong Kong government acted independently in a matter that could have far-reaching consequences for Sino-US relations. One expert suggested that by doing so, China had "returned the favor" for them not having accepted the asylum plea from Wang Lijun in February 2012. People's Daily denied the US government accusation that the PRC central government had allowed Snowden to escape, and said that Snowden helped in "tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask."

Russia
Russian president Vladimir Putin said that Snowden's arrival in Moscow was "a surprise." As Snowden remained in the transit area of Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, Putin said Snowden had not committed any crime on Russian soil and was free to leave and should do so. Putin's claims were received skeptically by some observers: One Moscow political analyst said "Snowden will fly out of Russia when the Kremlin decides he can go." Anonymous Ecuadorean officials told the Associated Press that Russia had blocked requests to let Snowden leave Moscow.

On June 30, Snowden's WikiLeaks handler, Sarah Harrison, submitted Snowden's request for political asylum in Russia Putin responded by imposing the condition that Snowden must stop his leaking. Snowden was said to have withdrawn the application.

Ecuador
After Robert Menendez, chairman of the United States foreign relations panel, warned Ecuador that accepting Snowden "would severely jeopardize" preferential trade access the United States provides to Ecuador, Ecuador's President Rafael Correa responded by abdicating US trade benefits. A government spokesman said that Ecuador would offer the USA "economic aid of US$23 million annually, similar to what we received with the trade benefits, with the intention of providing education about human rights."

Correa criticized the US media for centering its focus on Snowden and countries supporting him, instead of focusing on the global and domestic privacy issues implicated in the leaked documents.

United Nations
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that "the Snowden case is something I consider to be misuse" and that digital communications should not be "misused in such a way as Snowden did."

Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Althing, said that Ban should not have personally condemned Snowden and that Ban "seemed entirely unconcerned about the invasion of privacy by governments around the world, and only concerned about how whistleblowers are misusing the system."

Whistleblower community
Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower and leaker of the top-secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, stated in an interview with CNN that he thought Snowden had done an "incalculable" service to his country and that his leaks might prevent the United States from becoming a surveillance state. He said Snowden had acted with the same sort of courage and patriotism as a soldier in battle. In an op-ed the following morning, Ellsberg added that "there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that includes the Pentagon Papers, for which I was responsible 40 years ago." Ray McGovern, a retired CIA officer who presented White House intelligence briefs for multiple presidents, said he agreed with Ellsberg in an interview where he also said "this time today I'm feeling much more hopeful for our democracy that I was feeling this time yesterday."

William Binney, a whistleblower who, like Snowden, disclosed details of the NSA's mass surveillance activities, said that Snowden had "performed a really great public service to begin with by exposing these programs and making the government in a sense publicly accountable for what they're doing." However, after Snowden disclosed a previous conversation Snowden had with a "reliable source" about allegations that the US was "hacking into China", Binney felt, "he is transitioning from whistle-blower to a traitor."

Thomas Drake, former senior executive of NSA and whistle blower as well, said that he feels "extraordinary kinship" with Snowden. "I actually salute him, given my experience over many, many years both inside and outside the system. Remember, I saw what he saw. I want to re-emphasize that. What he did was a magnificent act of civil disobedience. He's exposing the inner workings of the surveillance state. And it's in the public interest. It truly is." WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange praised Snowden, calling him a "hero" who has exposed "one of the most serious events of the decade – the creeping formulation of a mass surveillance state." After charges against Snowden were revealed, Assange released a statement asking people to "step forward and stand with" Snowden.

Itinerary
Snowden's left Hawaii for Hong Kong on May 20, 2013 and traveled to Moscow on June 23 as Hong Kong was deliberating a request for his extradition.

Hong Kong
When asked why he had chosen to be in Hong Kong when the articles about NSA surveillance programs were disclosed to the public, Snowden explained: "NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not put that past the current US administration."

Snowden said that he was predisposed "to seek asylum in a country with shared values", and that his ideal choice would be Iceland. The International Modern Media Institute, an Icelandic freedom of speech advocacy organization, issued a statement offering Snowden legal advice and assistance in gaining asylum. Iceland's ambassador to China, Kristin A. Arnadottir, pointed out that asylum could not be granted to Snowden because Icelandic law requires that such applications be made from within the country.

Snowden vowed to challenge any extradition attempt by the US government, and he was reported to have approached Hong Kong human rights lawyers. In an interview with Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, Snowden said that he planned to remain in Hong Kong until "asked to leave." He added that his intention was to let the "courts and people of Hong Kong" decide his fate.

Media reports emerged that the British government was strongly discouraging airlines from allowing Snowden to board any flight bound for the United Kingdom. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees stated that if Snowden were to apply for refugee status in Hong Kong he would receive no special treatment because Hong Kong was not a signatory to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and does not allow refugees to settle in the city.

On June 20 and 21, a representative of WikiLeaks said that a chartered jet had been prepared to transport Snowden to Iceland, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange announced that he was brokering a discussion between Snowden and the Government of Iceland for Snowden to possibly be granted asylum in Iceland.

On June 23, US officials said that Snowden's US passport had been revoked. On the same day, Snowden boarded the commercial Aeroflot flight SU213 from Hong Kong to Moscow, accompanied by Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks and landed at 13:10 GMT. Hong Kong authorities said that Snowden had not been detained as requested by the United States because the United States' extradition request had not fully complied with Hong Kong law  and there was no legal basis to prevent Snowden from leaving.

Moscow


On June 24, Julian Assange told reporters that WikiLeaks had paid for Snowden's lodging in Hong Kong and his flight out. Assange said Snowden was "bound for Ecuador", via Russia and perhaps other countries as well.

Nobody had seen Snowden getting off the flight from Hong Kong, and there was much speculation as a car bearing diplomatic plates was seen on the airport tarmac. Upon Snowden's arrival in Moscow, Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, announced that Snowden had requested asylum in Ecuador. The United States has an extradition treaty with Ecuador, but it contains a political offense exception under which Ecuador can deny extradition if it determines that Snowden is being prosecuted for political reasons.

On June 25, Russian president Vladimir Putin declared "Our special services never worked with Mr. Snowden and aren’t working with him today...Mr. Snowden is a free man, and the sooner he chooses his final destination the better it is for us and for him."

On June 30, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa told the Associated Press that Snowden is "under care" of Russia and can't leave Moscow. President Evo Morales of Bolivia offered assylum to Snowden druring an interview with Russia Today.

On July 2, an airplane carrying President Morales was rerouted to Austria. Morales had been attending a conference of gas-exporting countries in Russia. Lisbon Airport refused it permission to make a scheduled landing for fuel, and France refused to let the plane cross their airspace. The refusals for "technical reasons", strongly denounced by Bolivia and Ecuador, were attributed to rumors perpetuated allegedly by the US that Snowden was on board. In response, there have been reports that an emergency meeting of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) had been called by Peru to address the matter.

Asylum requests
On July 1, WikiLeaks revealed that Snowden had applied for political asylum to 19 countries. A statement attributed to Snowden also contended that the U.S. administration, and specifically Vice President Biden, had unjustly pressured the governments of these countries to refuse his petition for asylum.

While a majority of the target countries have not treated his request as valid due to local requirements that they be submitted when the applicant is in the country concerned, Brazil, Finland, Germany, India, Poland and Norway have repudiated the requests.

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