"[12] His disclosures have fueled debates over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy, something that he has said he intended to do in retrospective interviews. Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 25, 2020 Edward Snowden got "the greatest gift" for Christmas. Greenwald said Snowden was thus forced to stay in Moscow and seek asylum. [140] The initial reports included details about NSA call database, Boundless Informant, and of a secret court order requiring Verizon to hand the NSA millions of Americans' phone records daily,[141] the surveillance of French citizens' phone and Internet records, and those of "high-profile individuals from the world of business or politics. Edward Snowden made a decision that did more damage to U.S. national security than any other individual in our nation's history. [278], On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint[279] against Snowden, charging him with three felonies: theft of government property and two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 (18 U. S. C. Sect. [30][48] The Agency assigned him to the global communications division at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. [30] Rather than returning to school, he passed the GED test[12] and took classes at Anne Arundel Community College. Snowden was a "Certified Ethical Hacker," a credential that "establishes and governs minimum standards for information security specialists in ethical hacking and information system auditing." According to some reports, his credential was what landed him the job at Booz Allen, which led to him being hired by the NSA. In May 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong, where he presented journalists with drives containing thousands of NSA documents. [120], After disclosing the copied documents, Snowden promised that nothing would stop subsequent disclosures. Who Is Edward Snowden? Snowden then contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in January 2013. In his words, he was "trained as a spy in the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover overseaspretending to work in a job that I'm notand even being assigned a name that was not mine." [54] Investigators estimated that of the 50,000 to 200,000 documents Snowden gave to Greenwald and Poitras, most were copied by Snowden while working at Dell. [390], Support for Snowden came from Latin and South American leaders including the Argentinian President Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro, and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. "[154] The NSA was shown to be secretly accessing Yahoo and Google data centers to collect information from hundreds of millions of account holders worldwide by tapping undersea cables using the MUSCULAR surveillance program. "[315], During a November 2016 interview with the German broadcaster ARD and the German paper Der Spiegel, then-outgoing President Obama said he "can't" pardon Edward Snowden unless he is physically submitted to US authorities on US soil. "[99] A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report declassified in June 2015 said that Snowden took 900,000 Department of Defense files, more than he downloaded from the NSA.[98]. Edward Snowden is one of the most well-known names in circles where mass surveillance and the NSA (National Security Agency) in general are often the topics of discussion. [199], Four months after Snowden received asylum in Russia, Julian Assange commented: "While Venezuela and Ecuador could protect him in the short term, over the long term there could be a change in government. Snowden explained why he rejected the request: What he doesn't say are that the crimes that he's charged me with are crimes that don't allow me to make my case. He was voted as The Guardian's person of the year 2013, garnering four times the number of votes as any other candidate. [398], In March 2014, Snowden spoke at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive technology conference in Austin, Texas, in front of 3,500 attendees. [192][193] Snowden also told the Post that "the United States government has committed a tremendous number of crimes against Hong Kong [and] the PRC as well,"[194] going on to identify Chinese Internet Protocol addresses that the NSA monitored and stating that the NSA collected text-message data for Hong Kong residents. [111] In January 2014, he told a German TV interviewer that he gave all of his information to American journalists reporting on American issues. That's when The Guardian and The Washington Post. So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading. Former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden has been given permanent residency in Russia, his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told state-run news agency RIA Novosti . [348], In September 2016, the bipartisan U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence completed a review of the Snowden disclosures and said that the federal government would have to spend millions of dollars responding to the fallout from Snowden's disclosures. The appeals court did not rule on the constitutionality of the bulk surveillance and declined to enjoin the program, noting the pending expiration of relevant parts of the Patriot Act. "[306] In an online discussion about racism in 2009, Snowden said: ''I went to London just last year it's where all of your Muslims live I didn't want to get out of the car. I had no material with me before I left Hong Kong, because I knew I was going to have to go through this complex multi-jurisdictional route.. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. [101] ", "NSA Hacked Email Account of Mexican President", "British spy agency taps cables, shares with NSA Guardian", "Snowden's Leaks on China Could Affect Its Role in His Fate", "Privacy Scandal: NSA Can Spy on Smart Phone Data", "Report: US spied on millions of phone calls in Spain over one month", "NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders after US official handed over contacts", "Merkel frosty on the U.S. over 'unacceptable' spying allegations", "Merkel compared NSA to Stasi in heated encounter with Obama", "N.S.A. But they're extremely attractive. ", "Exclusive: NSA contractor hired Snowden despite concerns about resume discrepancies", "U.S. [293], Snowden has also used the pseudonym John Dobbertin (after cryptographer Hans Dobbertin). However Snowden became initially stranded in Russia upon his landing in Moscow when his U.S. passport was revoked. [34], In his May 2014 interview with NBC News, Snowden accused the U.S. government of trying to use one position here or there in his career to distract from the totality of his experience, downplaying him as a "low-level analyst." [119], Snowden communicated using encrypted email,[116] and going by the codename "Verax". [161], In October 2013, Glenn Greenwald said "the most shocking and significant stories are the ones we are still working on, and have yet to publish. Apparently, under an agreement with the Danish government, a US government jet lay in wait on standby in Copenhagen, to transfer Snowden back to the United States from any Scandinavian country. [107][108] In April 2015, the Henry Jackson Society, a British neoconservative think tank, published a report claiming that Snowden's intelligence leaks negatively impacted Britain's ability to fight terrorism and organized crime. Edward Snowden has received a Russian passport after swearing an oath of allegiance to the country that has sheltered him from US authorities since 2013, his lawyer has said. [383] I was very much a person the most powerful government in the world wanted to go away,Edward toldThe Guardian. Specifically, the charges filed in the Criminal Complaint were: Each of the three charges carries a maximum possible prison term of ten years. [67] An anonymous source later said that Booz Allen's hiring screeners found possible discrepancies in Snowden's resume but still decided to hire him. If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country. The Guardian's chief editor, Alan Rusbridger, credited Snowden for having performed a public service. "[221] Describing Snowden's arrival in Moscow as a surprise and likening it to "an unwanted Christmas gift,"[226] Russian president Putin said that Snowden remained in the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport, had committed no crime in Russia, was free to leave and should do so. Nine years after getting stranded in Moscow unexpectedly, American whistleblower Edward Snowden was granted full Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin on Monday. [44], Snowden was then employed for less than a year in 2005 as a security guard at the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Study of Language, a research center sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA). Edward Snowden, whistleblower and privacy advocate "SecureDrop depends on Qubes OS for best-in-class isolation of sensitive workloads on journalist workstations. [415][416][417][418][419], In August 2020, a court filing by the Department of Justice indicated that Snowden had collected a total of over $1.2million in speaking fees in addition to advances on books since 2013. A potential return to the United States seemed possible as, in August 2020, President Trump flirted with the idea of pardoning Snowden. Snowden was granted a freedom of speech award by the Oslo branch of the writer's group PEN International. In late December 2020, Snowden announced the birth of his first child, who will have Russian citizenship. [126] In 2014, NBC broke its first story based on the leaked documents. Snowden also applied for asylum in Denmark, but this was rejected by the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Lkke Rasmussen, who said he could see no reason to grant Snowden asylum, calling him a "criminal". "[111][184], In December 2013, upon learning that a U.S. federal judge had ruled the collection of U.S. phone metadata conducted by the NSA as likely unconstitutional, Snowden said, "I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. A week prior to the announcement, Trump also said he had been thinking of letting Snowden return to the U.S. without facing any time in jail. [jargon][411][412][413][414], On July 21, 2016, Snowden and hardware hacker Bunnie Huang, in a talk at MIT Media Lab's Forbidden Research event, published research for a smartphone case, the so-called Introspection Engine, that would monitor signals received and sent by that phone to provide an alert to the user if his or her phone is transmitting or receiving information when it shouldn't be (for example when it's turned off or in airplane mode), a feature described by Snowden to be useful for journalists or activists operating under hostile governments that would otherwise track their activities through their phones. [30], On March 15, 2013 three days after what he later called his "breaking point" of "seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress"[58] Snowden quit his job at Dell. In the course of their daily work, they stumble across something that is completely unrelated in any sort of necessary sensefor example, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation. "[379] This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights. Oliver Stone and written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald, was released in 2016. Edward Snowden's lawyer Ben Wizner told The New York Times that Mr. Snowden was earning upwards of $10,000 for a paid speaking engagement, typically conducted via video chat. [59] Although he has said his career high annual salary was $200,000,[60] Snowden said he took a pay cut to work at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton,[60] where he sought employment in order to gather data and then release details of the NSA's worldwide surveillance activity. history. The discussion also covers gaps in the legal framework used to prosecute such cases. [205] On June 23, Snowden boarded a commercial Aeroflot flight, SU213, to Moscow, accompanied by Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks, with an intended final destination of Ecuador due to an Ecuadorian emergency travel document that Snowden had acquired. Glenn Greenwald said Snowden was motivated by a need to "ingratiate himself to the people of Hong Kong and China. [289] A year later, his temporary refugee status having expired, Snowden received a three-year temporary residency permit allowing him to travel freely within Russia and to go abroad for up to three months. [30], After attending a 2006 job-fair focused on intelligence agencies, Snowden accepted an offer for a position at the CIA. PRISM. . She said that the "arcane World War I law" was never meant to prosecute whistleblowers, but rather spies who betrayed their trust by selling secrets to enemies for profit. The complaint listed the publishers Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC d.b.a. Edward Snowden. A closer look at Mikes love life, Edward wrote on Twitter alongside a photo of himself, Isabella Russos ethnicity Her Asian roots explained, What is Ines Tazis ethnicity? [356] He came to international attention after the leaks appeared inThe Washington Post, The Guardian,and other publications. Snowden revealed that the GCHQ had a whole list of Smurf tools, each with its own use and purpose. Edward Snowden is a former NSA contractor who leaked highly classified information from the agency in 2013. [264] On July 24, Kucherena said his client wanted to find work in Russia, travel and create a life for himself, and had already begun learning Russian. Extracts of Lindsays diary were published in Snowdens memoir, Permanent Record. locations. Edward Snowden, in full Edward Joseph Snowden, (born June 21, 1983, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, U.S.), American intelligence contractor who in 2013 revealed the existence of secret wide-ranging information-gathering programs conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). Bush. [286][206][287] After 39 days in the transit section, he left the airport on August 1 and was granted temporary asylum in Russia for one year by the Federal Migration Service. ", "Trump once demanded Edward Snowden's execution for giving 'serious information' to Russia", "Trump says he is considering pardon for leaker Edward Snowden", "Top House Armed Services lawmakers warn against Trump pardoning Snowden", "Trump Says He Will 'Take A Look' At Pardoning Edward Snowden", "Daniel Ellsberg Calls Edward Snowden A 'Hero,' Says NSA Leak Was Most Important in American History", "Edward Snowden: saving us from the United Stasi of America", "Clapper: Leaks are 'literally gut-wrenching,' leaker being sought", "Ex-CIA director: Snowden should be 'hanged' if convicted for treason", "FBI director says U.S. will hold Snowden responsible on NSA leak", "Snowden leaks severely hurt U.S. security, two House members say", "Ron Paul starts Snowden clemency petition", "The Switchboard: Ron Paul starts petition for Snowden clemency", "Booz Allen Exec Describes How Snowden Deceived His Former Employer", "Jimmy Carter says he would consider pardoning Edward Snowden", "Hillary Clinton: Edward Snowden's Leaks Helped Terrorists", "Edward Snowden should have right to legal defence in US, says Hillary Clinton", "Kerry: Edward Snowden should "man up" and come home", "Edward Snowden's NSA leaks 'an important service', says Al Gore", "Ashton Carter, passed over before, gets picked by Obama to be defense secretary", "Rieder: Snowden's NSA bombshell sparks debate", "US won't 'scramble jets' to capture 'hacker' Snowden, Obama says", "Obama refuses to barter for Edward Snowden", "Obama downplays Snowden case, says US not 'scrambling jets' to get 'hacker', "Fact-checking Obama's claims about Snowden", "Going the Distance: On and off the road with Barack Obama", "Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders call for Edward Snowden to face trial", "Snowden bides for political asylum in Brazil", "Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed a 'public service', "Executive Summary of Review of the Unauthorized Disclosures of Former National Security Agency Contractor Edward Snowden", "Hollywood and Washington battle to define Snowden's image", "The House Intelligence Committee's Terrible, Horrible, Very Bad Snowden Report", "White House insists James Clapper will not lead NSA surveillance review", "Obama's 'outside experts' surveillance review panel has deep ties to gov't", "Obama panel recommends new limits on N.S.A. Her parents influence on her career, Where is Mary Roach from American Idol now? It should be about the gnawing questions his actions raised from the shadows. "[100] When asked in a May 2014 interview to quantify the number of documents Snowden stole, retired NSA director Keith Alexander said there was no accurate way of counting what he took, but Snowden may have downloaded more than a million documents. On September 16, 2019, it was reported that Snowden had said he "would love" to get political asylum in France. ", "Transcript: ARD interview with Edward Snowden", "Edward Snowden Q&A: Dick Cheney traitor charge is 'the highest honor', "Snowden sought Booz Allen job to gather evidence on NSA surveillance", "NSA Implementing 'Two-Person' Rule To Stop The Next Edward Snowden", "Job Title Key to Inner Access Held by Snowden", "Snowden persuaded other NSA workers to give up passwords sources", "Exclusive: Snowden Swiped Password From NSA Coworker", "NSA Memo Says Snowden Tricked Colleague to Get Password", "An NSA Coworker Remembers The Real Edward Snowden: 'A Genius Among Geniuses', "Snowden denies stealing passwords to access secret files", "Contractor fires Snowden from $122,000 per-year job", "Edward Snowden interview the edited transcript", "Edward Snowden in His Own Words: Why I became a Whistle-Blower", "Edward Snowden says "the most powerful institutions in society have become the least accountable", "Edward Snowden and the Rise of Whistle-Blower Culture", "Whistleblower Snowden:I'd love to be granted asylum in France", "Is It a Crime to Expose Crimes Already Committed? Here are some examples: Dreamy Smurf - Has the ability to turn phones on or off remotely. [9][291], In December 2013, Snowden told journalist Barton Gellman that supporters in Silicon Valley had donated enough bitcoins for him to live on. [62] While intelligence officials have described his position there as a system administrator, Snowden has said 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. "[400] Then-Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) of the House Intelligence Committee, later director of the CIA and secretary of state, had tried unsuccessfully to get the SXSW management to cancel Snowden's appearance; instead, SXSW director Hugh Forrest said that the NSA was welcome to respond to Snowden at the 2015 conference. [294] Snowden said his work for the NSA and CIA showed him that the United States Intelligence Community (IC) had "hacked the Constitution", and that he had concluded there was no option for him but to expose his revelations via the press. While Edward Snowden remains a highly controversial figure today, his revelations of mass global surveillance undoubtedly increased Americans' concern for data privacy. Snowden then filed a lawsuit for free passage through Norway in order to receive his freedom of speech award, through Oslo's District Court, followed by an appeals court, and finally Norway's Supreme Court. [45] According to the University, this is not a classified facility,[46] though it is heavily guarded. The case of Edward Snowden exemplifies the many hurdles whistleblowers can face when stepping forward. What did Edward Snowden do? Edward expected Mills to be mad at him, but she stated that she loved him and supported his decision to expose the NSA. [397], For his global surveillance disclosures, Snowden has been honored by publications and organizations based in Europe and the United States. "[179] In the wake of Snowden's revelations and in response to an inquiry from the Left Party, Germany's domestic security agency Bundesamt fr Verfassungsschutz (BfV) investigated and found no concrete evidence that the U.S. conducted economic or industrial espionage in Germany. [58][281], Snowden's legal representative, Jesselyn Radack, wrote that "the Espionage Act effectively hinders a person from defending himself before a jury in an open court." But the debate shouldn't be about him. "These attacks can be spoofed," said Snowden. [257], Putin said on July 1, 2013, that if Snowden wanted to be granted asylum in Russia, he would be required to "stop his work aimed at harming our American partners. 2015-05-15T21:53:00Z A bookmark The letter F. An envelope. [111] Snowden later made contact with Glenn Greenwald, a journalist working at The Guardian. Richard J. Leon, had ruled in a contemporaneous case before him that the NSA warrantless surveillance program was likely unconstitutional; Wiebe then proposed that Snowden should be granted amnesty and allowed to return to the United States.[324]. In a December interview with Fox News, Rogers said Snowden "did some things capability-wise that was beyond his capabilities.". Snowden made a number of claims about the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand. Represented on stage by a robot with a video screen, video camera, microphones, and speakers, Snowden conversed with TED curator Chris Anderson and told the attendees that online businesses should act quickly to encrypt their websites. [124] Greenwald later said Snowden disclosed 9,000 to 10,000 documents. Snowdens wife, Lindsay Mills, joined Snowden in Moscow in 2014. [393][394][395], In July 2014, Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news conference in Geneva that the U.S. should abandon its efforts to prosecute Snowden, since his leaks were in the public interest. [252] Brazil's Foreign Ministry said the government planned no response to Snowden's asylum request. [5][6], On June 21, 2013, the United States Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property,[7] following which the Department of State revoked his passport. In the memoir he wrote, "I realized that I was crazy to have imagined that the Supreme Court, or Congress, or President Obama, seeking to distance his administration from President George W. Bush's, would ever hold the IC legally responsiblefor anything". In a 2013 Associated Press interview, Glenn Greenwald stated: "In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do."[102]. However, Snowden's potential status as a Whistleblower under the 1989 Act is not directly addressed in the criminal complaint against him in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (see below) (Case No. [375] [182] Revelations included information about QUANTUMHAND, a program through which the NSA set up a fake Facebook server to intercept connections. Edward Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a computer programmer who worked as a subcontractor for the National Security Agency (NSA). [408], On November 10, 2015, Snowden appeared at the Newseum, via remote video link, for PEN American Center's "Secret Sources: Whistleblowers, National Security and Free Expression," event.
