Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden
Screen capture from the interview with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras on June 6, 2013
Born	Edward Joseph Snowden (1983-06-21) June 21, 1983 Elizabeth City, North Carolina, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	System administrator
Employer(s)	Booz Allen Hamilton Kunia, Hawaii, US (until June 10, 2013)
Known for	Revealing details of classified United States government surveillance programs
Criminal charge(s)	Theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person (June 2013).
Awards	Sam Adams Award
Signature

Further information: Global surveillance disclosure

Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American computer specialist, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee, and former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who disclosed classified NSA documents to several media outlets, initiating the NSA leaks, which reveal operational details of a global surveillance apparatus operated by the United States working with its Five Eyes partners, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and intimately connected with most Western countries' security agencies.

Snowden's release of classified material was called the most significant leak in US history by Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg. A series of exposés beginning in June 2013 revealed Internet surveillance programs such as PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora, as well as the interception of US and European telephone metadata. The reports were based on documents Snowden leaked to The Guardian and The Washington Post while employed by NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. By November 2013, six months after the disclosures began, the Guardian had published one percent of the documents, with "the worst yet to come".

A subject of controversy, Snowden has been variously called a hero, a whistleblower, a dissident, a traitor, and a patriot. According to Snowden, his "sole motive" for leaking the documents was "to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them." The disclosures have fueled debates over mass surveillance, government secrecy, and the balance between national security and information privacy. In December 2013, a federal judge ruled that the government had "almost certainly" violated the US Constitution by its practice of "collecting data on nearly every single phone call within or to the United States".

Snowden is a fugitive from United States authorities who have charged him with espionage and theft of government property. He is currently living in Russia under temporary asylum.

Background

Childhood, family, and education

Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21, 1983, 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 the United States District Court in Maryland. His parents are divorced, and his father has remarried. Friends and neighbors described Snowden as shy, quiet and nice. One longtime friend said that he was always articulate, even as a child. Speaking in an interview, Snowden's father described his son as "a sensitive, caring young man...he just is a deep thinker".

By 1999, Snowden had moved with his family to Ellicott City, Maryland. He studied 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 was reportedly interested in Japanese popular culture, had studied the Japanese language, and also worked for an anime company domiciled in the US. He also said he had a basic understanding of Mandarin Chinese and was deeply interested in martial arts and, at age 19 or 20, listed Buddhism as his religion on a military recruitment form, noting that the choice of agnostic was "strangely absent". Snowden told The Washington Post that he was an ascetic, rarely left the house and had few needs.

Before leaving for Hong Kong, Snowden resided in Waipahu, Hawaii, with his girlfriend. According to local real estate agents, they moved out of their home on May 1, 2013.

Political views

Snowden has said that in the 2008 presidential election, he voted for a third-party candidate. He has stated 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 Republican candidate Ron Paul.

Several sources have alleged that Snowden, under the pseudonym "TheTrueHOOHA", authored hundreds of posts on technology news provider Ars Technica's chat rooms. The poster discussed a variety of political topics. In a January 2009 entry, TheTrueHOOHA 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, in February 2010 TheTrueHOOHA wrote, "Did we get to where we are today via a slippery slope that was entirely within our control to stop, or was it an relatively instantaneous sea change that sneaked in undetected because of pervasive government secrecy?"

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. Snowden considers himself "neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American".

Career

On May 7, 2004, Snowden enlisted in the United States Army Reserve as a Special Forces recruit but did not complete any 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." In an email to The Guardian, the US Army confirmed his enlistment as Special Forces recruit and said he was discharged on September 28, 2004. The email said, "He did not complete any training or receive any awards". Snowden stated that this was the result of breaking 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 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. Snowden said that when the latter was arrested, a CIA operative offered to intervene and later recruited the banker. Swiss Federal Council President Ueli Maurer said it did not seem likely "that this incident played out as it has been described by Snowden and by the media". The revelations were said to have come at a sensitive time as the United States was pressing the Swiss government to increase banking transparency.

Snowden left the CIA in 2009 and began work for Dell, a private contractor, inside an NSA facility on a US military base in Japan . Snowden remained on the Dell payroll until early 2013. Persons familiar with the 2013 government investigation into Snowden's history said that Snowden had downloaded sensitive NSA material in April 2012. 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, with top secret Sensitive Compartmented Information clearances. Snowden took a six-day Certified Ethical Hacker training course in 2010 in India. 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 United States in May 2013, he had been employed by consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton for less than three months inside the NSA at the Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center in Hawaii, earning $122,000. 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. 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. According to a Reuters report, while in Hawaii Snowden "persuaded between 20 and 25 fellow workers" to give him their logins and passwords "by telling them they were needed for him to do his job as a computer systems administrator." This allegation was refuted by a source inside the NSA and by Snowden himself. Snowden's employment was terminated on June 10, 2013, "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 found some details of Snowden's education "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". The University College of the University of Maryland acknowledged that Snowden had attended a summer session at a UM 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. The university said that Snowden registered for an online master's degree program in computer security in 2011 but that "he is not active in his studies and has not completed the program".

A former NSA co-worker told Forbes that although the NSA was full of smart people, Edward Snowden was "a genius among geniuses". He was described as a "principled and ultra-competent, if somewhat eccentric employee, and one who earned the access used to pull off his leak by impressing superiors with sheer talent". Snowden created a backup system for the NSA that was implemented, and often pointed out security bugs to the agency. The former colleague said Snowden was "given full administrator privileges, with virtually unlimited access to NSA data" because he could "do things nobody else could". Snowden was offered a position on the NSA's elite staff of hackers, "Tailored Access Operations", but turned it down for the contractor position at Booz Allen.

NSA leaks

Main article: NSA leaks

Disclosure

Snowden first made contact with Glenn Greenwald, a journalist working at The Guardian, in late 2012. He contacted Greenwald anonymously and said he had "sensitive documents" that he would like to share. Greenwald found the measures that the source asked him to take to secure their communications, such as encrypting email, too annoying to employ. Snowden then contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in January 2013. According to Poitras, Snowden chose to contact her after seeing her report on NSA whistleblower William Binney in The New York Times. The Guardian reported that what originally attracted Snowden to both Greenwald and Poitras was a Salon article penned by Greenwald detailing how Poitras' controversial films had made her a "target of the government". Greenwald began working with Snowden in either February or in April after Poitras asked Greenwald to meet her in New York City, at which point Snowden began providing documents to them both. Barton Gellman, writing for The Washington Post, says his first "direct contact" was on May 16, 2013. According to Gellman, Snowden approached Greenwald after the Post declined to guarantee publication of all 41 of the PRISM PowerPoint slides within 72 hours and publish online an encrypted code allowing Snowden the ability to later prove that he was the source.

Snowden communicated using encrypted email, using the codename "Verax". 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 mortal risk from the United States Intelligence Community "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. In mid-May Snowden gave an electronic interview to Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum which was published weeks later by Der Spiegel.

After disclosing the copied documents, Snowden promised that nothing would stop the subsequent leaks. In June 2013, he said, "All I can say right now is the US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

Publication

On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong, where he was staying when the initial articles that he had leaked about the NSA were published. Within months, documents had been obtained and published by media outlets worldwide, most notably The Guardian (Britain), Der Spiegel (Germany), The Washington Post and The New York Times (USA), O Globo (Brazil), Le Monde (France), and similar outlets in Sweden, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Australia.

Leaks

The NSA leaks revealed operational details of a global surveillance apparatus run by the American NSA in close cooperation with the Australian (ASD), British (GCHQ), Canadian (CSEC), Danish (PET), Dutch (AIVD), French (DGSE), German (BND), Israeli (ISNU), Italian (AISE), Norwegian (NIS), Spanish (CNI), Swiss (NDB), and Swedish (FRA) security agencies, along with "most other Western countries".

Among other specifics, Snowden divulged the existence and functions of several classified US surveillance programs and their scope, including notably PRISM, NSA call database, and Boundless Informant. He also revealed details of Tempora, a British black-ops surveillance program run by the NSA's British partner, GCHQ. In July 2013, Greenwald stated that Snowden had additional sensitive information about the NSA that he has chosen not to make public, including "very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do". In September 2013, the existence of a classified decryption program codenamed Bullrun was revealed.

By October 2013, Snowden's disclosures had created tensions between the US and some of its close allies after they revealed the US had spied on countries including France, Mexico, Germany, Brazil, Britain, China, and Spain, as well as 35 world leaders, most notably the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said "spying among friends" was "unacceptable", and compared the NSA with the Stasi.

The Guardian's editor-in-chief said in November 2013 that only 1 percent of the documents released had been published. Officials warned that "the worst is yet to come", a sentiment echoed by Glenn Greenwald and by Lon Snowden. The extent of the leaks may never be known, according to US investigators, due in part to outdated software at the Hawaiian NSA facility. NSA Director Keith Alexander estimated that Snowden was in the process of leaking anywhere from 50,000–200,000 documents. Later estimates of the number of files accessed were as high as 1.7 million.

An NSA mission statement leaked in November 2013, "Sigint Strategy 2012–2016", affirmed that the NSA plans for continued expansion of surveillance activities. Their stated goal was to "dramatically increase mastery of the global network" and "acquire the capabilities to gather intelligence on anyone, anytime, anywhere.”

Leaks in December 2013 revealed that the NSA and the GCHQ spied on charities including Unicef, and allies including the EU chief.

In a December 2013 letter to the people of Brazil, Snowden wrote:

"These programs were never about terrorism: they're about economic spying, social control, and diplomatic manipulation. They're about power."

Motivations

Snowden's identity was made public by The Guardian at his request on June 9, 2013. He explained: "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. According to Poitras, who filmed the interview with Snowden in Hong Kong, he had initially not wanted to be seen on camera, because "he didn't want the story to be about him." Poitras says she convinced him it was necessary to have him give an account of the leaked documents' significance on film: "I knew that the mainstream media interpretation would be predictable and narrow, but because to have somebody who understands how this technology works, who is willing to risk their life to expose it to the public, and that we could hear that articulated, would reach people in ways that the documents themselves wouldn't." 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... My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them." When Snowden met with representatives of human rights organizations on July 12, he said:

The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair....

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Snowden said that in the past, whistleblowers had been 'destroyed by the experience', and that he wanted to "embolden others to step forward" by demonstrating that "they can win". In October, Snowden spoke out again on his motivations for the leaks in an interview with the New York Times, saying that the system for reporting problems does not work. "You have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it", Snowden explained, and pointed out the lack of whistleblower protection for government contractors, the use of the 1917 Espionage Act to prosecute leakers, and his belief that had he used internal mechanisms to 'sound the alarm', his revelations "would have been buried forever".

In December 2013, upon learning that a US federal judge had ruled the collection of US phone metadata conducted by the NSA as likely unconstitutional, Snowden stated: "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. It is the first of many." Snowden, in his words, "didn't want to change society", he "wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself."

In a December 2013 interview, Snowden spoke to the question of 'who elected' him to expose the NSA surveillance programs:

Dianne Feinstein elected me when she asked softball questions [in committee hearings]. Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden. . . . The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.

It wasn't that they put it on me as an individual — that I'm uniquely qualified, an angel descending from the heavens — as that they put it on someone, somewhere ... You have the capability, and you realize every other [person] sitting around the table has the same capability but they don't do it. So somebody has to be the first.

Flight from the US

Hong Kong

Protesters rally in Hong Kong to support Edward Snowden, June 15, 2013

On May 20, 2013, Snowden left Hawaii for Hong Kong. After he arrived in Hong Kong, Wikileaks reported that he was seeking asylum in Iceland because he was predisposed "to seek asylum in a country with shared values". Iceland's ambassador to China said Icelandic law requires that asylum applications be made from within Iceland. Snowden explained why he did not go directly from the US to Iceland: "Leaving the US was an incredible risk, 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 vowed to challenge any extradition attempt by the US government, and had reportedly approached Hong Kong human rights lawyers. Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he planned to remain in Hong Kong until "asked to leave", adding that his intention was to let the "courts and people of Hong Kong" decide his fate. While in Hong Kong Snowden supplied information about US intelligence operations in China to the South China Morning Post, which Glenn Greenwald explained as reflecting "a need to ingratiate himself to the people of Hong Kong and China." In late August the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Snowden was living at the Russian consulate shortly before his departure from Hong Kong to Moscow. Anatoly Kucherena rejected the Kommersant story, stating that Snowden "did not enter into any communication with our diplomats when he was in Hong Kong." Kucherena became Snowden's lawyer in July and was then head of the Russian Interior ministry's public council, in addition to serving as a member of the public council for the Federal Security Service (FSB). In early September, however, Russian president Vladimir Putin acknowledged that "Mr. Snowden first appeared in Hong Kong and met with our diplomatic representatives."

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 to Moscow, accompanied by Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks. 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. On June 24, Julian Assange said that WikiLeaks had paid for Snowden's lodging in Hong Kong and his flight out.

Russia

Arrival at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow on 23 June 2013

On June 23, 2013, Snowden landed in Moscow's Sheremetyevo international airport. According to Wikileaks, he was "bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum". According to The Washington Post, his passport was voided by US officials "as he tried to change planes en route to Latin America". He remained in the Sheremetyevo transit zone for 39 days until being granted temporary asylum by the Russian government on August 1. In a statement made on July 1, Snowden said:

Although I am convicted of nothing, [the US government] has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum."

Although Snowden had a seat reserved to fly on June 24 through Cuba to exile in Latin America, he did not board that flight. Snowden later said he "did not choose refuge in Moscow as a final destination", but that he had no other options.

Morales plane incident

Main article: Evo Morales grounding incident

On 1 July 2013, president Evo Morales of Bolivia, who had been attending a conference of gas-exporting countries in Russia, suggested during an interview with Russia Today that he would be 'willing to consider a request' for asylum. The following day, Morales' plane en route to Bolivia was rerouted to Austria and reportedly searched there after France, Spain and Italy denied access to their airspace. US officials had raised suspicions that Snowden may have been on board. Morales blamed the US for putting pressure on European countries, and said that the grounding of his plane was a violation of international law.

Asylum applications

Snowden had applied for political asylum to 20 countries by July 1. A statement attributed to Snowden also contended that the US administration, and specifically Vice President Joe Biden, had pressured the governments of these countries to refuse his petition for asylum. In the 1 July statement published by WikiLeaks, Snowden accused the US government of "using citizenship as a weapon" and using what he described as "old, bad tools of political aggression". Citing Obama's promise to not allow "wheeling and dealing" over the case, Snowden commented "This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile."

Snowden made a second batch of applications for asylum to 6 more countries several days later, but declined to name them citing prior interference by US officials. Finland, Germany, India, Poland, Norway, Austria, Italy, and the Netherlands cited technical grounds for not considering the application, saying that applications for asylum to these countries must be made from within the countries' borders or at border stations. Ecuador had initially offered Snowden a temporary travel document but later withdrew it; on July 1, President Rafael Correa said the decision to issue the offer had been "a mistake".

Russian president Putin said that Snowden's arrival in Moscow was "a surprise" and "like an unwanted Christmas gift". Putin said that Snowden remained in the transit area of Sheremetyevo, noted that he had not committed any crime on Russian soil, and declared that Snowden was free to leave and should do so. He added that Russia's intelligence agencies neither "had worked, nor were working with" Snowden. Putin's claims were received skeptically by some observers.

Putin said on July 1 that if Snowden wanted to be granted asylum in Russia, Snowden would be required to "stop his work aimed at harming our American partners". A spokesman for Putin subsequently said that Snowden had withdrawn his asylum application upon learning of the conditions.

In a July 12 meeting at Sheremetyevo Airport with representatives of human rights organizations and lawyers, organized in part by the Russian government, Snowden said he was accepting all offers of asylum that he had already received or would receive in the future, noting that his Venezuela's "asylee status was now formal", he also said he would request asylum in Russia until he resolved his travel problems. Russian Federal Migration Service officials confirmed on 16 July that Snowden had submitted an application to them for temporary asylum. According to Kucherena, Snowden agreed to meet Putin's condition for granting asylum, and would not further harm US interests 'by releasing more intelligence secrets'. On July 23 Kucherena said his client intended to settle in Russia. Snowden explained that he applied for asylum in Russia because, with no direct flights from Moscow to asylum offers in Latin America, he did not feel he could safely travel to them, and claimed that the US had pressured countries along his route to "hand him over".

Amid media reports in early July 2013 attributed to US administration sources that Obama's one-on-one meeting with Putin, ahead of a G20 meeting in St Petersburg scheduled for September, was in doubt due to Snowden's protracted sojourn in Russia, top US officials repeatedly made it clear to Moscow that Snowden should immediately be returned to the United States to face justice. Snowden needed asylum, according to his lawyer, because "he faces persecution by the US government and he fears for his life and safety, fears that he could be subjected to torture and capital punishment." In a letter to Russian Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov dated July 23, US Attorney General Eric Holder sought to eliminate the "asserted grounds for Mr. Snowden's claim that he should be treated as a refugee or granted asylum, temporary or otherwise": he assured the Russian government that the US would not seek the death penalty for Snowden irrespective of the charges he might eventually face and said Snowden would be issued a limited validity passport for returning to the US, and that upon his return, Snowden would benefit from legal and constitutional safeguards and not be tortured, as "torture is unlawful in the United States". The same day, the Russian president's spokesman reiterated the Kremlin's position that it would "not hand anyone over"; he also noted that Putin was not personally involved in the matter as Snowden "had not made any request that would require examination by the head of state" and that the issue was being handled through talks between the FSB and the FBI.

Criminal charges

On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with theft of government property, and alleging he had violated the US' 1917 Espionage Act through unauthorized communication of national defense information and "willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person".

Temporary asylum in Russia

After spending more than a month in the transit section, Snowden left the airport on August 1 after being granted temporary asylum in Russia for one year, an asylum that could be extended indefinitely on an annual basis. According to his lawyer, Snowden went to an undisclosed location kept secret for security reasons.

In response to the asylum grant, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the US administration was "extremely disappointed" by the Russian government's decision and that the meeting scheduled for September between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin was under reconsideration. Some US legislators urged the president to take a tough stand against Russia, possibly including a US boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. On August 7, the White House announced that Obama had canceled the meeting previously planned with Putin in Moscow citing lack of progress on a series of issues that included Russia's granting Snowden temporary asylum. Following cancellation of the bilateral talks, Putin's foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said they were "disappointed" and that it was clear to him that the decision was due to the situation around Snowden, which they "had not created"; Ushakov alleged that the US had been avoiding signing an extradition agreement and had "invariably" used its absence as a pretext for denying Russian extradition requests.

In late July 2013, Lon Snowden said he believed his son would be better off staying in Russia, and didn't believe he would receive a fair trial in the US. In mid October, he visited his son in Moscow, later telling the press that he was pleased with Edward's situation, and still believed Russia was the best choice for his asylum, saying he wouldn't have to worry about people "rushing across the border to render him". Snowden commented that his son found living in Russia "comfortable", and Moscow "modern and sophisticated".

Snowden's lawyer, Kucherena, announced on October 31 that his client had found a technical support job providing maintenance for Russia's largest website.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern said that Snowden did not give any computer files to Russia or China. American officials said that they have no proof of Russia or China having received such files. In an October 2013 interview, Snowden maintained that he did not bring any classified material into Russia "because it wouldn't serve the public interest". He added "there's a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents".

Edward Snowden speaks about various topics at the Sam Adams Award presentation in Moscow

Wikileaks released video of Snowden on October 11 taken during the Sam Adams Award reception in Moscow, his first public appearance in three months. Former US government officials attending the ceremony said that, contrary to claims from the US government, Snowden did not appear to be under the control of 'local security forces'. The whistle-blower group said that he was in good spirits, looked "remarkably well", and that he still believes he was right to release the NSA documents. In the video, Snowden said "people all over the world are coming to realize" that the NSA's surveillance programs put people in danger, hurt the US and its economy, and "limit our ability to speak and think and live and be creative, to have relationships and associate freely" as well as putting people "at risk of coming into conflict with our own government".

On October 31, Snowden met with German lawmaker Hans-Christian Ströbele, a visit prompted by a recent leak revealing NSA surveillance of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone for the past decade. Snowden was invited to testify in Germany to "assist investigations" into the alleged surveillance of the German leader by explaining how the leaked documents 'fit together'; according to Stroebele, Snowden showed he "knew a lot" about the matter. After the visit, Snowden indicated a willingness to testify, though not from Moscow as Germany requested. Snowden said he would rather give testimony before the US Congress, his second choice being Berlin.

Wikileaks' representative Sarah Harrison, who accompanied Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow, left Russia for Germany in early November after waiting until she felt confident he had "established himself and was free from the interference of any government." Her lawyers advised her to not return to her home in the UK, fearing she would be prosecuted under anti-terrorism laws. In a statement released November 6 upon arrival in Germany, Harrison wrote "I...negotiated [Snowden's] safe exit from Hong Kong to take up his legal right to seek asylum. I was travelling with him on our way to Latin America when the United States revoked his passport, stranding him in Russia." Journalist Glenn Greenwald commented on Snowden's Russian asylum: "[Snowden] didn't choose to be there. He was trying to get transit to Latin America, and then the US revoked his passport and threatened other countries out of offering Snowden safe passage."

NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who was also charged with espionage for leaking classified materials, said he believes Snowden would not be able to return to the US in the "forseeable future", as he has "essentially been declared enemy of the State number 1, exhibit number 1". After his recent visit with German officials, Snowden commented that he was seeking asylum 'in a "democratic" country' such as Germany or France, and wanted to leave Russia at the end of his year-long asylum.

On December 17, 2013 Snowden wrote an open letter to the people of Brazil offering to assist the Brazilian government in investigating allegations of US spying, and added that he continued to seek, and would require, asylum. Snowden wrote, "Until a country grants permanent political asylum, the US government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak...going so far as to force down the Presidential Plane of Evo Morales to prevent me from traveling to Latin America!" Brazil had been in an uproar since Snowden revealed that the US was spying on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, her senior advisors, and Brazil's national oil company, Petrobras.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and officials of the Brazilian foreign ministry said in response to the letter that they could not consider asylum for Snowden because they had not received any formal request for asylum from him. A representative of the foreign ministry said that a fax requesting asylum had been sent to the Brazilian embassy in Moscow in July but it had not been signed and could not be authenticated. David Miranda, the Brazilian partner of Glenn Greenwald, launched an internet petition urging the Brazilian president to consider offering Snowden asylum. Some prominent Brazilian senators expressed support for giving asylum to Snowden, including Senator Ricardo Ferraco (president of the Senate Foreign Relations and Defense Committee), although some other politicians, mainly opponents of Rousseff's government, said Brazil should not risk further harming relations between Brazil and the US by offering Snowden asylum. In July, the Brazilian Senate's Foreign Relations and Defense Committee had unanimously recommended granting asylum to Snowden.

Snowden met with Barton Gellman of The Washington Post six months after the disclosure for an exclusive interview spanning 14 hours, his first since being granted temporary asylum. Snowden talked about his life in Russia as "an indoor cat", reflected on his time as an NSA contractor, and discussed at length the revelations of global surveillance and their reverberations. Snowden said, "In terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished...I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated." He commented "I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA...I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don't realize it." On the accusation from former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden that he had defected, Snowden stated, "If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public."

Reaction

Main article: 2013 mass surveillance disclosures § Reaction

See also: PRISM § Responses to disclosures

Snowden's release of NSA material was called the most significant leak in US history by Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.

United States President Barack Obama was initially dismissive of Snowden, saying in June 2013, "I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker." In early August, Obama rejected the suggestion that Snowden was a patriot and said that Americans would have been better off had they remained unaware of the NSA surveillance activities that Snowden had revealed.

Obama also said that he himself had called for a review of US surveillance activities even before Snowden had begun revealing details of the NSA's operations. On August 9, Obama announced that he was ordering Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to arrange for "a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies." In December, the task force issued 46 recommendations that, if adopted, would subject the NSA to additional scrutiny by the courts, Congress, and the president, and would strip the NSA of the authority to infiltrate American computer systems using "backdoors" in hardware or software. A panel member said there was no evidence that the bulk collection of phone data had stopped any terror attacks.

Debate

International community

Demonstration at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin against the NSA surveillance program PRISM during Barack Obama's visit, June 18, 2013

Crediting the Snowden leaks, a United Nations committee unanimously adopted an 'anti-spying resolution' to 'protect the right to privacy against unlawful surveillance' in the wake of reports that 35 foreign leaders were subjects of US eavesdropping. The resolution "unequivocally states that the same rights that people have off-line must also be protected online."

The European Parliament invited Snowden to make a pre-recorded video appearance to aid their NSA investigation. He is expected to answer questions submitted by Parliament members in January 2014.

Snowden said in December 2013 that he was 'inspired by the global debate' ignited by the leaks, and stated that NSA's 'culture of indiscriminate global espionage "is collapsing".'

United States

In the US, Snowden's actions precipitated an intense debate on privacy and warrantless domestic surveillance. Jim Sensenbrenner, author of the Patriot Act, submitted a proposal on October 29, 2013 called the "USA Freedom Act", which would end the bulk collection of Americans' metadata, and reform the FISA court.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper condemned Snowden's actions as having done "huge, grave damage" to US intelligence capabilities, while United States Secretary of State John Kerry stated that "in some cases" the NSA had gone "too far" in some of its surveillance activities, and promised that it would be stopped.

Federal court ruling

On 16 December 2013, US Federal Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that bulk collection of American telephone metadata likely violates the Constitution of the United States. The judge wrote, "I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary' invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval ... Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment." Leon, the first judge to examine an NSA program outside of the secret FISA court on behalf of a non-criminal defendant, described the technology used as "almost Orwellian". In the 68-page ruling, Leon said that he had "serious doubts about the efficacy" of the program. The US government was unable to cite "a single instance in which analysis of the NSA's bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive." The judge ruled that a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, which established that phone metadata is not subject to the Fourth Amendment, did not apply to the NSA program as the US Justice Department has claimed, citing the NSA's vast scope and 'the evolving role of phones and technology'. Judge Leon stayed the ruling, giving the US government 6 months to appeal.

On the ruling, the Washington Post printed: "NSA officials, who rarely miss a chance to cite Snowden's status as a fugitive from the law, now stand accused of presiding over a program whose capabilities were deemed by the judge to be “Orwellian" and likely illegal. Snowden's defenders, on the other hand, have new ammunition to argue that he is more whistleblower than traitor."

Debates regarding offering amnesty to Snowden began to appear in publications and on the Internet immediately following Leon's ruling. Some of the reasons suggested in a The New Yorker article included benefits for the NSA.

Recognition

Snowden during the Sam Adams Award ceremony in October 2013

Edward Snowden was voted as The Guardian's person of the year 2013, garnering four times the number of votes than any other candidate.

Snowden was named Time Person of the Year runner-up in 2013, behind Pope Francis and ahead of Edith Windsor. TIME was criticized for not placing him in the top spot.

Snowden headed the Ten Tech Heroes of 2013 at TechRepublic, the site of an on-line newsletter circulated among IT professionals. Editor Jack Wallen placed Snowden in the number one position of his list and wrote, "Ed Snowden was a whistle blower the likes of which the world has never seen. Many consider him a villain. I, on the other hand, hold him up in the hero category for one simple reason: His disclosure of classified documents unveiled the NSA's mass surveillance program. Snowden's goal was "...to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them." Prior to this leak, the public was unaware of the depth of surveillance and the true nature of government secrecy. His disclosures have also had major implications for those in the technology field."

German "Whistleblower Prize"

Edward Snowden was awarded the biennial German "whistleblower prize" in August 2013, in absentia, with an accompanying award equal to 3,000 euro. Established in 1999, the award is sponsored by the German branch of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms and by the Association of German Scientists. Organizers in Berlin said the prize was to acknowledge his "bold efforts to expose the massive and unsuspecting monitoring and storage of communication data, which cannot be accepted in democratic societies". Snowden responded to the award, saying it was "a great honor to be recognized for the public good created by this act of whistleblowing", and that it was not he, but the public who effected "this powerful change to abrogation of basic constitutional rights by secret agencies".

Sam Adams Award

The Sam Adams Award was presented to Snowden by a group of four American former intelligence officers and whistleblowers in October 2013. After two months as an asylee, Snowden made his first public appearance in Moscow to accept the award, a candlestick holder meant to symbolize "bringing light to dark corners". One of the presenters, FBI whistleblower Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, told The Nation "We believe that Snowden exemplifies Sam Adams's courage, persistence and devotion to truth—no matter what the consequences. We wanted Snowden to know that, as opposed to the daily vitriol from the US government and mainstream media, 60 percent of the United States supports him, including thousands in the national security and intelligence agencies where we used to work." Radack was joined by Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, ex-NSA executive Thomas Drake and former FBI agent Coleen Rowley.

Lavabit

The owner of a secure email service which Snowden used, Lavabit, shut down the business after being forced to release the secure keys to his site to the FBI, exposing all 410,000 users to FBI's resulting ability to read all email routed via Lavabit. The move was mirrored days later by a similar email provider called Silent Circle. Three months later, owners of the two companies joined forces and announced their new email service, "Dark Mail Alliance", designed to be resistant to government surveillance.

Depiction in popular culture

Snowden's passage through Hong Kong inspired a local production team to produce a low-budget five-minute film entitled Verax. The film, depicting the time Snowden spent hiding in the Mira Hotel while being unsuccessfully tracked by the CIA and China's Ministry of State Security, was uploaded to YouTube on June 25, 2013.

A dramatic thriller about Edward Snowden, Classified: The Edward Snowden Story, is scheduled for release on September 19, 2014. The film is being crowdfunded and plans are to release the final product as a free download. The feature-length film is directed by Jason Bourque and produced by Travis Doering; actor Kevin Zegers plays the character of Edward Snowden. Michael Shanks stars as journalist Glenn Greenwald and Carmen Aguirre plays filmmaker Laura Poitras.

In September 2013, the TV series South Park parodied the Snowden revelations, with Eric Cartman standing in for Snowden. The episode, titled "Let Go, Let Gov", received the highest ratings for the show in two years.

The Alternative Christmas Address

Snowden was chosen in December 2013 to give Britain's Channel 4 "Alternative Christmas Message", an alternative to the Royal Christmas Message by Queen Elizabeth II. It was his first television appearance since arriving in Russia. His focus was on the importance of privacy and the need for an end to government surveillance. The 1.5 minute segment was addressed to "everyone out there listening". In it, he said that the recently revealed "system of worldwide mass surveillance" that governments have created, "working in concert", was what George Orwell had warned about in 1984, except that today's surveillance capabilities far surpass those described in the book. "We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go," he said. "A child born today [will] never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, un-analyzed thought. That's a problem because privacy matters; [it] allows us to determine who we are, and who we want to be." On the debate initiated by his leaks, he stated:

The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel asking is always cheaper than spying.

The piece was filmed, edited and produced by Laura Poitras. Previous addresses have been given by non-establishmnent figures such as Ali G, Baroness Lawrence and Sharon Osborne.

See also

• 2013 global surveillance disclosures
  • Timeline of mass surveillance disclosures
  • Aftermath of the global surveillance disclosure
• Classified information in the United States
• Extraordinary rendition
• Information sensitivity
• List of people granted asylum
• List of people who have lived at airports
• List of United States extradition treaties
• List of whistleblowers
• Martin and Mitchell defection
• Mass surveillance
  • Mass surveillance in the United Kingdom
  • Mass surveillance in the United States
• NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–07)
• NSA whistleblowers
  • William Binney
  • Thomas Andrews Drake
  • Perry Fellwock
  • Mark Klein
  • Thomas Tamm
  • Russ Tice
• Stellar Wind (code name)
• Terrorist Surveillance Program

Further reading

• "Snowden and Greenwald: The Men Who Leaked the Secrets". Rolling Stone. December 4, 2013.
• "How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets". New York Times. August 13, 2013.
• "NSA leaks: a timeline". Al Jazeera. November 1, 2013.
• "Free Snowden". (Journalistic Source Protection Defense Fund)
• Lanchester, John. "The Snowden files: why the British public should be worried about GCHQ". The Guardian. October 3, 2013.
• Dilanian, Ken. "A spy world reshaped by Edward Snowden". Los Angeles Times. December 22, 2013.
• Gellman, Bartman. "Edward Snowden, after months of NSA revelations, says his mission's accomplished". The Washington Post. December 23, 2013.
• Margulies, Joseph. "The Promise of May, the Betrayal of June, and the Larger Lesson of Manning and Snowden." (Archive) Verdict. Justia. July 17, 2013.

External links

• Edward Snowden at IMDb
• "The NSA Files". The Guardian. (Index of articles)
• "DNI Statement on Recent Unauthorized Disclosures of Classified Information." (Archive) Office of the Director of National Intelligence. June 6, 2013. PDF Version (Archive)
• "Global Surveillance. An annotated and categorized "overview of the revelations following the leaks by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. There are also some links to comments and followups". By Oslo University Library.