"[302] On September 26, 2022, President Vladimir Putin granted Snowden Russian citizenship. [109] Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, criticized the report for, in his opinion, presuming that the public became concerned about privacy only after Snowden's disclosures. [164], By October 2013, Snowden's disclosures had created tensions[165][166] between the U.S. and some of its close allies after they revealed that the U.S. had spied on Brazil, France, Mexico,[167] Britain,[168] China,[169] Germany,[170] and Spain,[171] as well as 35 world leaders,[172] most notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said "spying among friends" was unacceptable[173][174] and compared the NSA with the Stasi. I had raised these complaints not just officially in writing through email, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office. "[400][401][402] Attendees could use Twitter to send questions to Snowden, who answered one by saying that information gathered by corporations was much less dangerous than that gathered by a government agency, because "governments have the power to deprive you of your rights. [262] Slovenian correspondent Polonca Frelih, the only journalist, who presented at the July 12 meeting with Snowden, reported that he looked like someone without daylight for long time but strong enough psychologically while expressing worries about his medical condition. Snowden was offered a position on the NSA's elite team of hackers, Tailored Access Operations, but turned it down to join Booz Allen. Snowden applied for asylum in Austria,[370] Italy[371] and Switzerland. [288], Snowden had the choice to apply for renewal of his temporary refugee status for 12 months or requesting a permit for temporary stay for three years. [396], Surveys conducted by news outlets and professional polling organizations found that American public opinion was divided on Snowden's disclosures and that those polled in Canada and Europe were more supportive of Snowden than respondents in the U.S., although more Americans have grown more supportive of Snowden's disclosure. [240] Morales blamed the U.S. for putting pressure on European countries and said that the grounding of his plane was a violation of international law. [112] Barton Gellman, writing for The Washington Post, says his first direct contact was on May 16, 2013. Russian intelligence services offered to assist Snowden in return for any secrets he harbored. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped. [203][204], On June 22, 18 days after the publication of Snowden's NSA documents began, officials revoked his U.S. If something unforeseen befalls Snowden, Greenwald reported, more information will inevitably be leaked. 9) Fail-safe switch. Bush. It indicates the ability to send an email. He was not granted permanent political asylum. "[187] In March 2014, Snowden said he had reported policy or legal issues related to spying programs to more than ten officials, but as a contractor had no legal avenue to pursue further whistleblowing. [211][212][Notes 1] On June 24, a U.S. State Department spokesman rejected the explanation of technical noncompliance, accusing the Hong Kong government of deliberately releasing a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant and after having sufficient time to prohibit his travel. "[72] In a July interview with The Guardian, Snowden explained that, during his NSA career, "I began to move from merely overseeing these systems to actively directing their use. Edward Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is a computer programmer who worked as a subcontractor for the National Security Agency (NSA). [319], Days later, Attorney General William Barr told the AP he was "vehemently opposed" to the idea of a pardon, saying "[Snowden] was a traitor and the information he provided our adversaries greatly hurt the safety of the American people, he was peddling it around like a commercial merchant. Is Snowden on Netflix? Extracts of Lindsays diary were published in Snowdens memoir, Permanent Record. "[16] On September 17, 2019, his memoir Permanent Record was published. [318][319] He stated, "There are many, many peopleit seems to be a split decision that many people think that he should be somehow treated differently, and other people think he did very bad things, and I'm going to take a very good look at it. Her parents influence on her career, Where is Mary Roach from American Idol now? seq. Snowden joined the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation in 2014 and became its president in 2016. [130], The ongoing publication of leaked documents has revealed previously unknown details of a global surveillance apparatus run by the United States' NSA[133] in close cooperation with three of its four Five Eyes partners: Australia's ASD,[134] the UK's GCHQ,[135] and Canada's CSEC. [34] The University of Maryland University College acknowledged that Snowden had attended a summer session at a UM campus in Asia. He was an employee for the Central Intelligence Agency. He has revealed many global surveillance programs which have been run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance. Twenty-seven nations denied Snowden asylum before he settled in Russia. Liz Cheney called the idea of a pardon "unconscionable". The September 15, 2016, HPSCI report[92] estimated the number of downloaded documents at 1.5 million. 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." The people are warm. . Non-profit betrayals were not considered. Edward Snowden Says He's Applying For Russian Citizenship Snowden first arrived in Russia in 2013 after leaking secret files that revealed a vast web of domestic and international. He asked not to be quoted at length for fear of identification by stylometry. [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. 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 described the NSA's PRISM program as the U.S. government using businesses to collect data for them, and that the NSA "intentionally misleads corporate partners" using, as an example, the Bullrun decryption program to create backdoor access. They did not want that; they chose to keep me in Russia. According to Finnish foreign ministry spokeswoman Tytti Pylkk, Snowden made an asylum request to Finland by sending an application to the Finnish embassy in Moscow while he was confined to the transit area of the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, but was told that Finnish law required him to be on Finnish soil. The Foundation aims to protect, defend, and empower public-interest journalism in the 21st century. Assigned to an NSA facility at Yokota Air Base near Tokyo, Snowden instructed top officials and military officers on how to defend their networks from Chinese hackers. [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. At the airport, he learned that the United States government had canceled his passport. [127] In February 2014, for reporting based on Snowden's leaks, journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and The Guardians Ewen MacAskill were honored as co-recipients of the 2013 George Polk Award, which they dedicated to Snowden. "I have to lay my head down in Moscow on a pillow at night," he told an Israeli audience in November 2018, "but I live on the internet and every other city in the world. Edward Snowden, arguably the world's most famous whistle-blower, is a man who lived behind plenty of pseudonyms before putting his true name to his truth-telling: When he was first communicating . The criminal complaint was initially secret but was unsealed a week later. [4], In March 2012, Dell reassigned Snowden to Hawaii as lead technologist for the NSA's information-sharing office. Then-Attorney General Bill Barr vehemently opposed a potential pardon. In May 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong, where he presented journalists with drives containing thousands of NSA documents. [115] Greenwald found the measures that the source asked him to take to secure their communications, such as encrypting email, too annoying to employ. [222], According to one Russian report, Snowden planned to fly from Moscow through Havana to Latin America; however, Cuba told Moscow it would not allow the Aeroflot plane carrying Snowden to land. [206][207][208] Hong Kong authorities said that Snowden had not been detained for the U.S. because the request had not fully complied with Hong Kong law[209][210] and there was no legal basis to prevent Snowden from leaving. ", Snowden observed that this behavior happened routinely every two months but was never reported, being considered one of the "fringe benefits" of the work.[74]. [4] After the disclosures, his identity was made public by The Guardian at his request on June 9, 2013. [131][132], The NSA, the CIA and GCHQ spied on users of Second Life, Xbox Live and World of Warcraft, and attempted to recruit would-be informants from the sites, according to documents revealed in December 2013. [360], On September 2, 2020, a US federal court ruled that the US intelligence's mass surveillance program, exposed by Edward Snowden, was illegal and possibly unconstitutional. "[346], Snowden said in December 2013 that he was "inspired by the global debate" ignited by the leaks and that NSA's "culture of indiscriminate global espionage is collapsing. [25][26][27][28][29] His older sister, Jessica, was a lawyer at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. Edward Snowden said that he had expected to work for the federal government, as had the rest of his family. [30], In May 2006, Snowden wrote in Ars Technica that he had no trouble getting work because he was a "computer wizard". [357], On June 11, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, alleging that the NSA's phone records program was unconstitutional. Snowden has defended his actions as an effort "to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them. "[195], After leaving the Mira Hotel, Snowden was housed for two weeks in several apartments by other refugees seeking asylum in Hong Kong, an arrangement set up by Tibbo to hide from the US authorities. "[344], In June 2013, U.S. Edward J. Snowden speaking via video link to a technology conference in Lisbon in November. [11], A subject of controversy, Snowden has been variously praised and condemned for his leaks. [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. What Did Edward Snowden Do to Find Out About Mass Surveillance? [427][428][429], Snowden's impact as a public figure has been felt in cinema,[432] television,[433] advertising,[434] video games,[435][436] literature,[437][438] music,[439][440][441] statuary,[442][443] and social media.