About
Edward Snowden is an American system administrator and a former employee of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) before leaking highly classified information on the agency’s top-secret PRISM surveillance program to the British newspaper The Guardian in June 2013.
Online History
Career
This account is based on profile articles and interviews published by The Guardian[15]:
In May 2004, Snowden enlisted in the United States Army as a special forces recruit but was discharged in September after suffering injuries on both of his legs while training. He then worked as a security guard for the National Security Agency’s covert facility at the University of Maryland, before joining the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an IT security personnel. In 2007, Snowden was dispatched to Geneva, Switzerland, where he worked as a network security administrator with diplomatic cover. In 2009, he left the agency for a private contractor company and worked inside an NSA facility on a U.S. military base in Japan. Little is known is about Snowden’s whereabouts thereafter, but sometime between late March and early April 2013, he began working for U.S. defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton as a system administrator inside an NSA facility in Hawaii. In May 2013, Snowden took a temporary medical leave from his position. According to the real estate agents, Snowden and his girlfriend moved out of their home on May 1st.
2013 NSAPRISM Scandal
In January 2013, Snowden made contact with Laura Poitras, a Freedom of the Press board member and documentary filmmaker who previously reported on the NSA official William Binney’s whistleblowing for the New York Times in 2001, according to Poitras. In February, Snowden began working with The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald, followed by first direct contact with The Washington Post’s Barton Gellman in May. According to the journalists, Snowden communicated using encrypted mail under the codename “Verax,” Latin for “truth-teller,” and requested not to be quoted at length to safeguard identification by semantic analysis.
The Guardian Interview
On June 8th, three days after The Guardan published the story about NSA surveillance programs, Snowden revealed his identity to the public’s eye in an interview with the UK newspaper. In the video, Snowden provides a brief description of the agency’s data-mining infrastructure and its capabilities, such as intercepting e-mails, phone calls, passwords and credit cards.
“Now increasingly we see that [clandestine intelligence gathering is] happening domestically and to do that they, the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyses them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that’s the easiest, most efficient, and most valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government or someone they suspect of terrorism, they’re collecting you’re communications to do so.”
The Guardian also reported that Snowden first thought about exposing government surveillance in 2007, but Barack Obama’s election in 2008 gave him a sense of hope. However, Snowden became disenchanted after Obama “ultimately advanced the surveillance policies rather than reforming them.” When asked about the motive behind his whistleblowing, Snowden told The Washington Post that he wanted to raise public awareness of “surveillance state” that the country was becoming so they could decide.
Online Reactions
Petitions
On June 9th, an online petition titled “Pardon Edward Snowden” was submitted to the White House[3], demanding the Obama administration to “issue a full, free and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs.” The petition was quickly picked up by the news media and blogospher, reaching more than half of its signature goal of 100,000 in the first 48 hours. On June 10th, after The Guardian reported that Snowden may be seeking asylum in Iceland, a petition was submitted to Change.org[5] requesting the Icelandic government to grant asylum to Snowden. That same day, a crowdfunding campaign seeking to thank Snowden with a reward was launched on Crowdtilt.[10]
Search Interest
External References
[1]The Guardian – NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: ‘I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things’ – video
[2]The Guardian – NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily
[3]We The People – Pardon Edward Snowden
[4]Reddit – [AMAREQUEST] NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden
[5]Change.org – Iceland : Grant asylum to NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden.
[6]Reddit – Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance
[7]The Guardian – Edward Snowden: experts divided over extradition of NSA whistleblower
[8]BBC News – US spy leaker Edward Snowden ‘missing’ in Hong Kong
[9]Facebook – #IStandWithEdwardSnowden
[10]Crowdtilt – Reward Edward Snowden for courageously leaking NSA docs
[11]BoingBoing – Sweden Smearing Begins
[12]Gawker – The Vain Media Cynics of the NSA Story
[13]International Herald Tribune – The Solitary Leaker&
[14]LA Times – Edward Snowden fired, Booz Allen Hamilton says
[15]The Guardian – Edward Snowden