Edward Snowden

Activist

• Born: June 21, 1983
• Place of Birth: Elizabeth City, North Carolina

Significance: A skilled computer programmer, Edward Snowden spent years working in computer network security as an employee and contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA), which gave him access to top-secret government information. In 2013, Snowden leaked a number of secret documents, publicly revealing an elaborate domestic spying program run by the NSA.

Background

Edward Joseph Snowden was born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, on June 21, 1983, the second of two children. His father, Lon, was in the Coast Guard. His mother, Elizabeth “Wendy” Snowden, worked as a chief deputy clerk for administration and information technology for the US District Court in Baltimore, Maryland. When Snowden was nine, the family moved to Crofton, Maryland, outside of Annapolis. He attended Arundel High School, but dropped out during his sophomore year in 1998 after coming down with mononucleosis. Snowden took community college courses at Anne Arundel Community College in computer science and later earned his GED. His parents divorced in 2001, and he moved with his mother to Ellicot City, Maryland, and worked for a friend’s small technology company. In May 2004, inspired by the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center three years earlier, he joined the Army Special Forces. Snowden reported to Fort Benning in Georgia for basic training, but grew disillusioned with the attitudes of his fellow recruits. He broke both of his legs in a training accident and was discharged in September. Snowden moved back to Maryland, where he found a job as a security guard for the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language, a National Security Agency (NSA) facility.

Work for the US Government and Whistle-Blowing

Shortly after taking the security job, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hired Snowden as a computer engineer working on information technology (IT) security. He later spent six months in training in the CIA’s technology specialist school. In 2007, he was transferred to Geneva, Switzerland, and worked for the CIA at the United States Mission to the United Nations maintaining computer network security. Just like with the army, Snowden was disappointed in the work practices of CIA agents he observed and the government’s war activities that he read about in internal documents. He resigned from the organization in 2009.

In 2010, he took a job in Tokyo, Japan, working for Dell, a computer technology company that did contract work for the NSA. Through Dell, he worked with NSA officials to safeguard networks against Chinese hackers. In 2011, Dell transferred him back to Maryland where he served as lead technologist for the CIA. At this point, Snowden had had worked with the NSA long enough to know about the organization’s mass surveillance program—an extensive operation that included monitoring the e-mails and cell phone calls of ordinary citizens. In 2012, Dell sent him to Hawaii to do more contract work for the NSA at their Central Security Service on Oahu, where he could view and download all but the highest-level security information. In early 2013, he took a job with the consulting and contracting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and, through the company, took another position in cybersecurity for the NSA. He worked as a system administrator, a role that provided him with wide-ranging access to NSA computers and allowed him to access documents without being traced. He downloaded top-secret documents onto thumb drives. By this time, Snowden had already reached out to two journalists, filmmaker Laura Poitras and writer Glenn Greenwald, who would later leak the documents.

In May 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong. His correspondence with Poitras and Greenwald had been conducted using complicated security mechanisms to ensure the secrecy of their project. The three finally met in person in Hong Kong in June. The London Guardian published the first document—one of the hundreds of thousands Snowden had downloaded—a few days later, on June 6, 2013. Over the next few weeks, additional documents were published by the Guardian and the Washington Post revealing the extent of the NSA’s warrantless domestic surveillance and the United States’ international espionage practices. Among the most significant of the revelations was that of the PRISM program, which allowed the NSA access to the systems of large tech companies, such as Google and Apple, and how those companies may have collaborated with the NSA on their surveillance efforts. (Both newspapers continued to publish additional leaked documents for months afterwards.)

In an interview with the Guardian published on June 9, 2013, Snowden revealed himself as the whistle-blower. The United States Department of Justice filed a criminal complaint against Snowden on June 14, charging him with three felonies: stealing government property, revealing classified information, and transferring classified documents to unauthorized parties. The government sought to extradite Snowden from Hong Kong, but the autonomous region did not fulfill the request. On June 23, he flew to Moscow, and was forced to stay in the airport for five weeks until given temporary asylum by the Russian government in August. He made a formal request for clemency from the United States, but it was denied in November 2013.

When Snowden’s temporary asylum expired on August 1, 2014, he was authorized to stay in Russia for another three years. In January 2017, Russia again extended Snowden's asylum and authorized him to stay longer. Although Latin American countries, including Venezuela and Bolivia, were willing to grant him asylum in the past, Snowden has decided against leaving Russia. Snowden is in high demand as a speaker; he has given talks in many countries via satellite and remains a vocal advocate against unauthorized government surveillance. Following the publication of his memoir, Permanent Record, which he publicly discussed via video conference from Berlin, in 2019, it was reported that he had been granted permanent Russian residency in late 2020. That same year marked the second time in which a federal appeals court deemed the massive surveillance program that had collected phone data, which Snowden had blown the whistle on, illegal. As debates continued around reports of government support around developing technology to increase authoritative access to encrypted content, he virtually addressed a press conference in 2021 to advise against allowing such an invasion of privacy to happen.

In 2022, Snowden was officially granted Russian citizenship, making any attempt at extraditing him back to the United States impossible.

Impact

Edward Snowden is a polarizing figure who has had a major cultural impact on American culture and policy. He is lauded by some as the most significant whistle-blower of the recent past; he was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2013. Many books have been written about him and he was the subject of Poitras’s documentary about their meeting, Citizenfour, which won an Academy Award in 2015. He is also a wanted criminal and, according to some government officials, a traitor, who reportedly inflicted so much damage on US military security that it could take billions of dollars to fix. Snowden and the information he brought to light have remained big news since June 2013, but by 2015 policies began to reflect real change. Congress voted in June 2015 to rein in the NSA program that collects phone records with the USA Freedom Act, which stated that the section of the USA Patriot Act that the NSA had previously used to justify bulk collection could not be used after six months. Apple and Google improved encryption on their devices to protect customers’ data from government surveillance. A federal appeals court ruled on May 7, 2015, that collecting Americans’ phone records without a warrant is illegal. In 2016, the film Snowden was released with actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the role of Snowden. The movie was based on the leaked documents.

Personal Life

Edward Snowden lived in Moscow with his wife, Lindsay Mills, whom he married in 2017. The couple had a son together in late 2020.

Bibliography

Burrough, Bryan, Sarah Ellison, and Suzanna Andrews. “The Snowden Saga: A Shadowland of Secrets and Light.” Vanity Fair, May 2014, www.vanityfair.com/news/2014/04/edward-snowden-interview. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

"Edward Snowden Fast Facts." CNN, 5 June 2021, www.cnn.com/2013/09/11/us/edward-snowden-fast-facts/index.html. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Kramer, Andrew. "Russia Extends Edward Snowden's Asylum." The New York Times, 18 Jan. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/world/europe/edward-snowden-asylum-russia.html. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Marbella, Jean, Shashank Bengali, and David S. Cloud. “Details about Edward Snowden’s Life in Maryland Emerge.” Baltimore Sun, 10 June 2013, www.baltimoresun.com/2013/06/10/details-about-edward-snowdens-life-in-maryland-emerge-3/. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

“Putin Grants Russian Citizenship to U.S. Whistleblower Snowden." Reuters, 26 Sept. 2022, www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-grants-russian-citizenship-us-whistleblower-edward-snowden-2022-09-26/. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Savage, Charlie, and Jonathan Weisman. “N.S.A. Collection of Bulk Call Data Is Ruled Illegal.” New York Times, 7 May 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/us/nsa-phone-records-collection-ruled-illegal-by-appeals-court.html. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Shane, Scott. “Snowden Sees Some Victories, From a Distance.” New York Times, 19 May 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/05/20/world/europe/snowden-sees-some-victories-from-a-distance.html. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.

Stanglin, Doug. "Report: Cuba Nixed Snowden Flight from Russia to Havana." USA Today, 26 Aug. 2013, www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/26/report-snowden-reached-out-to-russia-back-in-hk/2699073/. Accessed 27 Sept. 2024.