Who is Edward Snowden?

Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American former technical contractor and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), before leaking details of classified NSA mass surveillance programs to the press. Snowden shared classified material on a variety of top-secret NSA programs, including the interception of US telephone metadata and the PRISM surveillance program, primarily with The Guardian, which published a series of exposés based on Snowden's disclosures in June 2013. Snowden said the leaks were an effort "to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."

Snowden faces charges of espionage and theft of US Government property for alleged leaks said to rank among the most significant breaches in the history of the NSA. Matthew M. Aid, an intelligence historian in Washington, said disclosures linked to Snowden have "confirmed longstanding suspicions that NSA's surveillance in this country is far more intrusive than we knew." On June 14, 2013, US federal prosecutors filed a sealed complaint, made public on June 21, charging Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified intelligence with an unauthorized person; the latter two allegations are under the Espionage Act.

On June 23rd 2013 the Hong Kong government announced that it had allowed the departure from the territory of Snowden. Snowden moved to Moscow aboard an Aeroflot flight.

Edward Snowden

Born : Edward Joseph Snowden
June 21, 1983 (age 30)

Status : at large

Nationality : American

Citizenship : United States

Occupation : System administrator

Employer : Booz Allen Hamilton (until June 10, 2013)

Known for : Disclosing classified information on NSA surveillance programs

Home town : Wilmington, North Carolina

Religion : Buddhist

Criminal charge: theft of government property, unauthorized communication of
national defense information and willful communication of classified intelligence
with an unauthorized person.

His political views

Snowden's laptop displays stickers supporting internet freedom organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor Project.

In the 2008 presidential election, Snowden said he voted for third-party candidates. He said he "believed in Obama's promises, "yet "[Obama] continued with the policies of his predecessor." For the 2012 election, political donation records indicate that he contributed to the primary campaign of Ron Paul.

His Career

On May 7, 2004, Snowden enlisted in the United States Army as a Special Forces recruit but did not complete the 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". However, he said he was discharged four months later on September 28 after having broken 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, an online forum for gamers, hackers and hardware tinkerers, 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 told The Guardian he left the agency in 2009 for a private contractor inside an NSA facility on a United States military base in Japan. 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.

Snowden described his life as "very comfortable," earning a salary of "roughly US$200,000" prior to his employment with Booz Allen. At the time of his departure from the US in May 2013, he had been working for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton for less than three months as a system administrator inside the NSA at the Kunia Regional SIGINT Operations Center in Hawaii. Snowden was employed on a salary of $122,000. Snowden said he had taken a pay cut to work at Booz Allen. The firm said Snowden's employment was terminated on June 10 "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 hiring screeners detected possible discrepancies in Snowden's résumé regarding his education since some details "did not check out precisely" but decided to hire him anyway; Reuters stated that the element which triggered concerns and the manner which Snowden satisfied the concerns were not known. The resume stated that Snowden attended computer-related classes at Johns Hopkins University. Tracey Reeves, a spokesperson for Johns Hopkins, said that the university did not find records of Snowden attending and argued that he may have attended Advanced Career Technologies, a private for-profit organization which operated as "Computer Career Institute at Johns Hopkins". A spokesperson for University of Liverpool said that in 2011 Snowden registered for an online master's degree program in computer security but that he did not finish the program and, as of 2013, was not active. A spokesperson for University College of the University of Maryland said that Snowden attended in person a summer session at a University of Maryland campus in Asia.

Media disclosures

Snowden first made contact with documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in January 2013. According to Poitras, Snowden chose to contact her after seeing her report on William Binney, an NSA whistleblower, in The New York Times. She is a board member of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, along with journalist Glenn Greenwald and renowned whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. Greenwald, reporting for The Guardian, claims to have been working with Snowden since February, and Barton Gellman, writing for The Washington Post, says his first "direct contact" was on May 16. However, Gellman alleges Greenwald was only involved after the Post declined to guarantee publication of the full documents within 72 hours. Gellman says he told Snowden "we would not make any guarantee about what we published or when....Snowden replied succinctly, 'I regret that we weren’t able to keep this project unilateral.' Shortly afterward he made contact with Glenn Greenwald of the British newspaper The Guardian."

Snowden communicated using encrypted email,[38] using the codename "Verax", meaning truth-teller in Latin. 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 risk from the United States Intelligence Community, whom Snowden said "will most certainly kill you if they think you are the single point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them the sole owner of this information."

Snowden described his CIA experience in Geneva as a "formative experience," stating that the CIA deliberately got a Swiss banker drunk and encouraged him to drive home. When the latter was arrested, a CIA operative offered to intervene and later recruited the banker. Swiss President Ueli Maurer commented, "It does not seem to me that it is likely that this incident played out as it has been described by Snowden and by the media." The revelations come at a sensitive time for US-Swiss relations as the Swiss government attempts to pass legislation allowing for more banking transparency. 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.



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