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84-513: The Open Rights Group ( ORG ) is a UK-based organisation that works to preserve digital rights and freedoms by campaigning on digital rights issues and by fostering a community of grassroots activists. It campaigns on numerous issues including mass surveillance, internet filtering and censorship, and intellectual property rights. The organisation was started by Danny O'Brien , Cory Doctorow , Ian Brown , Rufus Pollock , James Cronin , Stefan Magdalinski , Louise Ferguson and Suw Charman after

168-584: A diplomatic mission representing U.S. interests before the UN and other international organizations , Snowden received a diplomatic passport and a four-bedroom apartment near Lake Geneva . According to Greenwald, while there Snowden said he was "considered the top technical and cybersecurity expert" in that country and "was hand-picked by the CIA to support the president at the 2008 NATO summit in Romania ". A 2016 report from

252-765: A rear admiral in the Coast Guard, became a senior official with the FBI and was at the Pentagon in 2001 during the September 11 attacks . Edward Snowden said that he had expected to work for the federal government, as had the rest of his family. His parents divorced in 2001, and his father remarried. In the early 1990s, while still in grade school, Snowden moved with his family to the area of Fort Meade, Maryland . Mononucleosis caused him to miss high school for almost nine months. Rather than returning to school, he claims to have passed

336-488: 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. An anonymous source told Reuters that, while in Hawaii, Snowden may have persuaded 20–25 co-workers to give him their login credentials by telling them he needed them to do his job. The NSA sent a memo to Congress saying that Snowden had tricked

420-509: A "computer wizard". Snowden was sent to the CIA's secret school for technology specialists, where he lived in a hotel for six months while studying and training full-time. In March 2007, the CIA stationed Snowden with diplomatic cover in Geneva , Switzerland , where he was responsible for maintaining computer-network security. Assigned to the U.S. Permanent Mission to the United Nations ,

504-609: A "sell-out" meeting in Soho , London. The group has made submissions to the All Party Internet Group (APIG) inquiry into digital rights management and the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property . The group was honoured in the 2008 Privacy International Big Brother Awards alongside No2ID , Liberty , Genewatch UK and others, as a recognition of their efforts to keep state and corporate mass surveillance at bay. In 2010

588-458: A May 2014 interview to quantify the number of documents Snowden stole, retired NSA director Keith Alexander said there was no accurate way of counting what he took, but Snowden may have downloaded more than a million documents. The September 15, 2016 HPSCI report estimated the number of downloaded documents at 1.5 million. In a 2013 Associated Press interview, Glenn Greenwald stated: In order to take documents with him that proved that what he

672-607: A May 2014 interview, Snowden told NBC News that after bringing his concerns about the legality of the NSA spying programs to officials, he was told to stay silent on the matter. He said that the NSA had copies of emails he sent to their Office of General Counsel, oversight, and compliance personnel broaching "concerns about the NSA's interpretations of its legal authorities. I had raised these complaints not just officially in writing through email, but to my supervisors, to my colleagues, in more than one office." In May 2014, U.S. officials released

756-500: A San Francisco–based nonprofit organization that aims to protect journalists from hacking and government surveillance. He also has a job at an unnamed Russian IT company. In 2017, he married Lindsay Mills . On September 17, 2019, his memoir Permanent Record was published. On September 2, 2020, a U.S. federal court ruled in United States v. Moalin that one of the U.S. intelligence 's mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden

840-401: 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 was inactive as a student and had not completed the program. In his May 2014 interview with NBC News , Snowden accused the U.S. government of trying to use one position here or there in his career to distract from

924-559: A basic understanding of Mandarin Chinese and was deeply interested in martial arts . At age 20, he listed his religion as Buddhism after working at a U.S. military base in Japan. In September 2019, as part of interviews relating to the release of his memoir Permanent Record , Snowden revealed to The Guardian that he married Lindsay Mills in a courthouse in Moscow. The couple's first son

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1008-402: A big impact that I didn't turn over" and that "I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists ... If I have time to go through this information, I would like to make it available to journalists in each country." Despite these measures, the improper redaction of a document by The New York Times resulted in the exposure of intelligence activity against al-Qaeda . In June 2014,

1092-673: A chapter of the book Whistleblowing Nation , published in March 2020, an adaptation of which also appeared on Lawfare Blog in March 2019. The unclassified portion of a September 15, 2016, report by the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), initiated by the chairman and Ranking Member in August 2014, and posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists , concluded that Snowden

1176-491: A fellow employee into sharing his personal private key to gain greater access to the NSA's computer system. Snowden disputed the memo, saying in January 2014, "I never stole any passwords, nor did I trick an army of co-workers." Booz Allen terminated Snowden's employment on June 10, 2013, the day after he went public with his story, and 3 weeks after he had left Hawaii on a leave of absence. The former colleague said Snowden

1260-875: A joint declaration on internet rights. At the IGF in Hyderabad in 2008 a merger between the Dynamic Coalitions on Human Rights for the Internet and on Principles for the Internet led to the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles, which based on the APC Internet Rights Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights elaborated the Charter of Human Rights and Principles for the Internet presented at

1344-450: A panel discussion at Open Tech 2005. O'Brien created a pledge on PledgeBank , placed on 23 July 2005, with a deadline of 25 December 2005: "I will create a standing order of 5 pounds per month to support an organisation that will campaign for digital rights in the UK but only if 1,000 other people will too." The pledge reached 1000 people on 29 November 2005. The Open Rights Group was launched at

1428-502: A polygraph exam and underwent a stringent background investigation. After attending a 2006 job-fair focused on intelligence agencies, Snowden accepted an offer for a position at the CIA. The Agency assigned him to the global communications division at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia . In May 2006, Snowden wrote in Ars Technica that he had no trouble getting work because he was

1512-441: A secret court order requiring Verizon to hand the NSA millions of Americans' phone records daily, as well as the surveillance of phone and Internet records of French citizens, with specific targets of French people either "suspected of association with terrorist activities" or in "the worlds of business, politics or French state administration." XKeyscore , an analytical tool that allows for collection of "almost anything done on

1596-434: A sexually compromising situation. But they're extremely attractive. So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and they show a co-worker ... and sooner or later this person's whole life has been seen by all of these other people. Snowden observed that this behavior happened routinely every two months but was never reported, being considered one of the " fringe benefits " of the work. Snowden has described himself as

1680-459: A single email that Snowden had written in April 2013 inquiring about legal authorities but said that they had found no other evidence that Snowden had expressed his concerns to someone in an oversight position. In June 2014, the NSA said it had not been able to find any records of Snowden raising internal complaints about the agency's operations. That same month, Snowden explained that he had not produced

1764-453: A whistleblower, a description used by many sources, including CNBC , The New Yorker , Reuters, and The Guardian , among others. The term has both informal and legal meanings. Snowden said that he had told multiple employees and two supervisors about his concerns, but the NSA disputes his claim. Snowden elaborated in January 2014, saying "[I] made tremendous efforts to report these programs to co-workers, supervisors, and anyone with

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1848-488: A year as system administrator and pre-sales technical engineer on Dell's CIA account. In that capacity, he was consulted by the chiefs of the CIA's technical branches, including the agency's chief information officer and its chief technology officer . U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the investigation said Snowden began downloading documents describing the government's electronic spying programs while working for Dell in April 2012. Investigators estimated that of

1932-558: Is Neil Gaiman . As of October 2019 the group had over 3,000 paying supporters. In addition to staff members and volunteers, there is an advisory panel of over thirty members, and a board of directors, which oversees the group's work, staff, fundraising and policy. The current board members are: In January 2015, the Open Rights Group announced the formation of a Scottish Advisory Council which will be handling matters relating to Scottish digital rights and campaigns. The Advisory Council

2016-555: Is a fundamental social process, a basic human need and the foundation of all social organisation. It is central to the Information Society. Everyone, everywhere should have the opportunity to participate and no one should be excluded from the benefits of the Information Society offers. The 2004 WSIS Declaration of Principles also acknowledged the need to prevent the use of information and technologies for criminal purposes, while respecting human rights. Wolfgang Benedek comments that

2100-535: Is an American former NSA intelligence contractor and whistleblower who leaked classified documents revealing the existence of global surveillance programs. He became a naturalized Russian citizen in 2022. In 2013, while working as a government contractor, Snowden leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA). He was indicted for espionage. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by

2184-798: Is made up of: From the existing UK Advisory Council: And from the Open Rights Group Board: One of the first projects is to raise awareness and opposition to the Scottish Identity Database. ORGCON was the first ever conference dedicated to digital rights in the UK, marketed as "a crash course in digital rights". It was held for the first time in 2010 at City University in London and included keynote talks from Cory Doctorow , politicians and similar pressure groups including Liberty , NO2ID and Big Brother Watch . ORGCON has since been held in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2019 where

2268-553: The GED test. He took classes at Anne Arundel Community College . Although Snowden had no undergraduate college degree, he worked online toward a master's degree at the University of Liverpool , England , in 2011. He was interested in Japanese popular culture , had studied the Japanese language , and worked for an anime company that had a resident office in the U.S. He also said he had

2352-495: 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

2436-619: The Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (5 USC 2303(b)(8)-(9); Pub. Law 101-12). However, Snowden's potential status as a whistleblower under the 1989 Act is not directly addressed in the criminal complaint against him in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (see below) (Case No. 1:13 CR 265 (0MH)). These and similar and related issues are discussed in an essay by David Pozen, in

2520-459: The "widespread surveillance" and for helping to spark a "huge public debate about the extent of the government's spying". The Guardian ' s chief editor, Alan Rusbridger , credited Snowden for having performed a public service. The ongoing publication of leaked documents has revealed previously unknown details of a global surveillance apparatus run by the NSA in close cooperation with three of its four Five Eyes partners: Australia's ASD ,

2604-555: The 50,000 to 200,000 documents Snowden gave to Greenwald and Poitras, most were copied by Snowden while working at Dell. In March 2012, Dell reassigned Snowden to Hawaii as lead technologist for the NSA's information-sharing office. On March 15, 2013—three days after what he later called his "breaking point" of "seeing the Director of National Intelligence , James Clapper , directly lie under oath to Congress" —Snowden quit his job at Dell. Although he has said his career high annual salary

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2688-502: The CIA. In 2009, Snowden began work as a contractor for Dell , which manages computer systems for multiple government agencies. 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. Snowden looked into mass surveillance in China which prompted him to investigate and then expose Washington's mass surveillance program after he

2772-599: The Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women ." The APC Internet Rights Charter is an early example of a so-called Internet bill of rights, an important element of digital constitutionalism . In December 2003 the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was convened under the auspice of the United Nations (UN). After lengthy negotiations between governments, businesses and civil society representatives

2856-678: The GNI as a voluntary code of conduct, calling instead for bylaws to be introduced that force boards of directors to accept human rights responsibilities. Some of the 88 recommendations made by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression in a May 2011 report to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations General Assembly supported

2940-640: The IGF in Vilnius in 2010, which since has been translated into several languages. On October 29, 2008, the Global Network Initiative (GNI) was founded upon its "Principles on Freedom of Expression and Privacy". The Initiative was launched in the 60th Anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and is based on internationally recognized laws and standards for human rights on freedom of expression and privacy set out in

3024-584: The London Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence services had decrypted more than 1 million classified files in the Snowden cache, forcing the UK's MI6 intelligence agency to move agents out of live operations in hostile countries. Sir David Omand , a former director of the UK's GCHQ intelligence gathering agency, described it as a huge strategic setback that was harming Britain, America, and their NATO allies. The Sunday Times said it

3108-518: The NSA and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy. In 2013, Snowden was hired by an NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton , after previous employment with Dell and the CIA . Snowden says he gradually became disillusioned with the programs with which he

3192-527: The NSA's recently installed director, U.S. Navy Admiral Michael S. Rogers , said that while some terrorist groups had altered their communications to avoid surveillance techniques revealed by Snowden, the damage done was not significant enough to conclude that "the sky is falling." Nevertheless, in February 2015, Rogers said that Snowden's disclosures had a material impact on the NSA's detection and evaluation of terrorist activities worldwide. On June 14, 2015,

3276-635: The NSA. In March 2014, Army General Martin Dempsey , Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , told the House Armed Services Committee , "The vast majority of the documents that Snowden ... exfiltrated from our highest levels of security ... had nothing to do with exposing government oversight of domestic activities. The vast majority of those were related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques, and procedures." When asked in

3360-636: The UDHR, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Participants in the Initiative include the Electronic Frontier Foundation , Human Rights Watch , Google , Microsoft , Yahoo , other major companies, human rights NGOs, investors, and academics. John Harrington dismissed the impact

3444-431: The UK's GCHQ , and Canada's CSEC . On June 5, 2013, media reports documenting the existence and functions of classified surveillance programs and their scope began and continued throughout the entire year. The first program to be revealed was PRISM, which allows for direct access to data on the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. Barton Gellman of The Washington Post

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3528-527: The US House of Representatives Select Committee on Intelligence said that Snowden's official position at CIA was an entry-level technical services officer. 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 for drunk driving, a CIA operative offered to help in exchange for

3612-511: The United States gathered information on militants. As a result, the group's top leaders used couriers or encrypted channels to avoid being tracked or monitored by Western analysts. According to Snowden, he did not indiscriminately turn over documents to journalists, stating that "I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all sorts of documents that would have made

3696-638: The WSIS Declaration of Principles was adopted reaffirming human rights : We reaffirm the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelation of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development , as enshrined in the Vienna Declaration . We also reaffirm that democracy , sustainable development , and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as good governance at all levels are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. We further resolve to strengthen

3780-630: The WSIS Declaration only contains a number of references to human rights and does not spell out any procedures or mechanism to assure that human rights are considered in practice. The Dynamic Coalition for an Internet Bill of Rights held a large preparatory Dialogue Forum on Internet Rights in Rome, September 2007 and presented its ideas at the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Rio in November 2007 leading to

3864-607: The argument that internet access itself is or should become a fundamental human right. The United Nations Human Rights Council declared internet freedom a Human Right in 2012. Several countries and unions have laws dealing with digital rights: A poll of 27,973 adults in 26 countries, including 14,306 Internet users, was conducted for the BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan using telephone and in-person interviews between 30 November 2009 and 7 February 2010. GlobeScan Chairman Doug Miller interpreted

3948-541: The banker becoming an informant. Ueli Maurer , President of the Swiss Confederation for the year 2013, publicly disputed Snowden's claims in June of that year. "This would mean that the CIA successfully bribed the Geneva police and judiciary. With all due respect, I just can't imagine it," said Maurer. In February 2009, following six counseling sessions from his supervisors regarding poor performance, Snowden resigned from

4032-575: The canceled passport, and he was restricted to the airport terminal for over one month. Russia later granted Snowden the right of asylum with an initial visa for residence for one year, which was repeatedly extended. In October 2020, he was granted permanent residency in Russia. In September 2022, Snowden was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin . A subject of controversy, Snowden has been variously praised and condemned for his leaks. Snowden has defended his actions as an effort "to inform

4116-443: The codename " Verax ". He asked not to be quoted at length for fear of identification by stylometry . According to Gellman, before 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

4200-412: The communiqués in question because of the ongoing nature of the dispute, disclosing for the first time that "I am working with the NSA in regard to these records and we're going back and forth, so I don't want to reveal everything that will come out." Self-description as a whistleblower and attribution as such in news reports does not determine whether he qualifies as a whistleblower within the meaning of

4284-546: The default option" in response to the proposed switch. The organisation, though focused on the impact of digital technology on the liberty of UK citizens, operates with an apparently wide range of interests within that category. Its interests include: ORG has a paid staff, whose members include: Former staff include Suw Charman-Anderson and Becky Hogge , both executive directors, e-voting coordinator Jason Kitcat, campaigner Peter Bradwell, grassroots campaigner Katie Sutton and administrator Katerina Maniadaki. The group's patron

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4368-610: The group worked with 38 Degrees to oppose the introduction of the Digital Economy Act , which was passed in April 2010. The group opposes measures in the draft Online Safety Bill introduced in 2021, that it sees as infringing free speech rights and online anonymity. The group campaigns against the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport 's plan to switch to an opt-out model for cookies . The group spokesperson stated that "[t]he UK government propose to make online spying

4452-633: The initial articles based on the leaked documents were published, beginning with The Guardian on June 5. Greenwald later said Snowden disclosed 9,000 to 10,000 documents. 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 (U.S.), O Globo (Brazil), Le Monde (France), and similar outlets in Sweden , Canada , Italy , Netherlands , Norway , Spain , and Australia . In 2014, NBC broke its first story based on

4536-469: The internet; awareness, protection and realization of rights. The APC states that "the ability to share information and communicate freely using the internet is vital to the realization of human rights as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights , the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on

4620-500: The keynote was given by Edward Snowden . Digital rights A number of human rights have been identified as relevant with regard to the Internet . These include freedom of expression , privacy , and freedom of association . Furthermore, the right to education and multilingualism , consumer rights , and capacity building in the context of the right to development have also been identified. The APC Internet Rights Charter

4704-423: The leaked documents. In February 2014, for reporting based on Snowden's leaks, journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman and The Guardian′ s Ewen MacAskill were honored as co-recipients of the 2013 George Polk Award , which they dedicated to Snowden. The NSA reporting by these journalists also earned The Guardian and The Washington Post the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for exposing

4788-630: The material appeared in The Guardian , The Washington Post , and other publications. On June 21, 2013, the United States Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, following which the Department of State revoked his passport . Two days later, he flew into Moscow 's Sheremetyevo International Airport , where Russian authorities observed

4872-402: 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 New York Times article about NSA whistleblower William Binney . What originally attracted Snowden to Greenwald and Poitras

4956-522: The most hostile and dangerous environments around the world. So when they say I'm a low-level systems administrator, that I don't know what I'm talking about, I'd say it's somewhat misleading." In a June interview with Globo TV , Snowden reiterated that he "was actually functioning at a very senior level." 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. Many people don't understand that I

5040-535: The order of 1.7 million, a number that originally came from Department of Defense talking points. In July 2014, The Washington Post reported on a cache previously provided by Snowden from domestic NSA operations consisting of "roughly 160,000 intercepted e-mail and instant-message conversations, some of them hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents taken from more than 11,000 online accounts." A DIA report declassified in June 2015 said that Snowden took 900,000 Department of Defense files, more than he downloaded from

5124-603: The proper clearance who would listen. The reactions of those I told about the scale of the constitutional violations ranged from deeply concerned to appalled, but no one was willing to risk their jobs, families, and possibly even freedom to go to [ sic ] through what [Thomas Andrews] Drake did." In March 2014, during testimony to the European Parliament, Snowden wrote that before revealing classified information he had reported "clearly problematic programs" to ten officials, who he said did nothing in response. In

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5208-512: The public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them". His disclosures have fueled debates over mass surveillance , government secrecy , and the balance between national security and information privacy , something that he has said he intended to do in retrospective interviews. In early 2016, Snowden became the president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation ,

5292-542: The report for, in his opinion, presuming that the public became concerned about privacy only after Snowden's disclosures. Snowden's decision to leak NSA documents developed gradually following his March 2007 posting as a technician to the Geneva CIA station. Snowden later made contact with Glenn Greenwald, a journalist working at The Guardian . He contacted Greenwald anonymously as "Cincinnatus" and said he had sensitive documents that he would like to share. Greenwald found

5376-510: The results as showing that people around the world see access to the internet as their fundamental right, a force for good, and most do not want governments to regulate it. Findings from the poll include: In July and August 2012 the Internet Society conducted online interviews of more than 10,000 Internet users in 20 countries, including questions on digital rights: Edward Snowden Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983)

5460-661: The rule of law in international as in national affairs. The WSIS Declaration also makes specific reference to the importance of the right to freedom of expression in the " Information Society " in stating: We reaffirm, as an essential foundation of the Information Society, and as outlined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; that this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. Communication

5544-480: The totality of his experience, downplaying him as a "low-level analyst." In his words, he was "trained as a spy in the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover overseas—pretending to work in a job that I'm not—and even being assigned a name that was not mine." He said he'd worked for the NSA undercover overseas, and for the DIA had developed sources and methods to keep information and people secure "in

5628-454: 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 that operated as the Computer Career Institute at Johns Hopkins University. The University of Maryland University College acknowledged that Snowden had attended a summer session at a UM campus in Asia. Snowden's résumé stated that he estimated he would receive

5712-456: The work of others, Snowden recalled a moment when he and his colleagues began to have severe ethical doubts. Snowden said 18- to 22-year-old analysts were suddenly: ...thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility, where they now have access to all your private records. In the course of their daily work, they stumble across something that is completely unrelated in any sort of necessary sense—for example, an intimate nude photo of someone in

5796-574: Was $ 200,000, Snowden said he took a pay cut to work at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton , where he sought employment in order to gather data and then release details of the NSA's worldwide surveillance activity. At the time of his departure from the U.S. in May 2013, he had been employed for 15 months inside the NSA's Hawaii regional operations center , which focuses on the electronic monitoring of China and North Korea , first for Dell and then for two months with Booz Allen Hamilton . While intelligence officials have described his position there as

5880-406: Was a Salon article written by Greenwald detailing how Poitras's controversial films had made her a target of the government. Greenwald began working with Snowden in either February or April 2013, after Poitras asked Greenwald to meet her in New York City, at which point Snowden began providing documents to them. Barton Gellman , writing for The Washington Post , says his first direct contact

5964-404: Was actually an analyst and I designated individuals and groups for targeting." Snowden subsequently told Wired that while at Dell in 2011, "I would sit down with the CIO of the CIA, the CTO of the CIA, the chiefs of all the technical branches. They would tell me their hardest technology problems, and it was my job to come up with a way to fix them." During his time as an NSA analyst, directing

6048-593: Was asked in 2009 to brief a conference in Tokyo. During his four years with Dell, he rose from supervising NSA computer system upgrades to working as what his résumé termed a "cyber strategist" and an "expert in cyber counterintelligence" at several U.S. locations. In 2010, he had a brief stint in New Delhi , India , where he enrolled himself in a local IT institute to learn core Java programming and advanced ethical hacking . In 2011, he returned to Maryland , where he spent

6132-568: Was born in December 2020, and their second son was born sometime before September 2022. Feeling a duty to fight in the Iraq War , Snowden enlisted in the United States Army on May 7, 2004, and became a Special Forces candidate through its 18X enlistment option. He did not complete the training due to a leg injury and was given an administrative discharge on September 28, 2004. Snowden

6216-701: Was established by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) at the APC Europe Internet Rights Workshop, held in Prague, February 2001. The Charter draws on the People's Communications Charter and develops seven themes: internet access for all; freedom of expression and association ; access to knowledge, shared learning and creation - free and open source software and technology development; privacy , surveillance and encryption ; governance of

6300-562: Was given full administrator privileges with virtually unlimited access to NSA data. Snowden was offered a position on the NSA's elite team of hackers , Tailored Access Operations , but turned it down to join Booz Allen. An anonymous source later said that Booz Allen's hiring screeners found possible discrepancies in Snowden's résumé but still decided to hire him. Snowden's résumé stated that he attended computer-related classes at Johns Hopkins University . A spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins said that

6384-678: Was illegal and possibly unconstitutional. Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21, 1983, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina . Snowden's father, Lonnie, was a warrant officer in the U.S. Coast Guard , and his mother, Elizabeth, was a clerk at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland . His older sister, Jessica, was a lawyer at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. His maternal grandfather, Edward J. Barrett ,

6468-443: Was involved, and that he tried to raise his ethical concerns through internal channels but was ignored. On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong after taking medical leave from his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii , and in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald , Laura Poitras , Barton Gellman , and Ewen MacAskill . Snowden came to international attention after stories based on

6552-600: Was not a whistleblower in the sense required by the Whistleblower Protection Act. The bulk of the report is classified. The exact size of Snowden's disclosure is unknown, but Australian officials have estimated 15,000 or more Australian intelligence files and British officials estimate at least 58,000 British intelligence files were included. NSA Director Keith Alexander initially estimated that Snowden had copied anywhere from 50,000 to 200,000 NSA documents. Later estimates provided by U.S. officials were in

6636-565: Was not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden's data or whether Snowden voluntarily handed it over to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow. In April 2015, the Henry Jackson Society , a British neoconservative think tank , published a report claiming that Snowden's intelligence leaks negatively impacted Britain's ability to fight terrorism and organized crime. Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International , criticized

6720-496: Was on May 16, 2013. According to Gellman, Snowden approached Greenwald after the Post declined to guarantee publication within 72 hours of all 41 PowerPoint slides that Snowden had leaked exposing the PRISM electronic data mining program, and to publish online an encrypted code allowing Snowden to later prove that he was the source. Snowden communicated using encrypted email , and going by

6804-453: Was published weeks later by Der Spiegel . After disclosing the copied documents, Snowden promised that nothing would stop subsequent disclosures. 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." On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong, where he was staying when

6888-501: Was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do. Thus, the Snowden documents allegedly contained sensitive NSA blueprints detailing how the NSA operates, which would allow someone who read them to evade or even duplicate NSA surveillance. Further, a 2015 New York Times article reported that the Islamic State group had studied Snowden's revelations about how

6972-438: Was the first journalist to report on Snowden's documents. He said the U.S. government urged him not to specify by name which companies were involved, but Gellman decided that to name them "would make it real to Americans." Reports also revealed details of Tempora , a secret British surveillance program run by the NSA's British partner, GCHQ. The initial reports included details about NSA call database , Boundless Informant , and

7056-557: Was then employed for less than a year in 2005 as a security guard at the University of Maryland 's Center for Advanced Study of Language, a research center sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA). According to the University, this is not a classified facility, though it is heavily guarded. In June 2014, Snowden told Wired that his job as a security guard required a high-level security clearance , for which he passed

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