Edward Snowden
Former CIA and NSA contractor who disclosed classified surveillance documents in 2013
| Edward Snowden
| |
|---|---|
| Nationality | American; Russian citizen since 2022[1] |
| Residence | Russia (since 2013)[2][1] |
| Occupation | Intelligence contractor; whistleblower |
| Known for | Disclosure of classified National Security Agency and Government Communications Headquarters surveillance documents, 2013 |
Edward Snowden is a former Central Intelligence Agency technical assistant and a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), including through Booz Allen Hamilton, who in 2013 disclosed classified documents about US and allied surveillance programmes to journalists. The Guardian identified him, at his request, on 9 June 2013, after interviews in Hong Kong, as the source of what it described as one of the most significant leaks in US political history.[3]
Intelligence career
The Guardian report said Snowden had worked at the NSA for the previous four years as an employee of outside contractors, including Booz Allen Hamilton and Dell, and that he had earlier worked for the CIA, including from 2007 in Geneva on computer-network security, before leaving the CIA in 2009 for contractor work at an NSA facility in Japan. It recorded his account that he had enlisted in the US Army in 2003, begun training intended to lead to Special Forces, and been discharged after breaking both legs in a training accident, and that he had later worked as a security guard at an NSA facility at the University of Maryland before joining the CIA.[3]
Disclosures
The same article said that on 20 May 2013 Snowden flew to Hong Kong, after copying the last set of documents he intended to disclose from an NSA office in Hawaii, and that he had chosen to be named rather than remain anonymous. It quoted him as saying his “sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,” and that he expected the US government to accuse him of offences under the Espionage Act. The report is an interview-based account of his own statements and of the newspaper's reporting; it is not a judicial finding.[3]
The first Snowden-derived reports had appeared in the Guardian on 6 June 2013. Glenn Greenwald reported that day on a secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order, dated 25 April 2013 and signed by Judge Roger Vinson, requiring Verizon to give the NSA on an “ongoing, daily basis” the call records of its customers, including numbers, call durations and location data but not the content of calls.[4] On 21 June 2013 the Guardian reported, from documents provided by Snowden, that Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) was tapping fibre-optic cables under an operation codenamed Tempora and sharing the resulting data with the NSA; the report said that by 2012 GCHQ was handling 600 million “telephone events” a day, and quoted a source with knowledge of intelligence who said the data were collected lawfully under a system of safeguards and that the agency was looking for “needles” in a “vast haystack”.[5]
Criminal charges and asylum in Russia
The Guardian reported on 22 June 2013 that the United States had filed a criminal complaint, dated 14 June 2013, in the Eastern District of Virginia, charging Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications-intelligence information to an unauthorised person, and that the United States had asked Hong Kong to detain him.[6] Snowden flew from Hong Kong to Moscow on 23 June 2013, when, according to the Guardian, the United States annulled his passport; he remained in the airport transit zone for over a month and applied for temporary asylum in Russia on 16 July. On 1 August 2013 his lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said Russia's Federal Migration Service had granted him temporary asylum for one year, and Snowden left the airport.[2]
In September 2022 Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an order granting Snowden Russian citizenship. On 2 December 2022 Kucherena said Snowden had taken the oath and received a Russian passport, and that under the Russian constitution he could not be extradited to a foreign state. The US State Department spokesman Ned Price said that Snowden had “long signalled his allegiance to Russia”. Snowden had written in September 2022 that after nearly ten years of exile “a little stability will make a difference for my family”.[1]
Civil action over Permanent Record
In 2019 the United States sued Snowden in the Eastern District of Virginia for publishing his memoir Permanent Record and giving paid speeches without submitting them for prepublication review under his secrecy agreements with the Central Intelligence Agency and the NSA. According to the stipulated final judgment filed by the parties on 18 September 2020, the court granted summary judgment on liability on 17 December 2019, Snowden declined to take part in discovery and was sanctioned on 7 August 2020, and the parties agreed the relief to apply if the liability ruling was upheld: a constructive trust over the book's proceeds, which then totalled $4.2 million, and over $1,027,800 in fees from 56 listed speeches. The document records that Snowden reserved his right to appeal.[7]
Legal consequences of the disclosures
On 2 September 2020 the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in United States v. Moalin, held that the bulk collection of telephone metadata under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act exceeded what Congress had authorised in 50 U.S.C. § 1861 and so violated that section, and that it may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, while upholding the convictions of four defendants because the metadata had not tainted the trial evidence. The opinion records that Snowden had made public the existence of the programme in June 2013, months after the trial.[8]
See also
- National Security Agency
- Central Intelligence Agency
- Government Communications Headquarters
- Five Eyes
- Booz Allen Hamilton
- Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Andrew Roth, Edward Snowden gets Russian passport after swearing oath of allegiance, The Guardian, 2 December 2022, accessed 11 November 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Alec Luhn, Edward Snowden leaves Moscow airport after Russia grants asylum, The Guardian, 1 August 2013, accessed 11 November 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras, Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations, The Guardian, 11 June 2013 (article dated from interviews published that week), accessed 11 November 2026.
- ↑ Glenn Greenwald, NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily, The Guardian, 6 June 2013, accessed 11 November 2026.
- ↑ Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball, GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications, The Guardian, 21 June 2013, accessed 11 November 2026.
- ↑ US files criminal charges against NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Guardian, 22 June 2013, accessed 11 November 2026.
- ↑ United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction Against Defendant Edward Snowden (stipulated), United States v. Snowden, No. 1:19-cv-1197-LO-TCB, document 127-1, filed 18 September 2020, accessed 11 November 2026.
- ↑ United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, United States v. Moalin, Nos. 13-50572 and others, opinion by Judge Berzon, filed 2 September 2020, summary and pp. 13–14, accessed 11 November 2026.