Edward Snowden

Picture of Snowden, taken from his 2013 interview with Greenwald and Poitras

“”Saying that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different that saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.

— Edward Snowden

Edward Joseph Snowden (born 1983) is a former US National Security Agency contractor and Central Intelligence Agency employee. He was born in North Carolina and lived in Hawaii in the United States. He is best known for exposing many of the NSA and UK Government Communications Headquarters'^[wp] (GCHQ) spying activities conducted on ordinary civilians under the guise of hunting down terrorists. While working at Booz Allen Hamilton (an NSA contractor), he secretly took many thousands of classified documents concerning the NSA's illegal and unconstitutional activities, nearly 99% of which are yet to be revealed to the general public.

These activities involved unlawfully spying on ordinary civilians both inside and outside the United States and the United Kingdom, compromising the security of the Internet by means of weakening encryption; tapping global fiber optic networks; and bribing large conglomerates (such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, AT&T, Skype, and Verizon) for information, authorizing these programs through a secret and undemocratic court (FISA) inaccessible to the general public. Google, Apple and other companies denied any knowledge of the PRISM program and their participation to it, after which The Washington Post quickly and quietly revised its article on the subject.

Snowden has also used hyperbole in order to influence public opinion. During his Alternative Christmas message, he claimed that the government is able to watch "everything we do", even though it is practically impossible to do so. In actuality, the government is able to watch everywhere we go. During that same speech, he also claimed a child born today will not know what it is to have an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. That is a distortion because the NSA has no way of reading your mind; a child born today will not know what it is like to have an unrecorded expressed thought is closer to the truth but still an exaggeration.

He left Hawaii for Hong Kong on May 20, 2013, leaving his US$120,000 job, home, family and girlfriend behind, and met journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras,^[wp] sharing his trove of documents with them. Greenwald and Poitras began to publish the information, in The Guardian and Der Spiegel respectively, on June 5. Even the initial information, unsurprisingly, sparked national and international outrage directed at the spying agencies. Information is still being revealed and published as of March 2014.

After fleeing from a country that spies on its citizens Snowden was given temporary asylum in Russia, a country that also spies on its citizens and where he currently resides, on July 1, after having been stuck at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow for 39 days. He intended only to transit at Moscow and to continue to Ecuador or Venezuela, with a layover in Cuba, but was stuck there due to the revocation of his passport by the US government after he left Hong Kong and was in Sheremetyevo's transit zone.

He has been commended for his actions by many supporters of privacy and security around the world, being called a whistleblower and a hero. In August 2013, he was presented with the German "Whistleblower Prize", for "bold efforts to expose the massive and unsuspecting monitoring and storage of communication data, which cannot be accepted in democratic societies", and in December 2013, he was given the Sam Adams Award^[wp] for his actions to protect the people of the United States and elsewhere.

During an interview Neil deGrasse Tyson landed with Snowden he asked Snowden whether alien civilizations might use encryption and Snowden felt they could be, making it nearly impossible for humans to pick up evidence of their communications via satellites. During a second interview deGrasse Tyson asked Snowden why he's not in Twitter, and suggested the handle "@Snowden." A few days later Edward Snowden joined Twitter with the handle @Snowden. In his second tweet ever, the wanted man playfully asked deGrasse Tyson: "Thanks for the welcome. And now we've got water on Mars! Do you think they check passports at the border? Asking for a friend."

Back in the 2012 election, Snowden supported recurring presidential candidate and goldbug Ron Paul.

Conspiracies

Of course! He's hiding more!

• He was allowed to give the information. The "Evidence" for this is that he had to get past "all the firewalls and security codes in an afternoon".

• He's part of the Illuminati, though this one is to be expected. Everyone is.

• Alex Jonestown (Who else?) somehow found a way to shoehown Edward Snowden into the Moon Landing Conspiracy Theory.

• The Illuminati Card Game predicted PRISM.

• Mark Dice and friends suspect that the NSA is able to do more than that Edward said, such as listen to full phone calls.. Unfortunately, this one is plausible, considering the NSA's track record.

• That Edward was suggesting we go all Revolutionary War on their @$$.

• He's conspiring with Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela.

• HAARP

• One word: ALIENS!!!

• He's a double agent for Russia.

See also

• Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks
• Chelsea Manning, leaker of US government documents to WikiLeaks