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Who is Brandon Dempsey Hacker? Meet the Jackson, Mississippi man who took over the internet for his hacking arrest claims!
Brandon Dempsey is an American social media star. Known for his social media notoriety, he becomes the figure of internet users’ search interest from time to time.
Recently, his story of how he hacked into Hinds County’s Human Services Department (HCHS) and approved all outstanding food stamps went viral.
We’ve concluded that this isn’t the first time he’s come to prominence, but one of many.
Who Is Brandon Dempsey Hacker? Meet The Jackson Mississippi Man
Brandon Dempsey is the Jackson, Mississippi man who claimed he was arrested and released on bail for hacking the HCHS online system.
The post went viral on Twitter along with many other social media sources. Similarly, his story was also covered by many online media which brought more fame to his name.
The “hacker” is an ordinary American who is now busy with his family life. Nevertheless, he takes time for his life and his job and always causes enthusiasm on the internet.
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Explore His Arrest Claims On Twitter
Brandon Dempsey shared his HCHS arrest claims on Twitter back in late 2019. The post had gone viral and Brandon became a star among his collaborators.
However, the post was a fabricated post and he later claimed it was a social media prank. After all the uproar caused on the internet, he later tweeted that it was a joke and should be taken lightly.
In short, Dempsey had just morphed his mugshot and written the HCHS arrest story and shared it via his Twitter handle.
The tweet about the HCHS prank has since been deleted.
Was He Arrested?
Brandon Dempsey was not arrested for the Twitter prank. The arrest claims were only made in his “made-up” story, which had caught the eye of netizens.
It appears that the 2019 prank wasn’t the first time he’d garnered notoriety.
In 2018, he again shared his made-up story and a wanted report about hacking college computers and returning students since 2010.
His incredible story has even been believed and shared by many big-name celebrities.
This amazing man who often plays pranks on netizens has earned a good reputation on social media till date.
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See some more details on the topic Who Is Brandon Dempsey Hacker Jackson Mississippi Man And His Arrest Claims – What Happened here:
Who Is Brandon Dempsey Hacker? Jackson Mississippi Man …
Brandon Dempsey is the Jackson Mississippi man who claimed that he was arrested and bailed for hacking HCHS online system.
Source: 44bars.com
Date Published: 10/3/2021
View: 2113
Who Is Brandon Dempsey Hacker? Lithonia GA Man Arrested …
Brandon Dempsey hacker is a man from Mississippi who pranked being arrested for hacking HCHS. Continue to read to know more about him.
Source: www.650.org
Date Published: 11/4/2021
View: 5396
Brandon Dempsey year old Jackson Mississippi man was …
Brandon Dempsey year old Jackson Mississippi man was arrested over the weekend for hacking into the Hinds County Human Services Department (HCHS) ‘and approving …
Source: americasbestpics.com
Date Published: 9/26/2022
View: 4753
FACT CHECK: Viral Post Claims A Mississippi Man Was …
FACT CHECK: Viral Post Claims A Mississippi Man Was Arrested For Hacking Into The Hinds County System And Approving Food Stamp Applications.
Source: checkyourfact.com
Date Published: 12/19/2022
View: 5113
The story of a US hacker arrested for approving food stamp applications It was fabricated
The story of a US hacker arrested for approving food stamp applications? It was invented
Copyright AFP 2017-2022. All rights reserved.
A Jackson, Mississippi man made himself the focus of a Facebook post in which he claimed he was arrested and released on bail of $100,000 for hacking into Hinds County’s online system Human Services Department (HCHS) and approved all pending food stamp applications. However, when he admitted his prank on his Twitter account, the man said the report was intended as a joke.
The original post and tweets have been archived here and here.
They describe how he was arrested after hacking the county human resources network and approving all food stamp applications by mailing cards to new applicants, “each totaling $2,500.”
It has also been reported that current cardholders have benefited from the same amount.
The post has the Fox News Network logo in the upper left corner.
A screenshot of the post taken on December 20, 2019
The same story was also shared more than 10,000 times on Facebook via website nsfnews.com, according to data from social media analytics tool CrowdTangle.
Nfsnews.com is a prank website that allows users to create memes and share them on social networks.
A screenshot showing nsfnews.com inviting users to create pranks
Dempsey openly admits the joke on Twitter, as does another prank report, which also carries his “mug shot” and makes similar claims of hacking for the benefit of those in need.
A screenshot showing a similar prank by Dempsey, taken on December 20, 2019
The second post alleges that a Jackson man hacked a college computer and returned all dues to students as of 2010. This post was also widely shared on various social media platforms.
A tweet sharing the other Dempsey hoax, seen December 20, 2019
Chakabars, the name of an Instagram star with more than 700,000 followers, also shared a similar claim in a post that garnered more than 31,500 likes.
Self-proclaimed prankster Dempsey said on Twitter his intention was just to make people laugh.
“Everything I just do funny joke posts…it’s just for social media fun…please don’t take me seriously lol…I just like to make people laugh, that’s all.” We archived his Twitter post here.
A tweet from Dempsey urging people not to take the posts seriously
AFP reached out to Dempsey for comment – we’ll update this post with his response.
FACT CHECK Viral Post Claims A Mississippi Man Was Arrested For Hacking Into The Hinds County System And Approving Food Stamp Applications
A picture shared on Facebook claims a Mississippi man has been arrested for hacking into Hinds County’s Human Services Department and approving all food stamp applications.
Verdict: Wrong
There are no records of the incident described in the post. The claim appears to have originated as a hoax.
Fact check:
The image shows a screen-captured tweet dated Aug. 25 detailing how a 27-year-old man in Mississippi allegedly approved food stamp applications by hacking into the Hinds County Human Services Department’s system. At the time of publication, it was shared over 34,000 times.
“After approving the applications, he had cards totaling $2,500 each mailed to new applicants. Current cardholders also received $2,500 in credit,” the text reads. “His bail was set at $100,000 and has been pawned ever since. More on this story tonight at 10 p.m. Fox News.”
However, there is no evidence that the incident described in the post actually happened. Check Your Fact has found no credible media reports of an individual hacking into the department’s system to approve food stamp applications, and the Mississippi Department of Human Services does not appear to have issued a press release addressing a related hack. (RELATED: Viral Post falsely claims anyone can get food stamps by calling this number)
Searching the Fox News website for the story found no matches, further adding to the post’s dubiousness. Hinds County’s website was hacked in 2015, but county officials said at the time the information systems had not been compromised, NBC affiliate WLBT reported.
Other iterations of the post contain a different photo but the same wording. A man named Brandon Dempsey credited the creation of the claim on Twitter in October 2019, saying, “You all I only do funny joke posts… It’s just for fun on social media… Please don’t take me seriously lol… Just like it, Making people laugh, that’s all.”
Edward Snowden
American whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor
Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983) is an American former computer intelligence consultant who leaked top secret information from the National Security Agency (NSA) as an employee and contractor in 2013. His revelations uncovered numerous illegal global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance in partnership with telecom companies and European governments, and sparked a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
In 2013, Snowden was hired by an NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, having previously worked at Dell and the CIA.[2] Snowden says he gradually became disillusioned with the programs he was involved in and that he tried to air his ethical concerns through internal channels but was ignored. On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong after quitting 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 gained international attention after stories based on the material appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other publications. Snowden also made extensive allegations against the GCSB, drawing attention to their internal surveillance of New Zealanders and acts of espionage under the John Key government.[3][4]
On June 21, 2013, the US Department of Justice unveiled charges against Snowden for double violations of the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property[5], prompting the State Department to revoke his passport.[6] Two days later, he flew to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, where Russian authorities observed the canceled passport, and he was confined to the airport terminal for over a month. Russia later granted Snowden the right to asylum with an initial residence visa for a year, which was subsequently extended again and again. He was granted permanent residency in Russia in October 2020.[7]
A subject of controversy, Snowden has been variously labeled a traitor,[8] a hero,[9] a whistleblower,[10] a dissident,[11] a coward,[12] and a patriot.[13] US officials condemned his actions as causing “grave damage” to US intelligence capabilities.[14] Snowden has defended his leaks as an attempt “to educate the public about what is being done on their behalf and what is being done against them.”[15] His revelations have fueled debates about mass surveillance, government secrets, and the balance between national security and privacy, something he said he wanted to do in retrospective interviews.[16]
In early 2016, Snowden became president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting journalists from hacking and government surveillance.[17] He also has a job at an unnamed Russian IT company.[18] In 2017 he married Lindsay Mills. “I have to put my head on a pillow in Moscow at night,” he told an Israeli audience in November 2018, “but I live on the internet and in every other city in the world.”[19] On September 17, 2019 , his memoir Permanent Record were released.[20] On September 2, 2020, a US federal court ruled in United States v. Moalin that the US Secret Service’s mass surveillance program uncovered by Snowden was illegal and possibly unconstitutional.[21]
Early life[edit]
Childhood, family and education[ edit ]
Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21, 1983 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.[23] His maternal grandfather, Edward J. Barrett,[24][25] Rear Admiral in the US Coast Guard, became a senior FBI official and was at the Pentagon in 2001 during the September 11 attacks.[26] Snowden’s father, Lonnie, was a warrant officer in the Coast Guard[27] and his mother, Elizabeth, was an employee of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.[28][29][30][31][] 32] His older sister Jessica was an attorney at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. Edward Snowden said he expected to work for the federal government, as did the rest of his family.[33] His parents divorced in 2001[34] and his father remarried.[35]
In the early 1990s, while still in elementary school, Snowden moved his family to the Fort Meade, Maryland area.[36] Mononucleosis caused him to miss high school for nearly nine months.[33] Rather than return to school, he passed the GED test[15] and took classes at Anne Arundel Community College.[30] Although Snowden did not have a bachelor’s degree from college,[37] he was working towards a master’s degree online at the University of Liverpool, England, in 2011.[38] He was interested in Japanese popular culture, had studied the Japanese language[39] and worked for an anime company that had a branch in the US[40][41] He also said he had a basic understanding of Mandarin Chinese and am very interested in martial arts. At the age of 20, he listed Buddhism as his religion on a military recruitment form, noting that the choice of agnostic was “oddly absent.”[42] In September 2019, during interviews related to the publication of his memoir Permanent Record, Snowden revealed to The Guardian that he married Lindsay Mills in a Moscow courthouse.[20] The couple have a son born in December 2020.[43]
Career [edit]
Snowden felt committed to fighting in the Iraq war to help the oppressed,[15] and enlisted in the US Army on May 7, 2004 and became a Special Forces candidate through his 18X enlistment option.[44] He did not complete training due to bilateral tibial stress fractures and was discharged on September 28, 2004.
Snowden was then employed for less than a year in 2005 as a security officer at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced Study of Language, a research center sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA).[48] According to the university, this is not a classified facility,[49] although it is closely guarded.[50] In June 2014, Snowden told Wired that his job as a security guard required a high-level security clearance, for which he passed a polygraph exam and underwent a rigorous background check.[33]
Employment at the CIA[ edit ]
After attending a 2006 job fair focused on intelligence, Snowden accepted an offer for a position at the CIA.[33][51] The agency assigned him to the Global Communications Division at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.[33]
In May 2006, Snowden wrote in Ars Technica that he had no trouble finding work because he was a “computer wizard.”[42] After excelling as a junior on the top computer team, 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.[33]
In March 2007, the CIA stationed Snowden under diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was responsible for maintaining computer network security.[33][52] Snowden was assigned to the US Permanent Mission to the United Nations, a diplomatic mission representing US interests before the UN and other international organizations, and was given a diplomatic passport and a four-bedroom apartment near Lake Geneva.[33 ] According to Greenwald, during his time there, Snowden was “regarded as the best technology and cybersecurity expert” in that country and “was handpicked by the CIA to assist the President at the 2008 NATO summit in Romania.”[53] Snowden described his CIA experience in Geneva as formative, explaining that the CIA intentionally got a Swiss banker drunk and encouraged him to drive home. Snowden said that when he was arrested for drunk driving, a CIA agent offered to help in exchange for the banker becoming an informant.[54] Ueli Maurer, President of the Swiss Confederation for 2013, publicly denied Snowden’s claims in June of that year. “That would mean that the CIA had successfully bribed the Geneva police and judiciary. With all due respect, I can’t imagine that,” says Maurer.[55] In February 2009, Snowden resigned from the CIA.[56]
NSA subcontractor as Dell employee [ edit ]
In 2009, Snowden began working as a contractor for Dell,[57] which manages computer systems for several government agencies. Snowden, who was assigned to an NSA facility at Yokota Air Base near Tokyo, instructed high-ranking officials and military officers on how to protect their networks from Chinese hackers.[33] Snowden became involved with mass surveillance in China, which led him to investigate and then expose Washington’s mass surveillance program after being asked to brief a Tokyo conference in 2009.[58] During his four years at Dell, he progressed from overseeing NSA computer system upgrades to what he describes on his resume as a “cyber strategist” and “cyber counterintelligence expert” at multiple US locations. In 2010 he had a short stay in New Delhi, India, where he enrolled in a local IT institute to learn basic Java programming and advanced ethical hacking.[60] In 2011, he returned to Maryland, where he worked for a year as the lead technologist for Dell’s CIA account. In this capacity, he was consulted by the heads of the CIA’s technical departments, including the agency’s chief information officer and chief technology officer.[33] US officials and other sources familiar with the investigation said Snowden began downloading documents describing the government’s electronic espionage programs in April 2012 while he was working for Dell.[57] Investigators estimated that of the 50,000 to 200,000 documents Snowden gave Greenwald and Poitras, most were copied by Snowden while he was working at Dell.[2]
In March 2012, Dell posted Snowden to Hawaii as the senior technologist for the NSA’s Information Exchange Office.[33]
NSA subcontractor employed by Booz Allen Hamilton
On March 15, 2013—three days after what he later described as his “breaking point” when he “saw the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lying directly under oath before Congress”[61]—Snowden quit his job at Dell.[62] ] Although he said his high annual career wage was $200,000,[63] Snowden said he took a pay cut to work at consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton,[63] where he was seeking employment to manage data collect and then publish details of the NSA’s worldwide surveillance activities.[64]
At the time of his departure from the US in May 2013, he had spent 15 months at the NSA’s Hawaii Regional Operations Center focused on electronic surveillance of China and North Korea,[2] first for Dell and then for two months with Booz Allen Hamilton.[65] While intelligence officials have described his position there as a systems administrator, Snowden said he was an infrastructure analyst, which meant his job was to look for new ways to break into Internet and phone traffic around the world.[66] An anonymous source told Reuters that while Snowden was in Hawaii, he may have persuaded 20 to 25 colleagues to give him their credentials, telling them he needed them for his work.[67] The NSA sent a memo to Congress stating that Snowden had tricked a colleague into sharing his personal private key in order to gain better access to the NSA’s computer system.[68][69] Snowden denied the memo, saying in January 2014, “I have never stolen passwords, nor have I tricked an army of employees.” Booz Allen terminated Snowden’s employment on June 10, 2013 that day after going public with his story, and 3 weeks after leaving Hawaii on vacation.[73]
A former NSA official[74] said that although the NSA is full of intelligent people, Snowden is a “genius among geniuses” who created a widespread backup system for the NSA and often pointed out security flaws to the agency. The former colleague said Snowden was given full administrative privileges with virtually unlimited access to NSA data. Snowden was offered a position on the NSA’s elite hacking team, Tailored Access Operations, but turned it down to join Booz Allen.[70] An anonymous source later said that Booz Allen’s recruiters found possible inconsistencies in Snowden’s resume but decided to hire him anyway.[37] Snowden’s resume states that he took computer-related courses at Johns Hopkins University. A spokeswoman for Johns Hopkins said the university could not find any records showing Snowden attended the university and suggested he instead attended Advanced Career Technologies, a private non-profit organization known as the Computer Career Institute at the Johns Hopkins University acted.[37] The University College of the University of Maryland confirmed that Snowden had attended a summer session at a UM campus in Asia. Snowden’s CV indicated that he was expected to receive a master’s degree in computer security from the University of Liverpool in 2013. The university said Snowden enrolled in an online master’s degree in computer security in 2011, but was inactive as an undergraduate and had not completed the program. [37]
In his May 2014 interview with NBC News, Snowden accused the US government of trying to use a position here or there in his career to distract from the whole of his experience by labeling him a “low-level analyst.” downplayed. In his words, he was “trained as a spy in the traditional sense of the word by living and working undercover abroad – pretending to work a job I’m not – and even being given a name that wasn’t mine.” He said he’s worked undercover for the NSA overseas and for the DIA developed sources and methods to protect information and people “in the most hostile and dangerous environments around the world.” , I would say it’s a bit misleading.”[26] In a June interview with Globo TV, Snowden reiterated that he “actually operated at a very high level.”[75] In a July interview with The Guardian, Snowden explained that during his NSA career “I began to move from merely monitoring these systems to actively directing their use. A lot of people don’t understand that I was actually an analyst and I designated individuals and groups for targeting.”[76 ] Snowden later told Wired that in 2011, when I was at Dell, “I would sit down with the CIO of the CIA, the CTO of the CIA, the heads of all the technical branches. She would give me her toughest tec tell nology problems, and it was my job to come to you p with a way to fix them.”[33]
While serving as an NSA analyst directing the work of others, Snowden recalled a moment when he and his colleagues began to have serious ethical doubts. Snowden said 18- to 22-year-old analysts are suddenly there
“You have been thrust into an exceptionally responsible position where you now have access to all your private records. In the course of their day-to-day work, they come across something that is, in the necessary sense, completely independent – for example, an intimate nude photograph of someone in a sexually compromising situation. But they are extremely attractive. So what are they doing? They turn around in their chair and point to a colleague… and sooner or later that person’s whole life was seen by all of those other people.”
Snowden observed that this behavior occurred routinely every two months but was never reported as it was considered one of the “perks” of the job.[77]
Whistleblower status[edit]
Snowden has described himself as a whistleblower,[78] a description used by many sources including CNBC,[79] The New Yorker,[80] Reuters[81] and The Guardian[82].[83] [83][] 84][85] The term has both informal and legal meanings.
Snowden said he shared his concerns with several employees and two supervisors, but the NSA denied his allegation.[86] Snowden continued in January 2014, saying: “[I] have made tremendous efforts to report these programs to colleagues, supervisors and anyone with the proper approval who would listen, in deep concern to shock, but no one was willing to give up their jobs, Risking families and possibly even his liberty to [sic] go through what [Thomas Andrews] Drake did In the European Parliament, Snowden wrote that before disclosing classified information, he reported “clearly problematic programmes” to ten officials, from whom he said had done nothing about it.[88] In a May 2014 interview, Snowden told NBC News that after he expressed his concerns about the legality of NSA spy programs to officials, he was told to remain silent on the matter. He said the NSA had copies of emails he sent to its Office of General Counsel, oversight and compliance personnel that “raised concerns about the NSA’s interpretations of their law enforcement agencies. I had made these complaints not only officially in writing via email, but to “my supervisors, my colleagues, in more than one office.”[26]
In May 2014, US officials released a single email written by Snowden in April 2013 inquiring about judicial authorities, but said they found no other evidence that Snowden shared his concerns with anyone in a supervisory position have expressed.[89] In June 2014, the NSA said it had found no record of Snowden making internal complaints about the agency’s activities.[90] That same month, Snowden stated that he did not prepare the communiqués in question due to the ongoing nature of the dispute, and announced for the first time that “I’m working with the NSA on these records and we’re going back and forth, so I want to.” not reveal everything that will come out.”[91]
Self-description as a whistleblower and attribution as such in news reports does not determine whether he qualifies as a whistleblower under the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 (5 USC 2303(b)(8)-(9; Pub. Law) 101-12 ). However, Snowden’s potential whistleblowing status 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 a chapter of the book Whistleblowing Nation, published March 2020,[92] whose adaptation[93] was also published in Lawfare Blog in March 2019.[94] ] The unclassified portion of a September 15, 2016 United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) report, initiated by the Chair and Ranking Member in August 2014 and published on the Federation of American Scientists website, concluded Snowden was not a whistleblower within the meaning of the Whistleblower Protection Act.[95] Most of the report is classified.
Global Surveillance Disclosures[edit]
Size and Scope of Disclosures[ edit ]
The exact extent of Snowden’s disclosure is unknown,[96] but Australian officials estimate that 15,000 or more Australian intelligence files[97] and UK officials estimate that at least 58,000 British intelligence files were included.[98] NSA director Keith Alexander initially estimated that Snowden copied between 50,000 and 200,000 NSA documents.[99] Later estimates by US officials were in the order of 1.7 million,[100] a number originally drawn from Department of Defense talking points.[101] In July 2014, The Washington Post reported a Snowden-provided cache of domestic NSA operations consisting of “approximately 160,000 intercepted email and instant message conversations, some hundreds of pages long, and 7,900 documents from more than 11,000 had online accounts.”[102] A June 2015 declassified U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency states that Snowden took 900,000 DoD files, more than he downloaded from the NSA.[101]
Potential US national security implications
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 … extracted from our highest levels of security … had nothing to do with exposing government oversight about domestic activities. The vast majority of these related to our military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures NSA Director Keith Alexander said there was no accurate way to count what he stole, but Snowden may have downloaded more than a million documents. [104] The HPSCI report of September 15, 2016[95] estimated the number of documents downloaded at 1.5 million.
In a 2013 interview with the Associated Press, Glenn Greenwald stated:
“In order to take documents that proved what he said was true, he had to take documents that contained very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do.”[105]
For example, the Snowden documents allegedly contained sensitive NSA blueprints that detail how the NSA works and that would allow someone reading them to evade NSA surveillance or even duplicate them. Additionally, a July 20, 2015 New York Times article[106] reported that the terrorist group Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) had investigated revelations by Snowden about how the United States was gathering intelligence on militants, the main finding being that the Group at the top Executives used couriers or encrypted channels to avoid being tracked or monitored by western analysts.
According to Snowden, he did not indiscriminately release documents to journalists, stating: “I have carefully evaluated every single document that I have disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest. There are all kinds of documents that would have had a major impact on the fact that I didn’t turn them over”[15] and that “I have to check everything before I release it to journalists… If I have time to go through this information, I would happy to provide journalists in any country.” [64] Despite these measures, the New York Times’ improper redacting of a document led to the exposure of anti-al-Qaeda intelligence activities.[107]
In June 2014, the recently installed director of the NSA, U.S. Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers that although some terrorist groups have altered their communications to circumvent the surveillance techniques revealed by Snowden, the damage done was not significant enough to conclude that “the sky is falling.”[ 108] Nevertheless, Rogers said in February 2015 that Snowden’s disclosures had a significant impact on the NSA’s detection and assessment of terrorist activities worldwide.[109]
On June 14, 2015, the London Sunday Times reported that Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies had decrypted more than 1 million secret files in the Snowden cache, forcing British intelligence agency MI6 to remove agents from live operations in enemy countries. Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ, described this as a major strategic setback, damaging Britain, America and their NATO allies. The Sunday Times said it was not clear whether Russia and China stole Snowden’s data or whether Snowden voluntarily gave it up to remain at liberty in Hong Kong and Moscow.[110][111] In April 2015, the Henry Jackson Society, a British neoconservative think tank, published a report claiming that Snowden’s information leaks were negatively affecting Britain’s ability to fight terrorism and organized crime.[112] Gus Hosein, executive director of Privacy International, criticized the report for believing that it was only after Snowden’s revelations that the public became concerned about privacy.[113]
Release of NSA documents [ edit ]
Snowden’s determination to release NSA documents gradually developed after he was assigned to the CIA’s Geneva station as a technician in March 2007.[114] Snowden later got in touch with Glenn Greenwald, a journalist who worked at The Guardian.[115] He contacted Greenwald anonymously as “Cincinnatus”[116][117] and said he had sensitive documents that he would like to share.[118] Greenwald found the measures the source asked him to take to secure their communications, such as encrypting emails, too cumbersome to use. Snowden then contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in January 2013.[119] According to Poitras, Snowden decided to contact her after seeing her article in the New York Times about NSA whistleblower William Binney.[120] What originally drew Snowden to Greenwald and Poitras was a Salon article written by Greenwald detailing how Poitras’ controversial films had made them a government target.[118]
Greenwald began working with Snowden in either February[121] or April 2013 after Poitras asked Greenwald to meet them in New York City, after which Snowden began providing them with documents.[115] Barton Gellman, writing for the Washington Post, says his first direct contact was on May 16, 2013.[122] According to Gellman, Snowden approached Greenwald after the Post refused to guarantee the release within 72 hours of all 41 PowerPoint slides Snowden had leaked exposing the electronic data-mining program PRISM and to provide an encrypted code online publish, which Snowden could later use to prove that he was the source.[122]
Snowden communicated using encrypted email[119] and was codenamed “Verax”. He asked not to be quoted at length for fear of identification by stylometry.[122]
According to Gellman, Snowden wrote prior to their first face-to-face meeting, “I understand that I must suffer for my actions and that disclosure of this information to the public means my end.”[122] Snowden also told Gellman that the articles would be pending publication Journalists working with him are also at mortal risk from United States intelligence agencies “if they think you are the only point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them the sole owner of this information.” [122]
In May 2013, Snowden was temporarily suspended from his position at the NSA in Hawaii on the pretext of seeking treatment for his epilepsy.[15] In mid-May, Snowden gave an electronic interview to Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum, which was published weeks later in Der Spiegel.[123]
Upon disclosure of the copied documents, Snowden promised that nothing would prevent subsequent disclosures. In June 2013 he said: “All I can say for now is that the US government will not be able to cover this up by imprisoning or murdering me. The truth is coming and cannot be stopped.”[124]
publication [ edit ]
On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong[125] where he was staying when the first articles based on the leaked documents were published[126] beginning with The Guardian on June 5.[127] Greenwald later said Snowden disclosed 9,000 to 10,000 documents.[128]
Within a few months, documents were procured and published by media worldwide, notably The Guardian (UK), Der Spiegel (Germany), The Washington Post and The New York Times (USA), O Globo (Brazil), Le Monde (France). ) und ähnliche Verkaufsstellen in Schweden, Kanada, Italien, den Niederlanden, Norwegen, Spanien und Australien.[129] Im Jahr 2014 veröffentlichte NBC seine erste Geschichte basierend auf den durchgesickerten Dokumenten.[130] Im Februar 2014 wurden die Journalisten Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman und Ewen MacAskill von The Guardian für ihre Berichterstattung auf der Grundlage von Snowdens Leaks als Mitempfänger des George Polk Award 2013 geehrt, den sie Snowden widmeten.[131] Die NSA-Berichterstattung dieser Journalisten brachte The Guardian und The Washington Post auch den Pulitzer-Preis 2014 für den öffentlichen Dienst ein[132], weil sie die „weit verbreitete Überwachung“ aufgedeckt und dazu beigetragen haben, eine „große öffentliche Debatte über das Ausmaß der Spionage der Regierung“ auszulösen. Der Chefredakteur des Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, beschuldigte Snowden, einen öffentlichen Dienst geleistet zu haben.[133]
Offenbarungen [ bearbeiten ] [134] Die Skizze zeigt, wo das „öffentliche Internet“ auf die interne „Google Cloud“ trifft, in der sich Benutzerdaten befinden.[135] Folie aus einer NSA-Präsentation über „Google Cloud Exploitation“ aus ihrem MUSCULAR-Programm; die Skizze zeigt, wo das „öffentliche Internet“ auf die interne „Google Cloud“ trifft, in der sich Benutzerdaten befinden.
Die laufende Veröffentlichung von durchgesickerten Dokumenten hat bisher unbekannte Details eines globalen Überwachungsapparates enthüllt, der von der US-amerikanischen NSA[136] in enger Zusammenarbeit mit drei ihrer vier Five-Eyes-Partner betrieben wird: der australischen ASD[137] der britischen GCHQ[138]. ] und Kanadas CSEC.[139]
PRISM: ein geheimes Überwachungsprogramm, bei dem die NSA Benutzerdaten von Unternehmen wie Microsoft, Google, Apple Yahoo, Facebook und YouTube sammelt.
Am 5. Juni 2013 begannen Medienberichte, die die Existenz und Funktion klassifizierter Überwachungsprogramme und deren Umfang dokumentierten, und setzten sich das ganze Jahr über fort. Das erste Programm, das enthüllt wurde, war PRISM, das den vom Gericht genehmigten direkten Zugriff auf die Google- und Yahoo-Konten der Amerikaner ermöglicht, was sowohl von der Washington Post als auch von The Guardian im Abstand von einer Stunde veröffentlicht wurde.[134][140][141] Barton Gellman von der Washington Post war der erste Journalist, der über Snowdens Dokumente berichtete. Er sagte, die US-Regierung habe ihn gedrängt, die beteiligten Unternehmen nicht namentlich anzugeben, aber Gellman entschied, dass die Namensnennung „für die Amerikaner real werden würde“. betrieben vom britischen Partner der NSA, GCHQ.[140][143] Die ersten Berichte enthielten Details über die NSA-Anrufdatenbank, Boundless Informant und eine geheime Gerichtsverfügung, die Verizon verpflichtete, der NSA täglich Millionen von Telefonaufzeichnungen von Amerikanern auszuhändigen,[144] die Überwachung der Telefon- und Internetaufzeichnungen französischer Bürger und die von „hochkarätige Persönlichkeiten aus der Welt der Wirtschaft oder Politik.“[145][146][147] XKeyscore, ein Analysetool, das die Erfassung von „fast allem, was im Internet getan wird“, ermöglicht, wurde von The Guardian als Programm beschrieben das wirft ein Licht auf eine von Snowdens umstrittensten Äußerungen: „Wenn ich an meinem Schreibtisch sitze, [könnte] ich jeden abhören, von Ihnen oder Ihrem Buchhalter bis hin zu einem Bundesrichter oder sogar dem Präsidenten, wenn ich eine persönliche E-Mail hätte.“[148]
Das streng geheime schwarze Budget der NSA, das von der Washington Post von Snowden erhalten wurde, enthüllte die Erfolge und Misserfolge der 16 Spionageagenturen, aus denen die US-Geheimdienste bestehen,[149] und enthüllte, dass die NSA private US-Technologieunternehmen für den geheimen Zugang zu bezahlte ihre Kommunikationsnetze.[150] Den Agenturen wurden für das Geschäftsjahr 2013 52 Milliarden US-Dollar zugeteilt.[151]
Es wurde enthüllt, dass die NSA Millionen von E-Mail- und Instant-Messaging-Kontaktlisten sammelte,[152] E-Mail-Inhalte durchsuchte,[153] den Standort von Mobiltelefonen verfolgte und abbildete,[154] Verschlüsselungsversuche über Bullrun unterwanderte[155][156]. ] and that the agency was using cookies to piggyback on the same tools used by Internet advertisers “to pinpoint targets for government hacking and to bolster surveillance.”[157] The NSA was shown to be secretly accessing Yahoo and Google data centers to collect information from hundreds of millions of account holders worldwide by tapping undersea cables using the MUSCULAR surveillance program.[134][135]
The NSA, the CIA and GCHQ spied on users of Second Life, Xbox Live and World of Warcraft, and attempted to recruit would-be informants from the sites, according to documents revealed in December 2013.[158][159] Leaked documents showed NSA agents also spied on their own “love interests,” a practice NSA employees termed LOVEINT.[160][161] The NSA was shown to be tracking the online sexual activity of people they termed “radicalizers” in order to discredit them.[162] Following the revelation of Black Pearl, a program targeting private networks, the NSA was accused of extending beyond its primary mission of national security. The agency’s intelligence-gathering operations had targeted, among others, oil giant Petrobras, Brazil’s largest company.[163] The NSA and the GCHQ were also shown to be surveilling charities including UNICEF and Médecins du Monde, as well as allies such as European Commissioner Joaquín Almunia and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.[164]
In October 2013, Glenn Greenwald said “the most shocking and significant stories are the ones we are still working on, and have yet to publish.”[165] In November, The Guardian’s editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger said that only one percent of the documents had been published.[166] In December, Australia’s Minister for Defence David Johnston said his government assumed the worst was yet to come.[167]
By October 2013, Snowden’s disclosures had created tensions[168][169] between the U.S. and some of its close allies after they revealed that the U.S. had spied on Brazil, France, Mexico,[170] Britain,[171] China,[172] Germany,[173] and Spain,[174] as well as 35 world leaders,[175] most notably German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said “spying among friends” was unacceptable[176][177] and compared the NSA with the Stasi.[178] Leaked documents published by Der Spiegel in 2014 appeared to show that the NSA had targeted 122 high-ranking leaders.[179]
An NSA mission statement titled “SIGINT Strategy 2012-2016” affirmed that the NSA had plans for the continued expansion of surveillance activities. Their stated goal was to “dramatically increase mastery of the global network” and to acquire adversaries’ data from “anyone, anytime, anywhere.”[180] Leaked slides revealed in Greenwald’s book No Place to Hide, released in May 2014, showed that the NSA’s stated objective was to “Collect it All,” “Process it All,” “Exploit it All,” “Partner it All,” “Sniff it All” and “Know it All.”[181]
Snowden said in a January 2014 interview with German television that the NSA does not limit its data collection to national security issues, accusing the agency of conducting industrial espionage. Using the example of German company Siemens, he said, “If there’s information at Siemens that’s beneficial to US national interests—even if it doesn’t have anything to do with national security—then they’ll take that information nevertheless.”[182] In the wake of Snowden’s revelations and in response to an inquiry from the Left Party, Germany’s domestic security agency Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV) investigated and found no concrete evidence that the U.S. conducted economic or industrial espionage in Germany.[183]
In February 2014, during testimony to the European Union, Snowden said of the remaining undisclosed programs, “I will leave the public interest determinations as to which of these may be safely disclosed to responsible journalists in coordination with government stakeholders.”[184]
In March 2014, documents disclosed by Glenn Greenwald writing for The Intercept showed the NSA, in cooperation with the GCHQ, has plans to infect millions of computers with malware using a program called TURBINE.[185] Revelations included information about QUANTUMHAND, a program through which the NSA set up a fake Facebook server to intercept connections.[185]
According to a report in The Washington Post in July 2014, relying on information furnished by Snowden, 90% of those placed under surveillance in the U.S. are ordinary Americans and are not the intended targets. The newspaper said it had examined documents including emails, message texts, and online accounts, that support the claim.[186]
In an August 2014 interview, Snowden for the first time disclosed a cyberwarfare program in the works, codenamed MonsterMind, that would automate the detection of a foreign cyberattack as it began and automatically fire back. “These attacks can be spoofed,” said Snowden. “You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?”[33]
Motivations [ edit ]
Snowden speaks about the NSA leaks, in Hong Kong, filmed by Laura Poitras.
Snowden first contemplated leaking confidential documents around 2008 but held back, partly because he believed the newly elected Barack Obama might introduce reforms.[2] After the disclosures, his identity was made public by The Guardian at his request on June 9, 2013.[121] “I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded,” he said. “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”[125]
Snowden said he wanted to “embolden others to step forward” by demonstrating that “they can win.”[122] He also said that the system for reporting problems did not work. “You have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it.” He cited a lack of whistleblower protection for government contractors, the use of the Espionage Act of 1917 to prosecute leakers and the belief that had he used internal mechanisms to “sound the alarm,” his revelations “would have been buried forever.”[114][187]
In December 2013, upon learning that a U.S. federal judge had ruled the collection of U.S. phone metadata conducted by the NSA as likely unconstitutional, Snowden said, “I acted on my belief that the NSA’s mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts … today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights.”[188]
In January 2014, Snowden said his “breaking point” was “seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.”[61] This referred to testimony on March 12, 2013—three months after Snowden first sought to share thousands of NSA documents with Greenwald,[115] and nine months after the NSA says Snowden made his first illegal downloads during the summer of 2012[2]—in which Clapper denied to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA wittingly collects data on millions of Americans.[189] Snowden said, “There’s no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions. Seeing that really meant for me there was no going back. Beyond that, it was the creeping realization that no one else was going to do this. The public had a right to know about these programs.”[190] In March 2014, Snowden said he had reported policy or legal issues related to spying programs to more than ten officials, but as a contractor had no legal avenue to pursue further whistleblowing.[88]
Flight from the United States [ edit ]
Hong Kong [ edit ]
In May 2013, Snowden quit his job, telling his supervisors he required epilepsy treatment, but instead fled the United States for Hong Kong on May 10.[191] Snowden told Guardian reporters in June that he had been in his room at the Mira Hotel since his arrival in the city, rarely going out. On June 10, correspondent Ewen MacAskill said Snowden had left his hotel only briefly three times since May 20.[192]
Hong Kong rally to support Snowden, June 15, 2013
Snowden vowed to challenge any extradition attempt by the U.S. government, and engaged a Hong Kong-based Canadian human rights lawyer Robert Tibbo as a legal adviser.[2][193][194] Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he planned to remain in Hong Kong for as long as its government would permit.[195][196] Snowden also told the Post that “the United States government has committed a tremendous number of crimes against Hong Kong [and] the PRC as well,”[197] going on to identify Chinese Internet Protocol addresses that the NSA monitored and stating that the NSA collected text-message data for Hong Kong residents. Glenn Greenwald said Snowden was motivated by a need to “ingratiate himself to the people of Hong Kong and China.”[198]
After leaving the Mira Hotel, Snowden was housed for two weeks in several apartments by other refugees seeking asylum in Hong Kong, an arrangement set up by Tibbo to hide from the US authorities.[199][200]
The Russian newspaper Kommersant nevertheless reported that Snowden was living at the Russian consulate shortly before his departure from Hong Kong to Moscow.[201] Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and legal adviser to Snowden, said in January 2014, “Every news organization in the world has been trying to confirm that story. They haven’t been able to, because it’s false.”[202] Likewise rejecting the Kommersant story was Anatoly Kucherena, who became Snowden’s lawyer in July 2013 when Snowden asked him for help in seeking temporary asylum in Russia.[203] Kucherena said Snowden did not communicate with Russian diplomats while he was in Hong Kong.[204][205] In early September 2013, however, Russian president Vladimir Putin said that, a few days before boarding a plane to Moscow, Snowden met in Hong Kong with Russian diplomatic representatives.
On June 22, 18 days after the publication of Snowden’s NSA documents began, officials revoked his U.S. passport.[207] On June 23, Snowden boarded the commercial Aeroflot flight SU213 to Moscow, accompanied by Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks.[208][209] Hong Kong authorities said that Snowden had not been detained for the U.S. because the request had not fully complied with Hong Kong law,[210][211] and there was no legal basis to prevent Snowden from leaving.[212][213][Notes 1] On June 24, a U.S. State Department spokesman rejected the explanation of technical noncompliance, accusing the Hong Kong government of deliberately releasing a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant and after having sufficient time to prohibit his travel.[216] That same day, Julian Assange said that WikiLeaks had paid for Snowden’s lodging in Hong Kong and his flight out.[217] Julian Assange had asked Fidel Narváez, consul at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, to sign an emergency travel document for Snowden. Snowden said that having the document gave him “the confidence, the courage to get on that plane to begin the journey”.[218]
In October 2013, Snowden said that before flying to Moscow, he gave all the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong and kept no copies for himself.[114] In January 2014, he told a German TV interviewer that he gave all of his information to American journalists reporting on American issues.[61] During his first American TV interview, in May 2014, Snowden said he had protected himself from Russian leverage by destroying the material he had been holding before landing in Moscow.[26]
In January 2019, Vanessa Rodel, one of the refugees who had housed Snowden in Hong Kong, and her 7-year-old daughter were granted asylum by Canada.[219] In 2021, Supun Thilina Kellapatha, Nadeeka Dilrukshi Nonis and their children found refuge in Canada, leaving only one of Snowden’s Hong Kong helpers waiting for asylum.[220]
Russia [ edit ]
Ecuador embassy car at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow on June 23, 2013
On June 23, 2013, Snowden landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.[221] WikiLeaks said he was on a circuitous but safe route to asylum in Ecuador.[222] Snowden had a seat reserved to continue to Cuba[223] but did not board that onward flight, saying in a January 2014 interview that he intended to transit through Russia but was stopped en route. He said “a planeload of reporters documented the seat I was supposed to be in” when he was ticketed for Havana, but the U.S. canceled his passport.[202] He said the U.S. wanted him to stay in Moscow so “they could say, ‘He’s a Russian spy.'”[75] Greenwald’s account differed on the point of Snowden being already ticketed. According to Greenwald, Snowden’s passport was valid when he departed Hong Kong but was revoked during the hours he was in transit to Moscow, preventing him from obtaining a ticket to leave Russia. Greenwald said Snowden was thus forced to stay in Moscow and seek asylum.[224]
According to one Russian report, Snowden planned to fly from Moscow through Havana to Latin America; however, Cuba told Moscow it would not allow the Aeroflot plane carrying Snowden to land.[204] The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Cuba had a change of heart after receiving pressure from U.S. officials,[225] leaving him stuck in the transit zone because at the last minute Havana told officials in Moscow not to allow him on the flight.[226] The Washington Post contrasted this version with what it called “widespread speculation” that Russia never intended to let Snowden proceed.[227] Fidel Castro called claims that Cuba would have blocked Snowden’s entry a “lie” and a “libel.”[223] Describing Snowden’s arrival in Moscow as a surprise and likening it to “an unwanted Christmas gift,”[228] Russian president Putin said that Snowden remained in the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport, had committed no crime in Russia, was free to leave and should do so.[229][228]
Following Snowden’s arrival in Moscow, the White House expressed disappointment in Hong Kong’s decision to allow him to leave.[230][231][216] An anonymous U.S. official not authorized to discuss the matter told the Associated Press Snowden’s passport had been revoked before he left Hong Kong, but that a senior official in a country or airline could order subordinates to overlook the withdrawn passport.[232] US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Snowden’s passport was canceled “within two hours” of the charges against Snowden being made public[6] which was Friday, June 21.[5] In a July 1 statement, Snowden said, “Although I am convicted of nothing, [the U.S. government] has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.”[233]
Four countries offered Snowden permanent asylum: Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela.[234] No direct flights between Moscow and Venezuela, Bolivia, or Nicaragua existed, however, and the U.S. pressured countries along his route to hand him over. Snowden said in July 2013 that he decided to bid for asylum in Russia because he felt there was no safe way to reach Latin America.[235] Snowden said he remained in Russia because “when we were talking about possibilities for asylum in Latin America, the United States forced down the Bolivian president’s plane”, citing the Morales plane incident. According to Snowden, “the CIA has a very powerful presence [in Latin America] and the governments and the security services there are relatively much less capable than, say, Russia…. they could have basically snatched me….”[236] On the issue, he said “some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.”[237] Snowden said that he would travel from Russia if there was no interference from the U.S. government.[202]
Four months after Snowden received asylum in Russia, Julian Assange commented: “While Venezuela and Ecuador could protect him in the short term, over the long term there could be a change in government. In Russia, he’s safe, he’s well-regarded, and that is not likely to change. That was my advice to Snowden, that he would be physically safest in Russia.”[238]
In an October 2014 interview with The Nation magazine, Snowden reiterated that he had originally intended to travel to Latin America: “A lot of people are still unaware that I never intended to end up in Russia.” According to Snowden, the U.S. government “waited until I departed Hong Kong to cancel my passport in order to trap me in Russia.” Snowden added, “If they really wanted to capture me, they would’ve allowed me to travel to Latin America because the CIA can operate with impunity down there. They did not want that; they chose to keep me in Russia.”[239]
Morales plane incident [ edit ]
Spain, France, and Italy (red) denied Bolivian president Evo Morales permission to cross their airspace. Morales’s plane landed in Austria (yellow).
On July 1, 2013, president Evo Morales of Bolivia, who had been attending a conference in Russia, suggested during an interview with RT (formerly Russia Today) that he would consider a request by Snowden for asylum.[240] The following day, Morales’s plane, en route to Bolivia, was rerouted to Austria and landed there, after France, Spain, and Italy denied access to their airspace. While the plane was parked in Vienna, the Spanish ambassador to Austria arrived with two embassy personnel and asked to search the plane but they were denied permission by Morales himself.[241] US officials had raised suspicions that Snowden may have been on board.[242] Morales blamed the U.S. for putting pressure on European countries and said that the grounding of his plane was a violation of international law.[243]
In April 2015, Bolivia’s ambassador to Russia, María Luisa Ramos Urzagaste, accused Julian Assange of inadvertently putting Morales’s life at risk by intentionally providing to the U.S. false rumors that Snowden was on Morales’s plane. Assange responded that “we weren’t expecting this outcome. The result was caused by the United States’ intervention. We can only regret what happened.”[244][245]
Asylum applications [ edit ]
Snowden applied for political asylum to 21 countries.[246][247] A statement attributed to him contended that the U.S. administration, and specifically then–Vice President Joe Biden, had pressured the governments to refuse his asylum petitions. Biden had telephoned President Rafael Correa days prior to Snowden’s remarks, asking the Ecuadorian leader not to grant Snowden asylum.[248] Ecuador had initially offered Snowden a temporary travel document but later withdrew it,[249] and Correa later called the offer a mistake.[250]
In a July 1, 2013 statement published by WikiLeaks, Snowden accused the U.S. government of “using citizenship as a weapon” and using what he described as “old, bad tools of political aggression.” Citing Obama’s promise to not allow “wheeling and dealing” over the case, Snowden commented, “This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile.”[251] Several days later, WikiLeaks announced that Snowden had applied for asylum in six additional countries, but declined to name them, alleging attempted U.S. interference.[252]
After evaluating the law and Snowden’s situation, the French interior ministry rejected his request for asylum.[253] Poland refused to process his application because it did not conform to legal procedure.[254] Brazil’s Foreign Ministry said the government planned no response to Snowden’s asylum request. Germany and India rejected Snowden’s application outright, while Austria, Ecuador, Finland, Norway, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain said he must be on their territory to apply.[255][256][257] In November 2014, Germany announced that Snowden had not renewed his previously denied request and was not being considered for asylum.[258] Glenn Greenwald later reported that Sigmar Gabriel, Vice-Chancellor of Germany, told him the U.S. government had threatened to stop sharing intelligence if Germany offered Snowden asylum or arranged for his travel there.[259]
Putin said on July 1, 2013, that if Snowden wanted to be granted asylum in Russia, he would be required to “stop his work aimed at harming our American partners.”[260] A spokesman for Putin subsequently said that Snowden had withdrawn his asylum application upon learning of the conditions.[261]
In a July 12 meeting at Sheremetyevo Airport with representatives of human rights organizations and lawyers, organized in part by the Russian government,[262] Snowden said he was accepting all offers of asylum that he had already received or would receive. He added that Venezuela’s grant of asylum formalized his asylee status, removing any basis for state interference with his right to asylum.[263] He also said he would request asylum in Russia until he resolved his travel problems.[264] Slovenian correspondent Polonca Frelih, the only journalist, who presented at the July 12 meeting with Snowden, reported that he “looked like someone without daylight for long time but strong enough psychologically” while expressing worries about his medical condition. [265] Russian Federal Migration Service officials confirmed on July 16 that Snowden had submitted an application for temporary asylum.[266] On July 24, Kucherena said his client wanted to find work in Russia, travel and create a life for himself, and had already begun learning Russian.[267]
Amid media reports in early July 2013 attributed to U.S. administration sources that Obama’s one-on-one meeting with Putin, ahead of a G20 meeting in St Petersburg scheduled for September, was in doubt due to Snowden’s protracted sojourn in Russia,[268] top U.S. officials repeatedly made it clear to Moscow that Snowden should immediately be returned to the United States to face charges for the unauthorized leaking of classified information.[269][270][271] His Russian lawyer said Snowden needed asylum because he faced persecution by the U.S. government and feared “that he could be subjected to torture and capital punishment.”[272]
Snowden married Lindsay Mills in 2017. On April 16, 2020, CNN reported that Edward Snowden had requested a three-year extension of his Russian residency permit.[273]
Criminal Complaint Holder Letter Criminal Complaint DOJ Press Release
Eric Holder letter to Russian Justice Minister [ edit ]
In a letter to Russian Minister of Justice Aleksandr Konovalov dated July 23, 2013, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder repudiated Snowden’s claim to refugee status and offered a limited validity passport good for direct return to the U.S.[274] He stated that Snowden would not be subject to torture or the death penalty, and would receive a trial in a civilian court with proper legal counsel.[275] The same day, the Russian president’s spokesman reiterated that his government would not hand over Snowden, commenting that Putin was not personally involved in the matter and that it was being handled through talks between the FBI and Russia’s FSB.[276]
Criminal charges [ edit ]
On June 14, 2013, United States federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint[277] against Snowden, charging him with three felonies: theft of government property and two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 (18 U. S. C. Sect. 792 et. seq.; Publ. L. 65-24) through unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.[5][274]
Specifically, the charges filed in the Criminal Complaint were:
18 U.S.C. 641 Theft of Government Property
18 U.S.C. 793(d) Unauthorized Communication of National Defense Information
18 U.S.C. 798(a)(3) Willful Communication of Classified Intelligence Information to an Unauthorized Person
Each of the three charges carries a maximum possible prison term of ten years. The criminal complaint was initially secret but was unsealed a week later.
Analysis of Criminal Complaint [ edit ]
Stephen P. Mulligan and Jennifer K. Elsea, Legislative attorneys for the Congressional Research Service, provide a 2017 analysis[278] of the uses of the Espionage Act to prosecute unauthorized disclosures of classified information, based on what was disclosed, to whom, and how; the burden of proof requirements e.g. degrees of Mens Rea (guilty mind), and the relationship of such considerations to the First Amendment framework of protections of free speech are also analyzed. The analysis includes the charges against Snowden, among several other cases. The discussion also covers gaps in the legal framework used to prosecute such cases.
Snowden response to Criminal Complaint [ edit ]
Snowden was asked in a January 2014 interview about returning to the U.S. to face the charges in court, as Obama had suggested a few days prior. Snowden explained why he rejected the request:
What he doesn’t say are that the crimes that he’s charged me with are crimes that don’t allow me to make my case. They don’t allow me to defend myself in an open court to the public and convince a jury that what I did was to their benefit. … So it’s, I would say, illustrative that the president would choose to say someone should face the music when he knows the music is a show trial.[61][279]
Snowden’s legal representative, Jesselyn Radack, wrote that “the Espionage Act effectively hinders a person from defending himself before a jury in an open court.” She said that the “arcane World War I law” was never meant to prosecute whistleblowers, but rather spies who betrayed their trust by selling secrets to enemies for profit. Non-profit betrayals were not considered.[280]
Civil Complaint DOJ Press Release DOJ Civil Complaint EDVA Court Ruling
Civil lawsuit [ edit ]
On September 17, 2019, the United States filed a lawsuit, Civil Action No. 1:19-cv-1197-LO-TCB, against Snowden for alleged violations of non-disclosure agreements with the CIA and NSA.[281] The two-count civil complaint alleged that Snowden had violated prepublication obligations related to the publication of his memoir Permanent Record. The complaint listed the publishers Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC d.b.a. Henry Holt and Company and Holtzbrink, as relief-defendants.[282] The Hon. Liam O’Grady, a judge in the Alexandria Division of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia found for the United States (Plaintiff) by summary judgement, on both counts of the action.[283] The judgment also found that Snowden had been paid speaker honorariums totaling $1.03 million for a series of 56 speeches delivered by video link. The effect of the ruling was that the US government can collect the proceeds from his book and speeches and means that Snowden has to relinquish more than $5.2 million earned to a “constructive trust”, created to transfer the money to the government.[18]
Asylum in Russia [ edit ]
On June 23, 2013, Snowden landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport aboard a commercial Aeroflot flight from Hong Kong.[284][208][285] After 39 days in the transit section, he left the airport on August 1 and was granted temporary asylum in Russia for one year by the Federal Migration Service.[286]
Snowden had the choice to apply for renewal of his temporary refugee status for 12 months or requesting a permit for temporary stay for three years.[287] A year later, his temporary refugee status having expired, Snowden received a three-year temporary residency permit allowing him to travel freely within Russia and to go abroad for up to three months. He was not granted permanent political asylum.[288] In 2017, his temporary residency permit was extended for another three years.[7][289]
In December 2013, Snowden told journalist Barton Gellman that supporters in Silicon Valley had donated enough bitcoins for him to live on.[290] (A single bitcoin was then worth about $1,000.[18]) In 2017, Snowden secretly married Lindsay Mills.[291] By 2019, he no longer felt the need to be disguised in public and lived what was described by The Guardian as a “more or less normal life.” He was able to travel around Russia and make a living from speaking arrangements, locally and over the internet.[291]
His memoir Permanent Record was released internationally on September 17, 2019, and while U.S. royalties were expected to be seized, he was able to receive an advance[291] of $4.2 million.[18] The memoir reached the top position on Amazon’s bestseller list that day.[292] Snowden said his work for the NSA and CIA showed him that the United States Intelligence Community (IC) had “hacked the Constitution”, and that he had concluded there was no option for him but to expose his revelations via the press. In the memoir he wrote, “I realized that I was crazy to have imagined that the Supreme Court, or Congress, or President Obama, seeking to distance his administration from President George W. Bush’s, would ever hold the IC legally responsible – for anything”.[293] Of Russia he said, “One of the things that is lost in all the problematic politics of the Russian government is the fact this is one of the most beautiful countries in the world” with “friendly” and “warm” people.[291]
Snowden has also used the pseudonym John Dobbertin. In 2016, from Russia, Snowden participated in the creation ceremony of the zcash cryptocurrency as John Dobbertin, by briefly holding a part of the private cryptographic key for the zcash genesis block, before destroying it.[294]
On November 1, 2019, new amendments took effect introducing a permanent residence permit for the first time and removing the requirement to renew the pre-2019 so-called “permanent” residence permit every five years.[295][296] The new permanent residence permit must be replaced three times in a lifetime like an ordinary internal passport for Russian citizens.[297] In accordance with that law, Snowden was in October 2020 granted permanent residence in Russia instead of another extension.[7][298]
In April 2020, an amendment to Russian nationality law allowing foreigners to obtain Russian citizenship without renouncing a foreign citizenship came into force.[299] In November 2020, Snowden announced that he and his wife, Lindsay, who was expecting their son in late December, were applying for dual U.S.-Russian citizenship in order not to be separated from him “in this era of pandemics and closed borders.”[300]
Political views[edit]
Snowden has said that, in the 2008 presidential election, he voted for a third-party candidate, though he “believed in Obama’s promises.” Following the election, he believed President Barack Obama was continuing policies espoused by George W. Bush.[301]
In accounts published in June 2013, interviewers noted that Snowden’s laptop displayed stickers supporting Internet freedom organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Tor Project.[302] A week after publication of his leaks began, Ars Technica confirmed that Snowden had been an active participant at the site’s online forum from 2001 through May 2012, discussing a variety of topics under the pseudonym “TheTrueHOOHA.”[303] In an online discussion about racism in 2009, Snowden said: ”I went to London just last year it’s where all of your muslims live I didn’t want to get out of the car. I thought I had gotten off of the plane in the wrong country… it was terrifying.”[304][305][306][307] In a January 2009 entry, TheTrueHOOHA exhibited strong support for the U.S. security state apparatus and said leakers of classified information “should be shot in the balls.”[308] However, Snowden disliked Obama’s CIA director appointment of Leon Panetta, saying “Obama just named a fucking politician to run the CIA.”[309] Snowden was also offended by a possible ban on assault weapons, writing “Me and all my lunatic, gun-toting NRA compatriots would be on the steps of Congress before the C-Span feed finished.”[309] Snowden disliked Obama’s economic policies, was against Social Security, and favored Ron Paul’s call for a return to the gold standard.[309] In 2014, Snowden supported a universal basic income.[310]
Reaction [ edit ]
United States[edit]
Barack Obama [ edit ]
In response to outrage by European leaders, President Barack Obama said in early July 2013 that all nations collect intelligence, including those expressing outrage. His remarks came in response to an article in the German magazine Der Spiegel.[311]
In 2014, Obama stated, “our nation’s defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation’s secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it into their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy.” He objected to the “sensational” way the leaks were reported, saying the reporting often “shed more heat than light.” He said that the disclosures had revealed “methods to our adversaries that could impact our operations.”[312]
During a November 2016 interview with the German broadcaster ARD and the German paper Der Spiegel, then-outgoing President Obama said he “can’t” pardon Edward Snowden unless he is physically submitted to US authorities on US soil.[313]
Donald Trump [ edit ]
In 2013, Donald Trump made a series of tweets in which he referred to Snowden as a “traitor”, saying he gave “serious information to China and Russia” and “should be executed”. Later that year he added a caveat, tweeting “if it and he could reveal Obama’s [birth] records, I might become a major fan”.[314]
In August 2020, Trump said during a press conference that he would “take a look” at pardoning Snowden, and added that he was “not that aware of the Snowden situation”.[315][316] He stated, “There are many, many people – it seems to be a split decision that many people think that he should be somehow treated differently, and other people think he did very bad things, and I’m going to take a very good look at it.”[293]
Forbes described Trump’s willingness to consider a pardon as “leagues away” from his 2013 views. Snowden responded to the announcement saying, “the last time we heard a White House considering a pardon was 2016, when the very same Attorney General who once charged me conceded that, on balance, my work in exposing the NSA’s unconstitutional system of mass surveillance had been ‘a public service’.”[317] Top members of the House Armed Services Committee immediately voiced strong opposition to a pardon, saying Snowden’s actions resulted in “tremendous harm” to national security, and that he needed to stand trial. Liz Cheney called the idea of a pardon “unconscionable”. A week prior to the announcement, Trump also said he had been thinking of letting Snowden return to the U.S. without facing any time in jail.[316]
Days later, Attorney General William Barr told the AP he was “vehemently opposed” to the idea of a pardon, saying “[Snowden] was a traitor and the information he provided our adversaries greatly hurt the safety of the American people, he was peddling it around like a commercial merchant. We can’t tolerate that.”[293]
Public figures [ edit ]
Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg called Snowden’s release of NSA material the most significant leak in U.S. history.[318][319] Shortly before the September 2016 release of his biographical thriller film Snowden, a semi-fictionalized drama based on the life of Edward Snowden with a short appearance by Snowden himself, Oliver Stone said that Snowden should be pardoned, calling him a “patriot above all” and suggesting that he should run the NSA himself.[320]
In a December 18, 2013, CNN editorial, former NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe, known for his involvement in the NSA’s Trailblazer Project, noted that a federal judge for the District of Columbia, the Hon. Richard J. Leon had ruled in a contemporaneous case before him that the NSA warrantless surveillance program was likely unconstitutional; Wiebe then proposed that Snowden should be granted amnesty and allowed to return to the United States.[321]
Government officials [ edit ]
Numerous high-ranking current or former U.S. government officials reacted publicly to Snowden’s disclosures.
Debate [ edit ]
In the U.S., Snowden’s actions precipitated an intense debate on privacy and warrantless domestic surveillance.[335][336] President Obama was initially dismissive of Snowden, saying “I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.”[337][338][339] In August 2013, Obama rejected the suggestion that Snowden was a patriot,[340] and in November said that “the benefit of the debate he generated was not worth the damage done, because there was another way of doing it.”[341]
In June 2013, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont shared a “must-read” news story on his blog by Ron Fournier, stating “Love him or hate him, we all owe Snowden our thanks for forcing upon the nation an important debate. But the debate shouldn’t be about him. It should be about the gnawing questions his actions raised from the shadows.”[342] In 2015, Sanders stated that “Snowden played a very important role in educating the American public” and that although Snowden should not go unpunished for breaking the law, “that education should be taken into consideration before the sentencing.”[343]
Snowden said in December 2013 that he was “inspired by the global debate” ignited by the leaks and that NSA’s “culture of indiscriminate global espionage … is collapsing.”[344]
At the end of 2013, The Washington Post said that the public debate and its offshoots had produced no meaningful change in policy, with the status quo continuing.[160]
In 2016, on The Axe Files podcast, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said that Snowden “performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made.” Holder nevertheless said that Snowden’s actions were inappropriate and illegal.[345]
In September 2016, the bipartisan U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence completed a review of the Snowden disclosures and said that the federal government would have to spend millions of dollars responding to the fallout from Snowden’s disclosures.[346] The report also said that “the public narrative popularized by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions.”[347] The report was denounced by Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman, who, in an opinion piece for The Century Foundation, called it “aggressively dishonest” and “contemptuous of fact.”[348]
Presidential panel [ edit ]
In August 2013, President Obama said that he had called for a review of U.S. surveillance activities before Snowden had begun revealing details of the NSA’s operations,[340] and announced that he was directing DNI James Clapper “to establish a review group on intelligence and communications technologies.”[349][350] In December, the task force issued 46 recommendations that, if adopted, would subject the NSA to additional scrutiny by the courts, Congress, and the president, and would strip the NSA of the authority to infiltrate American computer systems using backdoors in hardware or software.[351] Panel member Geoffrey R. Stone said there was no evidence that the bulk collection of phone data had stopped any terror attacks.[352]
Court rulings (United States) [ edit ]
On June 6, 2013, in the wake of Snowden’s leaks, conservative public interest lawyer and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit claiming that the federal government had unlawfully collected metadata for his telephone calls and was harassing him. In Klayman v. Obama, Judge Richard J. Leon referred to the NSA’s “almost-Orwellian technology” and ruled the bulk telephone metadata program to be likely unconstitutional.[353] Leon’s ruling was stayed pending an appeal by the government. Snowden later described Judge Leon’s decision as vindication.[354]
On June 11, the ACLU filed a lawsuit against James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, alleging that the NSA’s phone records program was unconstitutional. In December 2013, ten days after Judge Leon’s ruling, Judge William H. Pauley III came to the opposite conclusion. In ACLU v. Clapper, although acknowledging that privacy concerns are not trivial, Pauley found that the potential benefits of surveillance outweigh these considerations and ruled that the NSA’s collection of phone data is legal.[355]
Gary Schmitt, former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wrote that “The two decisions have generated public confusion over the constitutionality of the NSA’s data collection program—a kind of judicial ‘he-said, she-said’ standoff.”[356]
On May 7, 2015, in the case of ACLU v. Clapper, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that Section 215 of the Patriot Act did not authorize the NSA to collect Americans’ calling records in bulk, as exposed by Snowden in 2013. The decision voided U.S. District Judge William Pauley’s December 2013 finding that the NSA program was lawful, and remanded the case to him for further review. The appeals court did not rule on the constitutionality of the bulk surveillance and declined to enjoin the program, noting the pending expiration of relevant parts of the Patriot Act. Circuit Judge Gerard E. Lynch wrote that, given the national security interests at stake, it was prudent to give Congress an opportunity to debate and decide the matter.[357]
On September 2, 2020, a US federal court ruled that the US intelligence’s mass surveillance program, exposed by Edward Snowden, was illegal and possibly unconstitutional. They also cited that the US intelligence leaders, who publicly defended it, were not telling the truth.[21]
USA Freedom Act [ edit ]
On June 2, 2015, the U.S. Senate passed, and President Obama signed, the USA Freedom Act which restored in modified form several provisions of the Patriot Act that had expired the day before, while for the first time imposing some limits on the bulk collection of telecommunication data on U.S. citizens by American intelligence agencies. The new restrictions were widely seen as stemming from Snowden’s revelations.[358][359]
Europe [edit]
In an official report published in October 2015, the United Nations special rapporteur for the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of speech, Professor David Kaye, criticized the U.S. government’s harsh treatment of, and bringing criminal charges against, whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden. The report found that Snowden’s revelations were important for people everywhere and made “a deep and lasting impact on law, policy, and politics.”[360][361] The European Parliament invited Snowden to make a pre-recorded video appearance to aid their NSA investigation.[362][363] Snowden gave written testimony in which he said that he was seeking asylum in the EU, but that he was told by European Parliamentarians that the U.S. would not allow EU partners to make such an offer.[364] He told the Parliament that the NSA was working with the security agencies of EU states to “get access to as much data of EU citizens as possible.”[365] He said that the NSA’s Foreign Affairs Division lobbies the EU and other countries to change their laws, allowing for “everyone in the country” to be spied on legally.[366]
By mid-2013, Snowden had applied for asylum in 21 countries, including countries in Europe and South America,[246][247] obtaining negative responses in most cases.
Austria, Italy and Switzerland [ edit ]
Snowden applied for asylum in Austria,[367] Italy[368] and Switzerland.[369][370][371] Snowden, speaking to a Geneva, Switzerland audience via video link from Moscow, said he would love to return to Geneva, where he had previously worked undercover for the CIA. Swiss media said that the Swiss Attorney General had determined that Switzerland would not extradite Snowden if the US request were considered “politically motivated”. Switzerland would grant Snowden asylum if he revealed the extent of espionage activities by the United States government. According to the paper Sonntags Zeitung, Snowden would be granted safe entry and residency in Switzerland, in return for his knowledge of American intelligence activities. Swiss paper Le Matin reported that Snowden’s activity could be part of criminal proceedings or part of a parliamentary inquiry. Extradition would also be rejected if Snowden faced the death penalty, for which the United States has already provided assurances. The three felony charges which Snowden faces each carry a maximum of 10 years imprisonment. As reported in Der Bund, the upper-level Swiss government could create an obstacle.
France [ edit ]
On September 16, 2019, it was reported that Snowden had said he “would love” to get political asylum in France.[372] Snowden first applied unsuccessfully for asylum in France in 2013, under then French President François Hollande. His second request under President Emmanuel Macron, was favorably received by Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet. However, no other members of the French government were known to express support for Snowden’s asylum request, possibly due to the potential adverse diplomatic consequences.
Germany [ edit ]
Hans-Georg Maaßen, head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic security agency, speculated that Snowden could have been working for the Russian government.[373][374] Snowden rejected this insinuation,[375] speculating on Twitter in German that “it cannot be proven if Maaßen is an agent of the SVR or FSB.”[376] On October 31, 2013, Snowden met with German Green Party lawmaker Hans-Christian Ströbele in Moscow, to discuss the possibility of Snowden giving testimony in Germany.[377] At the meeting, Snowden gave Ströbele a letter to the German government, parliament, and federal Attorney-General, the details of which were to later be made public. Germany later blocked Snowden from testifying in person in an NSA inquiry, citing a potential grave strain on US-German relations.[378]
Nordic countries [ edit ]
The FBI demanded that Nordic countries arrest Snowden, should he visit their countries.[379] Snowden made asylum requests to Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.[246] All requests were ultimately denied, with varying degrees of severity in the response. According to Finnish foreign ministry spokeswoman Tytti Pylkkö, Snowden made an asylum request to Finland by sending an application to the Finnish embassy in Moscow, while he was confined to the transit area of the Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow but was told that Finnish law required him to be on Finnish soil.[380] According to SVT News, Snowden met with three Swedish MP’s; Matthias Sundin (L), Jakop Dalunde (MP) and Cecilia Magnusson (M), in Moscow, to discuss his views on mass surveillance.[381] The meeting was organized by the Right Livelihood Award Foundation, which awarded Snowden the Right Livelihood Honorary Award,[382] often called Sweden’s “Alternative Nobel Prize.” According to the foundation, the prize was for Snowden’s work on press freedom. Sweden ultimately rejected Snowden’s asylum, however, so the award was accepted by his father, Lon Snowden, on his behalf.
Snowden was granted a freedom of speech award by the Oslo branch of the writer’s group PEN International. He applied for asylum in Norway but Norwegian Justice Secretary Pål Lønseth [no] insisted that the application be made on Norwegian soil and further expressed doubt that Snowden met the criteria for gaining asylum – being “important for foreign political reasons”. Snowden then filed a lawsuit for free passage through Norway in order to receive his freedom of speech award, through Oslo’s District Court, followed by an appeals court, and finally Norway’s Supreme Court. The lawsuit was ultimately rejected by the Norwegian Supreme Court.[383][384][385] Snowden also applied for asylum in Denmark, but this was rejected by the center-right Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen who said he could see no reason to grant Snowden asylum, calling him a “criminal”.[386] Apparently, under an agreement with the Danish government, a US government jet lay in wait on standby in Copenhagen, to transfer Snowden back to the United States from any Scandinavian country.[387]
Latin and South America [ edit ]
Support for Snowden came from Latin and South American leaders including the Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Bolivian President Evo Morales, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.[388][389]
International community [ edit ]
A demonstration at Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin during Barack Obama’s visit on June 18, 2013
Crediting the Snowden leaks, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted Resolution 68/167 in December 2013. The non-binding resolution denounced unwarranted digital surveillance and included a symbolic declaration of the right of all individuals to online privacy.[390][391][392]
In July 2014, Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told a news conference in Geneva that the U.S. should abandon its efforts to prosecute Snowden, since his leaks were in the public interest.[393]
Public opinion polls [ edit ]
A rally in Germany in support of Snowden on August 30, 2014
Surveys conducted by news outlets and professional polling organizations found that American public opinion was divided on Snowden’s disclosures and that those polled in Canada and Europe were more supportive of Snowden than respondents in the U.S., although more Americans have grown more supportive of Snowden’s disclosure. In Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Spain, more than 80% of people familiar with Snowden view him positively.[394]
Recognition [ edit ]
For his global surveillance disclosures, Snowden has been honored by publications and organizations based in Europe and the United States. He was voted as The Guardian’s person of the year 2013, garnering four times the number of votes as any other candidate.[395]
Teleconference speaking engagements [ edit ]
In March 2014, Snowden spoke at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive technology conference in Austin, Texas, in front of 3,500 attendees. He participated by teleconference carried over multiple routers running the Google Hangouts platform. On-stage moderators were Christopher Soghoian and Snowden’s legal counsel Wizner, both from the ACLU.[396] Snowden said that the NSA was “setting fire to the future of the internet,” and that the SXSW audience was “the firefighters.”[397][398][399] Attendees could use Twitter to send questions to Snowden, who answered one by saying that information gathered by corporations was much less dangerous than that gathered by a government agency, because “governments have the power to deprive you of your rights.”[397] Then-Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) of the House Intelligence Committee, later director of the CIA and secretary of state, had tried unsuccessfully to get the SXSW management to cancel Snowden’s appearance; instead, SXSW director Hugh Forrest said that the NSA was welcome to respond to Snowden at the 2015 conference.[397]
Snowden addressing a TED conference from Russia via telepresence robot
Later that month, Snowden appeared by teleconference at the TED conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Represented on stage by a robot with a video screen, video camera, microphones, and speakers, Snowden conversed with TED curator Chris Anderson and told the attendees that online businesses should act quickly to encrypt their websites. He described the NSA’s PRISM program as the U.S. government using businesses to collect data for them, and that the NSA “intentionally misleads corporate partners” using, as an example, the Bullrun decryption program to create backdoor access.[400] Snowden said he would gladly return to the U.S. if given immunity from prosecution, but that he was more concerned about alerting the public about abuses of government authority.[400] Anderson invited Internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee on stage to converse with Snowden, who said that he would support Berners-Lee’s concept of an “internet Magna Carta” to “encode our values in the structure of the internet.”[400][401]
On September 15, 2014, Snowden appeared via remote video link, along with Julian Assange, on Kim Dotcom’s Moment of Truth town hall meeting held in Auckland.[402] He made a similar video link appearance on February 2, 2015, along with Greenwald, as the keynote speaker at the World Affairs Conference at Upper Canada College in Toronto.[403]
In March 2015, while speaking at the FIFDH (international human rights film festival) he made a public appeal for Switzerland to grant him asylum, saying he would like to return to live in Geneva, where he once worked undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency.[404]
In April 2015, John Oliver, the host of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, flew to Moscow to interview Edward Snowden.[405]
On November 10, 2015, Snowden appeared at the Newseum, via remote video link, for PEN American Center’s “Secret Sources: Whistleblowers, National Security and Free Expression,” event.[406]
In 2015, Snowden earned over $200,000 from digital speaking engagements in the U.S.[407]
Edward Snowden speaking at LibrePlanet 2016
On March 19, 2016, Snowden delivered the opening keynote address of the LibrePlanet conference, a meeting of international free software activists and developers presented by the Free Software Foundation. The conference was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the first such time Snowden spoke via teleconference using a full free software stack, end-to-end.[jargon][408][409][410][411]
On July 21, 2016, Snowden and hardware hacker Bunnie Huang, in a talk at MIT Media Lab’s Forbidden Research event, published research for a smartphone case, the so-called Introspection Engine, that would monitor signals received and sent by that phone to provide an alert to the user if his or her phone is transmitting or receiving information when it shouldn’t be (for example when it’s turned off or in airplane mode), a feature described by Snowden to be useful for journalists or activists operating under hostile governments that would otherwise track their activities through their phones.[412][413][414][415][416]
In August 2020, a court filing by the Department of Justice indicated that Snowden had collected a total of over $1.2 million in speaking fees in addition to advances on books since 2013.[417] In September 2021, Yahoo! Finance reported that for 67 speaking appearances by video link from September 2015–May 2020, Snowden had earned more than $1.2 million. In March 2021, Iowa State University paid him $35,000 for one such speech, his first at a public U.S. college since February 2017, when the University of Pittsburgh paid him $15,000.[18]
In April 2021, Snowden appeared at a Canadian investment conference sponsored by Sunil Tulsiani, a former policeman who had been barred from trading for life after dishonest behavior.[418] Snowden took the opportunity to affirm his role as a whistleblower, inform viewers of Tulsiani’s background, and encourage investors to conduct proper research before spending any money.[418][419]
The “Snowden effect” [ edit ]
In July 2013, media critic Jay Rosen defined the “Snowden effect” as “Direct and indirect gains in public knowledge from the cascade of events and further reporting that followed Edward Snowden’s leaks of classified information about the surveillance state in the U.S.”[420] In December 2013, The Nation wrote that Snowden had sparked an overdue debate about national security and individual privacy.[421] In Forbes, the effect was seen to have nearly united the U.S. Congress in opposition to the massive post-9/11 domestic intelligence gathering system.[422] In its Spring 2014 Global Attitudes Survey, the Pew Research Center found that Snowden’s disclosures had tarnished the image of the United States, especially in Europe and Latin America.[423]
Jewel v. NSA [ edit ]
On November 2, 2018, Snowden provided a court declaration in Jewel v. National Security Agency.[424][425][426]
Bibliography[edit]
In popular culture[edit]
Snowden’s impact as a public figure has been felt in cinema,[429] television,[430] advertising,[431] video games,[432][433] literature,[434][435] music,[436][437][438] statuary,[439][440] and social media.
Snowden gave Channel 4’s Alternative Christmas Message in December 2013.[443]
The film Snowden, based on Snowden’s leaking of classified US government material, directed by Oliver Stone and written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald, was released in 2016.[444] The documentary Citizenfour directed by Laura Poitras won Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards.[445]
See also[edit]
Notes [edit]
^ [214] Hong Kong also wanted more details of the charges and evidence against Snowden to make sure it was not a political case. Yuen said he spoke to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder by phone to reinforce the request for details “absolutely necessary” for the detention of Snowden. Yuen said “As the US government had failed to provide the information by the time Snowden left Hong Kong, it was impossible for the Department of Justice to apply to a court for a temporary warrant of arrest. In fact, even at this time, the US government has still not provided the details we asked for.”[215] Hong Kong’s Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen argued that government officials did not issue a provisional arrest warrant for Snowden due to “discrepancies and missing information” in the paperwork sent by U.S. authorities. Yuen explained that Snowden’s full name was inconsistent, and his U.S. passport number was also missing.Hong Kong also wanted more details of the charges and evidence against Snowden to make sure it was not a political case. Yuen said he spoke to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder by phone to reinforce the request for details “absolutely necessary” for the detention of Snowden. Yuen said “As the US government had failed to provide the information by the time Snowden left Hong Kong, it was impossible for the Department of Justice to apply to a court for a temporary warrant of arrest. In fact, even at this time, the US government has still not provided the details we asked for.”
References[edit]
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