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Edward Snowden (1983 - ) Edward Snowden, born on this day in 1983, is an American whistleblower who leaked highly classified information from the NSA in 2013 when he was working as a CIA employee,...

Edward Snowden (1983 - )

Tue Jun 21, 1983

Image: Edward Snowden speaks about the NSA leaks in an interview with reporter Glenn Greenwald at the hotel The Mira Hong Kong. [Wikipedia]

Edward Snowden, born on this day in 1983, is an American whistleblower who leaked highly classified information from the NSA in 2013 when he was working as a CIA employee, exposing multiple governments' widespread surveillance programs.

Snowden's disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, prompting a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.

In 2013, the United States Department of Justice unsealed charges against Snowden of two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, revoking his passport. Two days later, he flew into a Moscow Airport, where Russian authorities noted that his U.S. passport had been canceled, and he could not leave the airport terminal for over one month.

Russia later granted Snowden the right of asylum with an initial visa for residence for one year, and he continues to reside there on extension today.

"Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give to an American."
- Edward Snowden

Date: 1983-06-21
Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, www.theguardian.com.
Tags: #Birthdays.
Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org

64 comments

I appreciate what he did. I hate that he is in Russia.
- Reminder that the reason is in Russia is because the US trapped him there, that was not his intended destination. The US was leveraging every country they could to prevent Snowden flying anywhere. They ended up cancelling his passport while he was on a flight from Hong Kong to Moscow in transit to a final destination somewhere in Latin America.
  So he ended up being stuck in the international terminal in Moscow and not able to even leave the airport since he had no valid passport. Russia and the US do not have an extradition agreement, and the US has always refused to send criminals back to Russia, so they did the same, also citing that his actions would not have even violated Russian law. Eventually over a month later they processed a temporary one year asylum request since he was stuck in Russia anyway. And that was extended until he was granted permanent residency in 2020.
  In short the only reason he ended up in Russia is because the US trapped him there.
  
  I’ve seen what Russia does to American citizens they detain (atheletes, reporters, teachers, etc.).
  It’s telling that Edward Snowden, a former CIA agent, would not get the same or worse treatment in Russia.
- To be fair to him, he's been in Russia since like 2013 which was before all the Ukraine stuff really started to blow up. And from a practical point of view, he's probably much safer there than he would be in any US friendly country.
  It's unfortunate that his actions in the interests of raising awareness of mass surveillance to the US public were also in the interests of the Russian state, which will be all to happy to see the US government undermined in some way.
  Nonetheless, I think he done the right thing.
  
  After Georgia "stuff" blew up though. And everything before that. And let's be real, you could see who would be their head today even back in 2013.
  He deserved better.
- I hate that he is in Russia.
  Why
  
  Russia uses his presence as a propaganda point. It also give Americans the ability to paint him as an actual traitor (by fleeing to an enemy country).
  Wish he had vanished into the Canadian wilderness or something instead.
  
  Seriously?
  Come on, man.
A common critique of China and Russia is mass surveillance of their citizens and this is true, China through more in depth social registration and facial recognition, Russia through sorm and isp data retention, etc.
The difference is that Snowden revealed America does much of the same but without any transparency. His leaks forced some - PRISM, XKEYSCORE, MUSCULAR, STELLARWIND, etc are now public knowledge and have congressional oversight. But a lot has changed in the past 12 years. Modern AI was essentially nonexistent during his leaks. His leaks did not cover any military or CIA programs. By his own and the governments admission information was highly compartmentalized for security so he potentially only knew a small chunk of what was happening at the time.
Since then there have been a number of tools and things acknowledged but not expanded upon that are used by the government, such as the cia vault 7 tools disclosed by Wikileaks in 2017 (malware for many things, smart TVs, ios and android, cars, many web browsers, etc). To further complicate things a lot of government surveillance in the us happens outside of the government thanks to our military contracting system. Actors such as booz allen, amazon govcloud, and palantir maintain databases so they bypass FISA requirements.
This is finally becoming more concrete with trumps ICE raids as we begin to see leaks that show ICE, DHS, FBI, and local police departments are relying on palantir databases of American citizens for profiling and arrests. These databases did not appear overnight. They were built over a long time and indicate our government clearly has an issue both with spying on its own citizens and being transparent about it.
In the modern age it is clear that we are going to be tracked. We need to demand transparency and regulation surrounding this. We also need to demand fair treatment for federal whistleblowers, especially related to the military as these often get exempted from whistleblowing protections and charged as espionage. Snowden still lives in exile and is facing 30 years, reality winner got the harshest espionage sentence in history for leaking memos about russian hacking in the 2016 election (by the trump admin, which seems unfair), Chelsea manning got 35 years (which was commuted by Obama), Daniel hale got 45 months, etc.
- There is no such thing as privacy or security anymore.
Cant forget about the OG Thomas A Drake who blew the whistle years before Snowden
I think it's hilarious that he sacrificed his life to reveal US secrets because he couldn't stomach the idea of widespread domestic spying.
But then in Russia suddenly he cares about his safety again, and he's repeating their propaganda... helping others to get bombed.
But nah, he's American and the people being terrorized by Russia are foreigners. Makes sense he doesn't care and only risks his life for very specific things related to American intelligence.
I got his book as an audiobook. was pretty good
It's all so tiresome, the machine controls you no matter what; any collective effort is futile when everyone is divided. There government runs mass surveillance programs on its on citizens and you're powerless against it; there are people living in hell and there is nothing you can do about it — whose crimes are they paying for? It's to divide, always to divide.
Can he tell us the meaning of life, now that he's 42?
Disclosure: Ed Snowden was nearly casual to my death. (Long story.)
He isn’t a hero, at least not anymore.
He made his krevati, he can sleep in it.

64 comments