It was at a job-fair, in 2006, in which a young, self-proclaimed ‘computer wizard’ called Edward Snowden found his calling. He was offered a position at the Central Intelligence Agency’s global communications division in Langley, and he was later placed onto a diplomatic cover exercise in Switzerland. ‘I realised I was part of something that was doing more harm than good,’ Snowden said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper. A disillusioned Snowden made some serious allegations about the CIA using ‘dirty tricks’ during that particular operation, claiming that his employers bribed the police and judiciary in order to encourage a banker to become an informant.
Three years later, Snowden was assigned to a National Security Agency facility in Japan. His time here was focused on educating high-ranking military officials on cyber-security, in particular the growing threat of Chinese hackers. He returned to the United States in 2011, spending a year as a lead technologist and having occasional meetings with the CIA’s chief information and technology officers. Snowden started downloading top-secret government documents about spying programs, shortly before his ‘breaking point’ where he claimed to witness a Cabinet-level official lying under oath. Snowden, now reassigned to a CIA consulting firm, gathered further data and, according to an anonymous source, persuaded co-workers to share passwords to assist with this objective. In June 2013, Edward Snowden met with journalists in a Hong Kong hotel room and shared with them ‘The NSA Files’. His intention, according to The Guardian, was to start a debate about mass surveillance. He certainly succeeded.
Officials can only estimate the size of Snowden’s disclosure; however, it is agreed that the number of documents is in the region of one million. He stated that he ‘carefully evaluated every single document disclosed to ensure that each was in the public interest.’ Despite his screening methods, the improper redaction of a document by the New York Times did result in the exposure of intelligence activity against al-Qaeda. Snowden’s cache of documents also revealed details of Tempora, a British black-ops surveillance program involving the interception of large amounts of citizens’ personal data. Sir David Omand, former director of GCHQ, described the decryption of Snowden’s files by Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies as ‘a huge strategic setback – harming Britain and its allies.’ It is not clear how these agencies obtained the data; however, it may be possible that, according to The Sunday Times, Snowden volunteered the data at a price.
The NSA contactor Booz Allen Hamilton have been criticised for choosing to employ Edward Snowden despite finding discrepancies within a résumé that he submitted for the $122,000-a-year job. One example of untrue and incorrect information was the mention of a master’s degree in computer studies which ‘was to be received from the University of Liverpool’. A university spokesman confirmed that Snowden was ‘not active in his studies and did not complete the programme.’ The résumé also stated that he attended classes at John Hopkins University, in Maryland, however a spokeswoman for that university said no records could be found to show that Snowden had ever attended the university as he had claimed.
In June 2013, Snowden took a flight to Moscow, Russia where he was restricted to the airport terminal by the authorities due to his US passport having been cancelled. His employment officially ended one month after departing his home country. He was granted temporary asylum in Russia for a year, and then, after this expired, a three-year residency permit. In 2017 it was said, possibly incorrectly, by a senior US official that Russia was considering extraditing Snowden. As of this month, Edward Snowden remains in Moscow despite being sought by the United States for trial. The human rights organisation ‘Amnesty International’ has expressed their view that Snowden should be pardoned rather than imprisoned.
Edward Snowden has written his memoirs, entitled ‘Permanent Record’, which will be released in twenty countries this month. The publishers of this book, Macmillan, who are based in the UK, said of Snowden: ‘He displayed enormous courage in giving up his future for the good of his country and his is an incredible American story.’ He has already been portrayed in a feature film directed by Oliver Stone and in the 2014 Academy Award winning documentary Citizenfour. Snowden is also active on Twitter, commenting on a range of issues.
Elliot Tyler 