Biography

One of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. [April 2014].

In 2013, he revealed the National Security Agency (NSA) was unconstitutionally seizing the private records of billions of individuals who had not been suspected of any wrongdoing. He revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill. Snowden came to international attention after stories based on the material appeared in The Guardian, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, and The New York Times newspapers. The revelations resulted in the largest debate about reforms to US surveillance policy since 1978.

Snowden made his revelations in Hong Kong. After he left Hong Kong, the US government revoked his passport, forcing him to land in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport without a way to leave. Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin eventually granted him asylum. Snowden's girlfriend Lindsay Mills later moved to Russia to be with him. As of 2017, they remain in Russia.

He scored above 145 on two separate IQ tests, signifying genius-level intelligence.

Is a former CIA and NSA intelligence officer who served as a subject matter expert on technology and cybersecurity.

Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American.

There have, of course, been some stories where my calculation of what is not public interest differs from that of reporters, but it is for this precise reason that publication decisions were entrusted to journalists and their editors. I recognize I have clear biases influencing my judgment.

There is a technical solution to every political problem...In general, if you agree with the first amendment principles, you agree with encryption. It's just code. Arguing against encryption would be analogous to arguing against hidden meanings in paintings or poetry.

The NSA is surely not the Stasi, but we should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundations of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.

What we recoil against most strongly is not that such surveillance can theoretically occur, but that it was done without a majority of society even being aware it was possible.