Edward Snowden

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Birthname	Edward Snowden
Date of Birth	June 21, 1983
Birth Place	Elisabeth City, North Carolina
Nationality	American
Occupation	Computer Professional
Biography	Best known for his leak of confidential NSA documents that revealed the unlawful practices of their security programs

Life Before the Government Employment

Edward Snowden was born on June 21, 1983. Edward Snowden was born in Elisabeth City, North Carolina, but grew up in the suburbs of Maryland. Coincidentally, he did not grow up far from the NSA’s headquarters at Fort Meade, in the suburbs of Maryland. Snowden did not graduate from college or high school, but was enrolled in the Anne Arundel County public school system until he was forced to miss eight months of school due to a battle with mononucleosis. Snowden then enrolled in community college, and began to explore his passion in technology. At this point in time Snowden began to work for one of his friends that ran his own tech company.

Family Ties to Government Service

Snowden came from a family that was heavily involved in government affairs. In one of his extensive interviews with the magazine WIRED, Snowden says “Everybody in my family has worked for the government in one way or another.” Snowden’s family ties to Government Agencies go all the way back to his maternal Grandfather, who worked in the Pentagon, continued through his parents and to his sister, Jessica, who was a lawyer for The Federal Judicial Center in Washington. Snowden found himself attracted to the idea of being able to serve his country. Inspired by the events that took place on 9/11 and the ensuing Iraq War on Terrorism, Snowden volunteered his services to the Army special forces in 2004. He passed aptitude tests, but was discharged after suffering two broken legs during a training exercise. After accepting and excelling at a job with the CIA, Snowden was then transferred to a job with the NSA. He worked for the NSA until he left the country, prior to leaking the Government documents that he had collected.

The Leak

In early June 2013, Edward Snowden leaked government documents that he had collected during his time at the NSA to journalist Glenn Greenwald, journalist Barton Gellman and filmmaker Laura Poitras. He also gave the documents to four organizations: First Look Media, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Snowden had seen first hand what the NSA had been doing with the people's private data, and decided that it was time for action. By releasing these documents, he risked being sent to prison and charged with treason against the government that he had once wanted to serve so badly. In his exclusive interview with WIRED magazine, Snowden explains his motivations for leaking the documents. In an audio recording embedded in the article, he says: "My name is Ed Snowden. I used to work for the government, and now I work for the public. Technology is the greatest equalizer in human history. It allows us to try on new faces, join new communities, engage in new conversations, and discover who we are, and what we want to become. Our generation is facing a time where governments around the world are questioning whether or not individuals can be trusted with the power of technology, if we can be left to our own devices and use it creatively rather than destructively. While I don’t know the answer to that question, what I do know is that governments shouldn’t be the ones to decide, we should. And what I did was not to benefit myself, I didn’t ask for money, I gave this information back to public hands, and the reason I did that was not to gain a label, but to give you back a choice about the country you want to live in" Snowden also insists that though he was the leaker, he does not have copies of the original documents anymore.

Government Programs Revealed in the Leak

PRISM might have been the most talked about government program after Snowden's leak, but the information did not stop there. In the documents, there was also information about other programs such as: Upstream, Bullrun, Xkeyscore and, Quantuminsert, and Dishfire. The documents also included information about the United Kingdom's version of the NSA, the GCHQ, being involved in similar activity that the NSA was.

• PRISM
  • Most of the reports from the respective agencies that had copies of the documents Snowden leaked focused on the NSA program PRISM. The report from the Guardian claimed that the PRISM program was using nine leading American internet companies servers to extract personal data such as email, audio chats, video chats, documents, and other forms of data. It was also reported that these companies are allowing the government to do this. Snowden later confirmed that tons of US communications “were being intercepted and stored without a warrant, without any requirement for criminal suspicion, probable cause, or individual designation.” The nine companies that were listed in the secret documents were: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. The program was started during the Bush Administration, under the Protect America Act of 2007. When the initial reports were released, most of the companies that were rumored to be involved unsurprisingly denied to have any knowledge of the program or ever allowing the government unrestricted access to their servers.
• Bullrun
  • Project Bullrun was the NSA's decryption program. It's main focus was to crack the encryption of network communication technology. Snowden did not have complete access to information on this program, so the only information that is known about it is contained in the slides released. The program is used by the NSA to crack online encryption in order to get access to personal data. The program was designed to weaken online commercial encryption by inserting vulnerabilities that only the NSA knew about. This encryption protected sensitive data such as emails, banking, and medical records, etc.
• Dishfire
  • Dishfire is a program uses text messages and missed call alerts to retrieve data about people. The program is said to have collected almost 200 million text messages a day from places all around the world. The program does not only collect information from previous surveillance targets, but aims to collect as much data as possible about anything and everything that is being transmitted via text message.
• Tailored Access Operations
  • Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, is a program that hacks into, monitors, and collects data from foreign computer systems. TAO reportedly consists of over one thousand military and civilian computer hackers, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer hardware and software designers, and electrical engineers. These workers work in shifts twenty-four hours a day, looking to find and hack potential security threats to the United States. Tailored Access Operations is centered in Fort Meade.
• Xkeyscore

Ethical Implications

The actions of Edward Snowden have brought to light the