Edward Joseph Snowden is an American-born and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013 when he was an employee and subcontractor.
His illegal disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many runs by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments, and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
In early 2016, Snowden became the president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a San Francisco–based nonprofit organization that aims to protect journalists from hacking and government surveillance. He also has a job at an unnamed Russian IT company.
In 2017, he married Lindsay Mills. On September 17, 2019, his memoir Permanent Record was published. On September 2, 2020, a U.S. federal court ruled in United States v. Moalin that the U.S. intelligence’s mass surveillance program exposed by Snowden was illegal and possibly unconstitutional.
How did Edward Snowden learn to code?
The TOI report says that Snowden “spent a week in New Delhi training in core Java programming and advanced ethical hacking and this training that got him certified as an EC-Council Certified Security Analyst (ECSA).”
And where exactly did Snowden learn all the core Java programming skills in New Delhi? An offshore IT training and certification provider Koenig Solutions which is located in Moti Nagar, New Delhi says the Times of India report. The report says that TOI has also seen a copy of “The Registration of Foreigners Rule 1939 Form C Hotel Arrival report which shows Snowden checked into Koenig Inn run by the institute in Karol Bagh at 2.30 pm on September 3 2010.”
According to Rohit Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Koenig Solutions, Snowden paid over $2000 for training, lodging, etc. The report also quotes a Koenig centre manager Hema Sharma, as saying that Snowden, mostly “kept to himself. He was unassuming and nothing out of the ordinary… He would frequently visit the Haldirams restaurant next to our centre.”