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.
Where is Edward Snowden hiding?
Edward Snowden’s residency in Russia is part of the aftermath of the global surveillance disclosures made by Edward Snowden. On June 23, 2013, Snowden flew from Hong Kong to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport. Observing that his U.S. passport had been cancelled, Russian authorities restricted him to the airport terminal.
On August 1, after 39 days in the transit section, Snowden left the airport. He was granted temporary asylum in Russia for one year. On August 7, 2014, six days after Snowden’s one-year temporary asylum expired, his Russian lawyer announced that Snowden had received a three-year residency permit. It allowed him to travel freely within Russia and to go abroad for up to three months.
In October 2020, after Snowden applied to renew his temporary permit, Russia granted him unlimited permanent residency. In November 2020, Snowden announced that he and his wife were applying for Russian citizenship, but that they “remain Americans, raising our son with all the values of America we love”.