Edward Snowden

He was born Edward Joseph Snowden on June 21, 1983, in the port town of Elizabeth City, North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state in the South Atlantic region of the United States; its capital is Raleigh and its largest city is Charlotte. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on November 21, 1789, becoming the 12th state, and its population in the 2020 census was 10,439,388.Open the full entry, in the United States, and spent the first nine years of his life there.⁠[1][2][3]

CNNCNNCNN (Cable News Network) is an Atlanta-based news organization founded by Ted Turner on June 1, 1980, as the world’s first 24-hour television news channel. It has been owned in turn by Turner Broadcasting System, Time Warner, AT&T and Warner Bros. Discovery, became part of Skydance Corporation along with Warner Bros. Discovery in October 2026, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry’s profile states that his father, Lonnie Snowden, is a former Coast Guard officer and that his mother, Elizabeth Snowden, was a federal court administrator. The London Review of Books review of his memoir writes that his father, Lonnie, was an electronics instructor for the Coast Guard; that his mother, Wendy, is descended from passengers of the Mayflower and worked at the National Security Agency (NSA) administering pension benefits; and that his maternal grandfather was a Coast Guard admiral. The Associated PressAssociated PressThe Associated Press is a cooperative news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it is the oldest and largest news agency in the United States.Open the full entry account of the memoir describes his mother as a clerk at the NSA and his father as having served in the Coast Guard.⁠[1][3][4]

In his memoir he writes that as a toddler he watched his father play a flight simulator on a home computer and that he was given a Nintendo Entertainment System at the age of six; as a child he also took apart a Nintendo console and put it back together.⁠[3][4]

In 1992 his father was transferred and the family moved from North Carolina to MarylandMarylandMaryland is a Middle Atlantic state of the United States, deeply indented by Chesapeake Bay and bordered by Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, the District of Columbia and West Virginia; its capital is Annapolis and its largest city is Baltimore. One of the original 13 states, it ratified the U.S. Constitution on April 28, 1788, as the seventh state to do so, and had a population of 6,177,224 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry; BritannicaEncyclopædia BritannicaEncyclopædia Britannica is a general English-language encyclopedia first published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1768; the name also refers to its publisher, Chicago-based Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. (which presents itself as The Britannica Group). The print edition ended in 2012, and the company’s main businesses since then have been the online encyclopedia Britannica.com, digital education products for schools and libraries, and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.Open the full entry writes that the family settled in central Maryland, near Fort Meade, where the NSA has its headquarters. The same year the family got its first modem, and he spent much of his spare hours online on bulletin boards and gaming sites.⁠[3][2]

As a teenager he gained access to the website of Los Alamos National Laboratory. In a 2019 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air he recalled that he was a Boy Scout at the time, that he called the laboratory to report the weakness, and that the laboratory asked him to call back when he turned 18; he said he had “simply been curious” and that his mother did not punish him for it. In his memoir he writes that around this period he stopped answering to “Eddie” and began going by “Ed.”⁠[5][3][4]

In his memoir he writes that he disliked school and did little homework, that in his sophomore year he contracted mononucleosis, missed four months and dropped out, and that he then enrolled at a community college to work toward a General Educational Development (GED) credential. He studied intermittently at a community college between 1999 and 2005 and completed a GED but earned no degree.⁠[3][2]

He attended Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, Maryland, from 1999 to 2001 and again from 2004 to 2005; the college’s spokesman, Daniel Baum, said that he received no certificate or degree during his time there and took no cyber-related courses.⁠[6]

In his memoir he writes that his first job was as a web designer for a woman he had met in a Japanese class, and that the two parted ways after the September 11 attacks because he supported the war on terror. In the book he calls his “reflexive, unquestioning support” for the wars that followed September 11 his greatest regret.⁠[3][4]

On May 7, 2004, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserve as a Special Forces candidate, and on September 28 of that year he was discharged without completing any training. The review writes that he broke his leg in basic training and left the army through an “administrative separation”; Right Livelihood’s biography states that he was separated after an injury during Special Forces training.⁠[1][2][3][7]

In 2005 he worked as a security guard at a University of MarylandUniversity of Maryland, College ParkThe University of Maryland, College Park is a university in College Park, Maryland, United States, whose forerunner was the Maryland Agricultural College.Open the full entry research facility affiliated with the NSA. In his memoir he describes obtaining a Top Secret/SCI clearance and working the night shift for the NSA at a language center.⁠[2][3]

Britannica writes that he was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2006 and given a top-secret clearance; Right Livelihood’s biography states instead that he joined the CIA in 2005 as a computer systems engineer. He was a systems administrator and worked as a subcontractor for the CIA at its headquarters in McLean, VirginiaVirginiaVirginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state whose capital is Richmond. It entered the Union on June 25, 1788, as the 10th state, and had a population of 8,631,393 in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020).Open the full entry.⁠[2][7][3]

In a September 2019 interview on NPR’s Fresh Air he recalled: “On my very first day entering into duty for the CIA, I was required to pledge an oath of service.”⁠[5]

In 2007 the CIA posted him to its station in Geneva under diplomatic cover as a network security technician. In his memoir he writes that in Switzerland he had his first and only experience of human intelligence work, tipping off his commanding officer about the potential usefulness of a Saudi banker he had met at a dinner party.⁠[2][7][3]

In 2009 he left the CIA to work for the NSA as an employee of private contractors, first Dell and later Booz Allen Hamilton. In 2009 he moved to Tokyo to work at the NSA’s Pacific Technical Center.⁠[2][1][3]

In the September 2019 Fresh Air interview he said that he later left “direct mission-related work out in Japan” to become a corporate sales official for Dell at CIA headquarters. In his memoir he describes being diagnosed with epilepsy after returning to the Washington area.⁠[5][3]

He served the CIA, the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency for nearly a decade as a subject-matter expert on technology and cybersecurity.⁠[8]

In 2012 he and his girlfriend moved to HawaiiHawaiiHawaii is a U.S. state consisting of a group of volcanic islands in the central Pacific Ocean; its capital is Honolulu, on the island of Oʻahu. Hawaii was admitted to the Union on August 21, 1959, as the 50th state. Its population at the 2020 Census (April 1, 2020) was 1,455,271.Open the full entry, mostly, he writes in his memoir, because of concern about his health; he worked at an NSA facility known as “the Tunnel.” It was at an NSA office in Hawaii that he later copied the last of the documents he planned to disclose.⁠[3][9]

In 2013 he worked on a Booz Allen Hamilton team in Hawaii for less than three months. He took the job to obtain information about secret NSA activities and to gain access to XKEYSCORE, then collected the documents and leaked them.⁠[1][9][2][3]

In his memoir he says that NSA analysts used collection powers to read the emails of lovers and stalk them online; he concluded that the intelligence community had “hacked the Constitution” and that the courts, Congress and President Barack ObamaBarack ObamaBarack Obama (born 1961) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017, the first African American to hold the office. He was previously an Illinois state senator and a U.S. senator from Illinois, and he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009.Open the full entry would never hold it legally accountable. He writes that he struggled to explain this to his girlfriend: “I couldn’t tell her that my former co-workers at the NSA could target her for surveillance.”⁠[4]

In his memoir he writes that before leaving he emptied his bank accounts, left cash for his girlfriend in a steel ammunition box, and wiped and encrypted his old computers. The House Intelligence Committee’s summary of September 2016 describes him as a disgruntled employee who had frequent conflicts with his managers and states that he was reprimanded two weeks before he began illegally downloading classified documents.⁠[4][10]

Telling his supervisors that he needed a few weeks away for epilepsy treatment, he left for Hong Kong on May 20, 2013. On May 24 he emailed The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is an American daily newspaper founded in Washington in 1877, known for its role in the Pentagon Papers case and the Watergate investigation. Run by the Meyer–Graham family for eighty years from 1933, it has been owned personally by Jeff Bezos since 2013.Open the full entry asking it to publish information about the PRISM program.⁠[9][1][2]

Accounts differ on where he stayed in his first days in Hong Kong. In an article in The InterceptThe InterceptThe Intercept is a New York-based nonprofit investigative news outlet founded on February 10, 2014 by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill under Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media, initially to report on the NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden; it became an independent nonprofit separate from First Look in 2023.Open the full entry on March 21, 2017, Glenn GreenwaldGlenn GreenwaldHost of System Update.Open the full entry writes that some accounts, including the House Intelligence Committee’s report of September 2016, held that he did not check into the Mira Hotel until June 1, leaving eleven days unaccounted for; Greenwald published records that the Mira Hotel had provided to his lawyers in Hong Kong showing that he checked in on May 21 and stayed continuously until June 10, after spending his first night, May 20, at the Icon Hotel. Greenwald and Laura Poitras arrived in Hong Kong on June 2 and spent eight days working with him in his room.⁠[11]

On June 5, 2013, The Guardian disclosed a secret court order requiring VerizonVerizonVerizon (Verizon Communications Inc.) is one of the largest telecommunications carriers in the United States, formed in 2000 through the merger of Bell Atlantic, one of the “Baby Bells,” and GTE. Headquartered in New York City, it operates a nationwide wireless network, Fios fiber broadband and communications services for businesses and government, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.Open the full entry to hand the NSA millions of phone records; on June 6, The Guardian and The Washington Post disclosed PRISM, a program through which the NSA could obtain user data from technology companies. On June 9 the two papers identified him as their source.⁠[1][2]

He was 29 when he came forward, saying: “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.” In a note accompanying the first set of documents he gave The Guardian he wrote: “I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions,” and in his interview with The Guardian he said: “I have no regrets.”⁠[9]

On June 9 Booz Allen Hamilton confirmed that he had worked for the firm for nearly three months; it terminated him on June 10.⁠[1]

On June 12 the South China Morning Post published an interview in which he claimed that the NSA had been hacking into Chinese computers since 2009 and that U.S. agents had hacked networks around the world for years. On June 17, in a live online chat, he said that U.S. access to communications exceeded constitutional limits. On June 18, Sean Joyce, deputy director of the Federal Bureau of InvestigationFederal Bureau of InvestigationThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the federal investigative agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. It grew out of a force of special agents organized by Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte in 1908, has used its present name since 1935 and is headquartered in Washington, D.C.Open the full entry, testified to the House Intelligence Committee that PRISM had helped stop alleged terror plots.⁠[1][2]

On June 14, 2013, federal prosecutors filed a sealed criminal complaint against him in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Booz Allen Hamilton is based; it was unsealed on June 21, his 30th birthday. The complaint lists three charges: theft of government property (18 U.S.C. § 641), unauthorized communication of national defense information (§ 793(d)), and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person (§ 798(a)(3)), the latter two under the Espionage Act of 1917; each carries up to ten years in prison. Section 794, the part of the Espionage Act that can carry the death penalty, was not charged.⁠[1][12][13]

The United States asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, and on June 22 a U.S. official said that the United States had sought his extradition from Hong Kong. The U.S.–Hong Kong extradition treaty makes an exception for offenses of a political character, which have traditionally included espionage. An Icelandic businessman linked to WikiLeaks said that a private plane was waiting in China to take him to Iceland if Iceland granted asylum.⁠[13][12][1]

On June 23, 2013, he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow. The Hong Kong government stated that day that he had left of his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel; because the documents the United States had submitted for a provisional arrest warrant did not fully meet Hong Kong’s legal requirements, the government had asked for more information and, without it, had no legal basis to stop him from leaving. The government also wrote formally to the United States seeking an explanation of reports that U.S. agencies had hacked computer systems in Hong Kong.⁠[14][1]

The United States revoked his passport the same day. In a September 2019 interview with NPR’s Scott Simon he said that it was then Secretary of State John Kerry who canceled his passport as he left Hong Kong for Ecuador and that Russia was not his choice; he was stranded at the Moscow airport while on his way from Hong Kong to Ecuador. He traveled to Moscow with the help of WikiLeaks, and Vladimir Putin confirmed that he was in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport.⁠[1][15][16][2]

He remained in the airport transit zone for more than a month—40 days, in his own words: “I was trapped in that airport for 40 days.” On the number of countries where he sought asylum, Britannica gives about 20, while he himself said in two NPR interviews in September 2019 that it was 27. Vladimir Putin said that Russia would not take part in an extradition to the United States and that if he wished to stay in Russia he “must stop his work aimed at bringing harm to our American partners.”⁠[2][15][5]

On June 30 Der Spiegel published leaked documents showing NSA bugging of European Union offices. On July 12 he met human rights activists and lawyers at the airport and asked Russia for asylum while he awaited passage to Latin America; on July 16 his lawyer said that he had applied for temporary asylum in Russia; and on July 24 Russian media said that documents allowing him to move about Russia while his application was reviewed had been approved.⁠[1]

On August 1, 2013, his lawyer said that Russia had granted him one year of temporary asylum and that he had left the airport. On October 31 the lawyer said that he had been hired by an unnamed Russian website.⁠[1][17]

On November 3, Der Spiegel published a purported letter from him, “A Manifesto for the Truth,” calling for a global solution to mass surveillance; on December 17 he posted an open letter to Brazil offering to help investigate surveillance of Brazilians.⁠[1]

At a White House news conference on August 9, 2013, Barack Obama announced surveillance reforms and an outside group of experts. Asked about him, Obama said: “No, I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot.” He noted that Snowden had been charged with three felonies and could come home, appear before the court with a lawyer and make his case; he also said that he had called for a thorough review of surveillance operations before the leaks, while acknowledging that “Mr. Snowden’s leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response.”⁠[18]

Barack Obama criticized his methods but in August 2013 announced an independent panel to examine government surveillance practices; its findings, published in December 2013, recommended suspending the mass collection of telephone records and tighter oversight of sensitive programs, and Obama acted on a number of the recommendations.⁠[2]

He served as Rector of the University of GlasgowUniversity of GlasgowThe University of Glasgow is a research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded in 1451, it describes itself as the fourth oldest university in the UK, and it is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry from 2014 to 2017.⁠[7]

On January 23, 2014, Attorney General Eric Holder said: “If Mr. Snowden wanted to come back to the United States and enter a plea, we would engage with his lawyers.” He responded in an online chat the same day that, under the current whistleblower protection laws, returning was unfortunately not possible.⁠[1]

In February 2014 he joined the board of Freedom of the Press Foundation, a press-freedom organization, and served as its board president from 2016 to 2022; as of November 2026 he remains a member of the foundation’s board, and he now works on enforcing human rights through new technologies.⁠[8][19][4]

On March 10, 2014, he addressed the South by Southwest conference from Russia by video link, urging surveillance reform; it was his first direct address to Americans since he left the country.⁠[1][20]

On April 14, 2014, The Guardian US and The Washington Post shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, each “for its revelation of widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency.” He wrote in an article on the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s website that day: “Today’s decision is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government.”⁠[21][22]

In an interview with NBCNBCNBC (National Broadcasting Company) is an American national commercial broadcast television network. It was founded by RCA in 1926, began as a radio network and later developed television. With ABC and CBS it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it passed to General Electric with RCA in 1986, merged with Universal to form NBCUniversal in 2004, has been controlled by Comcast since 2011, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry on May 28, 2014, he said that he had been trained as a spy and had worked undercover; National Security Adviser Susan Rice denied that he had ever been a spy.⁠[1]

On August 7, 2014, his lawyer announced that his stay in Russia had been extended by three years; Russia issued him a three-year residence permit in August 2014 and extended it in 2017.⁠[1][2]

At the 87th Academy Awards on February 22, 2015, Citizenfour (2014), a documentary that includes footage of his 2013 interviews in Hong Kong, won the award for Best Documentary Feature; the winners were Laura Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy and Dirk Wilutzky.⁠[23][2]

On February 23, 2015, NSA Director Michael Rogers said that the leaks had had a material impact on the agency’s ability to detect terror plots.⁠[1]

In April 2015 HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver aired John Oliver’s interview with him, which covered government surveillance and the Patriot Act along with lighter topics. Before that his face had been streamed onto a big screen at South by Southwest; he had appeared on panels, one of them the final public appearance of The New York TimesThe New York TimesThe New York Times is an American morning daily newspaper published in New York City. Founded in 1851, it is published by The New York Times Company.Open the full entry media columnist David Carr; and he had roamed the halls of the TED conference on the screen of a telepresence robot.⁠[20]

After Barack Obama signed the USA Freedom Act, he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times on June 4, 2015, calling the end of mass phone surveillance a historic victory. Congress effectively ended the NSA’s bulk phone metadata program in 2015.⁠[1][24]

On July 28, 2015, the White House rejected a petition, signed by more than 167,000 people, asking for him to be pardoned.⁠[1]

On September 29, 2015, he joined Twitter and gained more than 110,000 followers in under an hour. On October 5 he said that he would accept prison if allowed to return, and that he and his lawyers were waiting for talks on a deal.⁠[1]

On April 27, 2016, the first trailer was released for Snowden, a biopic directed by Oliver StoneOliver StoneOliver Stone is an American film director, screenwriter and producer and a Vietnam War veteran who has won three Academy Awards for films including Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, also known for Wall Street and JFK; in later years he turned to documentaries, and his interview films with leaders such as Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Vladimir Putin drew controversy.Open the full entry and slated to premiere on September 16. Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay with Kieran Fitzgerald, based on Luke Harding’s The Snowden Files and Time of the Octopus by his Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena; Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays him, and the cast also includes Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Rhys Ifans, Nicolas Cage, Scott Eastwood, Joely Richardson, Timothy Olyphant and Ben Schnetzer.⁠[25][26]

On May 30, 2016, former Attorney General Eric Holder said that he had performed a public service but must still pay a penalty.⁠[1]

On September 15, 2016, all members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence adopted the classified 36-page report of its two-year investigation of his disclosures, and the committee issued a four-page summary of its conclusions. That summary states that he took about 1.5 million pages of classified documents, that his disclosures inflicted great harm on U.S. national security and infringed on the privacy of thousands of government employees and contractors, and that the vast majority of the documents he stole had no connection to privacy or civil liberties. The committee’s chairman, Devin Nunes, called him a “traitor” who willfully betrayed his colleagues and his country, and committee member Adam Schiff said the review showed his claims to be self-serving and false. Each member of the committee sent a letter to Barack Obama asking him not to pardon Snowden; in an interview that week he said that he was seeking a pardon from Obama.⁠[10]

On December 22 Congress released a report stating that he had been in contact with Russian intelligence officials since arriving in Russia, which he immediately disputed on Twitter. On December 23 the committee submitted its declassified report to the House (H. Rept. 114-891).⁠[1][27]

In 2017 he married his American partner, Lindsay Mills, in Moscow. In his memoir he writes that the two met through the website HotOrNot.com; she later joined him in Russia.⁠[17][16][3][4]

His memoir, Permanent Record, was published on September 17, 2019—in the United States by Metropolitan Books, an imprint of Henry Holt; in the United Kingdom by Pan Macmillan; and in Germany by S. Fischer Verlag—in more than 20 countries, with the editing led by Metropolitan Books publisher Sara Bershtel. Macmillan’s chief executive, John Sargent, said in the statement announcing the book: “Like him or not, his is an incredible American story.”⁠[28][29]

On the same day the U.S. Department of Justice filed a civil lawsuit alleging that he had breached his non-disclosure agreements with the CIA and the NSA by publishing the book without submitting it for pre-publication review and by giving public speeches on intelligence matters. The suit did not seek to stop the book’s publication or distribution; relying on the Supreme Court of the United StatesSupreme Court of the United StatesThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court of the U.S. federal judiciary. Established under the Constitution and the Judiciary Act of 1789, it has consisted since 1869 of a Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices and sits in Washington, D.C.Open the full entry decision in Snepp v. United States, it sought all of his proceeds from the book, and named the publishing entities as nominal defendants. The department stated that the civil case was separate from the criminal charges against him and that its claims were allegations only.⁠[29][30]

The book was his first detailed account of his life; in it he warns of government efforts to delegitimize journalism and support authoritarian movements, writing: “What is real is being purposely conflated with what is fake.”⁠[4]

In interviews for the book he spoke about his situation in Russia. In a September 2019 interview with NPR’s Scott Simon he said: “I have been criticizing the Russian government while I am here.” On Fresh Air he said: “I have never and will never accept money or housing or any other assistance from the Russian government,” and: “My ultimate goal will always be to return to the United States.” He said that he would return to stand trial on the condition that he be allowed to present a public interest defense to a jury.⁠[15][5]

In a CBSCBSCBS is an American commercial broadcast television network. It was founded in 1927 as United Independent Broadcasters, renamed the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1928, and grew from a radio network into a television network under William S. Paley. With ABC and NBC it is one of the three traditional U.S. broadcast networks; it has been owned in turn by Westinghouse, Viacom, ViacomCBS and Paramount Global, has been owned by Paramount Skydance Corporation since 2025, and is one of the five networks that rotate in the White House television pool.Open the full entry interview in 2019 he acknowledged that living in Russia was “problematic,” saying: “of course I would like to return to the United States.”⁠[17]

In December 2019 the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled for the government on liability, finding that he had breached his contractual and fiduciary obligations by publishing Permanent Record and giving prepared remarks within the scope of his pre-publication review obligations.⁠[30]

At a news conference at his private golf club in Bedminster, New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the eastern United States on the Atlantic Ocean, bordered by New York State, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, with the Hudson River forming its northeastern boundary and the Delaware River its western boundary; its capital is Trenton and its largest city is Newark. One of the original 13 colonies, it became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution on December 18, 1787, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 9,288,994.Open the full entry, in August 2020, Donald TrumpDonald TrumpDonald Trump (born 1946) is an American politician and businessman, a Republican who ran the real estate company the Trump Organization and starred in the television series The Apprentice. He served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and has been the 47th president since 2025.Open the full entry, asked about a pardon for him, said: “I’m going to take a look at that very strongly.” Trump had earlier called him a “traitor.” Human rights groups had asked Barack Obama to pardon him, without success.⁠[31]

On September 2, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in United States v. Moalin that the NSA’s bulk collection of phone metadata, which he had exposed, violated a section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and possibly the Fourth Amendment; the court nonetheless held that the program had not tainted the other evidence at trial and upheld the convictions of four Somali immigrants. Judge Marsha Berzon wrote the opinion.⁠[24]

The panel wrote that the government’s earlier public statements about the program’s usefulness were “inconsistent with the contents of the classified record.” Patrick Toomey of the American Civil Liberties UnionAmerican Civil Liberties UnionThe American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan civil liberties organization headquartered in New York City, founded in 1920 by Roger Nash Baldwin and others.Open the full entry said: “The ruling makes plain that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records violated the Constitution.” The program had been shut down in 2019.⁠[32]

On September 29, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia entered a final judgment and permanent injunction against him, awarding the government more than $5.2 million and imposing a constructive trust in favor of the United States over those sums and any further royalties or other benefits from Permanent Record and 56 specified speeches. G. Zachary Terwilliger, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in the Justice Department’s release of October 1, 2020: “Intelligence information should protect our nation, not provide personal profit.”⁠[30]

In October 2020 Russia granted him permanent residency; he said then that he planned to seek Russian citizenship without giving up his U.S. citizenship. In a November 2020 tweet he wrote of “our son” and said that he and Lindsay Mills would remain Americans and hoped to return to the States so the family could be reunited; the Associated Press writes that the couple’s child was born in December 2020.⁠[17][26][2]

On September 26, 2022, Vladimir Putin signed a decree granting him Russian citizenship. The Associated Press writes that the decree named 75 foreign citizens; The Week, drawing on The Times, gives the number as 72. His lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said that his wife, Lindsay Mills, would also apply for a Russian passport; as Russia was mobilizing reservists for its war in Ukraine, Kucherena said that he had never served in the Russian armed forces and so was not eligible for call-up.⁠[26][17][2]

He wrote in a tweet that week that “a little stability will make a difference for my family” and that he prayed for his family’s privacy.⁠[17]

On December 1, 2022, he received a Russian passport and took the citizenship oath; it was not said whether he had renounced his U.S. citizenship. State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the United States could not confirm the news but would not be surprised: “Mr. Snowden has long signaled his allegiance to Russia, this step would only formalize that.”⁠[16]

After OpenAIOpenAIOpenAI is an artificial intelligence research and product organization founded in 2015 that develops the GPT model series, ChatGPT, Codex and a developer API, and conducts research on image, speech, video and intelligent agents. After its 2025 restructuring, the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation continues to control the for-profit OpenAI Group PBC. Its growth has involved large-scale fundraising and compute partnerships, and has also been accompanied by controversies over governance, copyright, privacy and AI safety.Open the full entry appointed retired Army general Paul Nakasone, a former NSA director and head of U.S. Cyber Command, to its board and to its new safety and security committee, he posted on X on June 14, 2024: “Do not ever trust OpenAI or its products.” He called the appointment “a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth.”⁠[33]

On July 26, 2024, he spoke remotely on the main stage of the Bitcoin 2024 conference in Nashville, TennesseeTennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state in the southeast-central United States, with its capital at Nashville. It was admitted to the Union on June 1, 1796, as the 16th state, and the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted 6,910,840 residents.Open the full entry, between appearances by Senators Cynthia Lummis and Tim Scott and before Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (born 1954) is an American environmental lawyer, activist and author who co-founded the Waterkeeper Alliance and has been the 26th U.S. secretary of health and human services since 2025.Open the full entry; Bill HagertyBill HagertyBill Hagerty is an American Republican politician who has served as a U.S. senator from Tennessee since 2021 and was U.S. ambassador to Japan from 2017 to 2019; he introduced the GENIUS Act, the federal stablecoin law signed in 2025, and won re-election in November 2026.Open the full entry and Vivek RamaswamyVivek RamaswamyVivek Ramaswamy is an American entrepreneur and Republican politician who founded the biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences and the asset manager Strive, ran for president in 2024, briefly took part in DOGE, and was the Republican nominee in the November 2026 Ohio governor’s election.Open the full entry also spoke that day. He urged the audience to vote without blind loyalty: “Cast your vote but don’t join a cult.” He also argued that governments could use artificial intelligence to mine people’s metadata and analyze financial activity, and that the public ledger of BitcoinBitcoinBitcoin (common symbol BTC) is an open peer-to-peer electronic cash protocol, network, and native digital asset. Full nodes independently verify transactions and blocks according to the consensus rules; transactions are recorded as UTXOs, and blocks are organized into a public ledger through proof of work. Bitcoin is not issued or managed by any single institution, but using, holding in custody, and trading it still involve key, privacy, market, and legal risks.Open the full entry could serve as training data for such models.⁠[34]

In his memoir he writes that his parents divorced and that he moved with his mother and sister into a condominium.⁠[3]

He and his wife, Lindsay Mills, have two children.⁠[16][17]

He said in the September 2019 Fresh Air interview that he had his own apartment and income in Moscow and that he speaks publicly for the American Program Bureau; he described himself as “a little bit of an indoor cat” and said that he used a soldering iron to remove the microphone from his phone. In his memoir he writes that when he goes out he changes his appearance with different glasses and avoids cameras on buildings, that he was once recognized in a Moscow museum and agreed to a selfie with a teenage girl, and that he takes part in Freedom of the Press Foundation board meetings by video.⁠[5][4]

His lawyer in Russia is Anatoly Kucherena; the Hong Kong barrister Robert Tibbo obtained the Mira Hotel’s records of his stay, which the hotel provided to his lawyers in Hong Kong.⁠[26][11]

Foreign Policy magazine named him the top global thinker of 2013.⁠[8]

In 2014 he received the Right Livelihood Award “for his courage and skill in revealing the unprecedented extent of state surveillance.”⁠[7]

Central Intelligence Agency: Official website: https://www.cia.gov/ (opens in a new window).⁠[35]

Dell: Official website: https://www.dell.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[36]

Booz Allen Hamilton: Official website: https://www.boozallen.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[37]

Freedom of the Press Foundation: Official website: https://freedom.press/ (opens in a new window).⁠[38]

University of Glasgow: Official website: https://www.gla.ac.uk/ (opens in a new window).⁠[39]

X: Public account: https://x.com/Snowden (opens in a new window).⁠[8]