United States of Secrets: Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden is the individual responsible for the greatest National Security leak in United States history, and for good reason.

Edward Snowden worked in many different ways in the intelligence field for the United States, working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA). While working as an NSA contractor with Booz Allen Hamilton, he noticed the NSA was keeping track of Americans using telephone records. They kept track of who called who, when they called, and even their location. This presented Snowden with a huge moral dilemma, and when trying to take this information through the proper channels without any resolution, he decided to blow the whistle. He left Hawaii where he was working for the NSA in May 2013, and flew to Hong Kong to leak all the documents that proved what the NSA was doing. In June of 2013 the Department of State revoked his US passport.

Edward Snowden now lives in Russia, and has been since June 2013, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. As of October 2020, Edward Snowden was granted permanent residency in Russia. Thanks to Edward Snowden, people have become more aware of their data and privacy concerns. The problem now isn't only the United States government harvesting your information, it's the huge technology conglomerates like Google, and Facebook that can do whatever they want with your data while making billions of dollars at the same time.