Published time: June 23, 2014 09:12
Reuters / Tobias Schwarz
With his life being made into a Hollywood movie,
ex-NSA analyst Edward Snowden executed the biggest intelligence leak in history
and outwitted the spy agency to mark the one-year anniversary of his stay in
Russia – his surprise haven from US prosecution.
In June 2013, Snowden was forced to seek asylum after
disclosing to several media outlets thousands of classified documents that he
had obtained as an NSA contractor for Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton.
Trying to mastermind the largest secret documents
release in history, in May 2013 Snowden left the US for Hong Kong, where he met
with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, handing over the classified
data to them.
Four days after the initial disclosure of the NSA
program in The Guardian, on June 9, Snowden revealed his
identity, initiating a
manhunt to find him and deliver him to the American justice system. While still
in Hong Kong, the US Department of Justice charged the whistleblower with two
counts of violating the Espionage Act as well as theft of government property,
punishable by up to 30 years in prison. On June 22, the State Department
revoked his passport.
On June 23, 2013, Snowden flew from Hong Kong to Moscow,
allegedly en route to Cuba, but having no passport, Snowden was forced to stay
in the transit zone at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, where he applied for
political asylum to 21 countries. Four countries offered Snowden permanent
asylum - Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela. But as Moscow has no
direct flights between those Latin American states, Snowden, fearing US
authorities would try to intercept him en route, applied to for Russian asylum.
On August 1, Russian authorities granted him a one-year temporary renewable
asylum.
RT's Egor Piskunov revisits the scene at Moscow's
Sheremetyevo Airport where these dramatic events played out, and tours the
windowless hotel where the whistleblower was staying while awaiting a decision
on his fate.
Snowden's revelations continue to expose the extensive
intrusion of numerous global surveillance programs into people's everyday
lives. Most are run or associated with the NSA and the Five Eyes group, in a conspiracy with
multinational telecommunication companies and EU governments.
The 31-year-old is credited with revealing the
existence of the Boundless Informant program, along with the PRISM electronic
data mining program, the Tempora interception project, the XKeyscore analytical
tool, the MUSCULAR access point and the massive FASCIA database - all in 2013
alone.
In 2014, the Snowden files exposed UK's Joint Threat Research
Intelligence Group, along with the Dishfire database, Squeaky Dolphin's live
monitoring of social media channels, the Optic Nerve program used for
collection of private webcam images, just to name a few.
For his role and courage in exposing government
secrets, and sparking a debate about the interrelations of national security
and individual privacy, Edward Snowden has received a number of prestigious
awards and human rights group recognition for his service.
British journalist, Wikileaks supporter and confidante
of US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, Sarah Harrison, holds a certificate
on the occassion of the awarding of Snowden with the Berlin Award for Moral
Courage at the Wall Panorama in Berlin, June 22, 2014. (AFP Photo / Stephanie
Pilick)
In one year, he became the recipient of the German 'Whistleblower
Prize', the Sam Adams Award which was presented to him in Moscow, the German
"positive" Big Brother Award, the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, and
the Fritz Bauer Prize which he secured Saturday.
In addition, the whistleblower was named as The
Guardian's 2013 person of the year, topped Foreign Policy’s 2013 list of
leading Global Thinkers, and was named Time's Person of the Year runner-up,
behind Pope Francis.
Snowden also joined the board of directors of the Freedom of the
Press Foundation, co-founded by
Daniel Ellsberg and was elected as a Rector of the University of Glasgow.
His persona has also gained popularity in the pop
culture with a dramatic thriller about Edward Snowden, 'Classified: The Edward
Snowden Story', scheduled for release in September 2014.
Read more on the commercialization of Snowden's image
here: ‘Yes we scan’: Graffiti, memes and
T-shirts celebrate Snowden’s NSA leaks
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