Edward Snowden: podcast appearances and interviews

Edward Joseph Snowden, born on June 21, 1983, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, is a former United States National Security Agency intelligence contractor. He is known for leaking classified documents that revealed the existence of global surveillance programs operated by the NSA and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, with cooperation from telecommunications companies and European governments. His disclosures in 2013 prompted widespread discussions about national security and individual privacy. Snowden's career included work for the Central Intelligence Agency and management of NSA computer systems at Dell. In 2013, he worked briefly for Booz Allen Hamilton to gather additional NSA documents before departing for Hong Kong, where he leaked the sensitive information to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Barton Gellman, and Ewen MacAskill. Following his disclosures, the US Department of Justice charged him with violations of the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, leading to the revocation of his passport. He stayed in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport for a month before being granted asylum and later became a Russian citizen in 2022. Snowden has since taken on roles such as the president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting journalists from hacking and government surveillance. He is employed by an unnamed Russian IT company. He married Lindsay Mills in 2017, and his memoir titled Permanent Record was published in 2019. A 2020 US federal court ruling found that at least one of the surveillance programs Snowden exposed was illegal and potentially unconstitutional.