Snowden is presumed innocent unless and until
proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt
Edward Snowden
Advances in technology since 1979 have enabled the government to collect and analyze information about its citizens on an unprecedented scale. Confronting these changes, ” the Supreme Court recognized that a “central aim” of the Fourth Amendment was “to place obstacles in the way of a too permeating police surveillance”.
Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer specialist working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. The basics of Snowden’s life are well known : broken family life, his half-finished education, his political beliefs, and his devotion to the Internet. Snowden’s upbringing and checkered employment history help explain his decision to proceed as he did rather than follow official whistle-blower procedures.
The Snowden Files is a major motion picture, directed by Oliver Stone and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt. To some, Edward Snowden is a whistleblower who exposed illegal and unconstitutional acts of mass surveillance of Americans by the United States government. His supporters see attacks on American civil liberties by aggressive surveillance policies within their own government, trading on the fears of the American people. This occurred under both Democratic and Republican administrations, while a few brave whistleblowers came forward to lift the curtain on the Constitutional threats. Edward Snowden is seen by some as being persecuted for bravely exposing massive illegal government surveillance of all Americans.
Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Justice Department took several steps to remove the separation – or “wall” – between intelligence and criminal information. These included significant amendments to the USA Patriot Act in October 2001; new guidelines issued by the Attorney General in March 2002 regarding intelligence-sharing procedures that implemented the FISA amendments and effectively removed the wall between intelligence and criminal investigations; and an opinion issued by the FISA Court of Review in May 2002 that held FISA permitted the use of intelligence in criminal investigations and that coordination between criminal prosecutors and intelligence investigators was necessary for the protection of national security.
In June 2013, former National Security Agency (“NSA”) contractor Edward Snowden made public the existence of NSA data collection programs. One such program, conducted under FISA Subchapter IV, involved the bulk collection of phone records, known as telephony metadata, from telecommunications providers. Other programs, conducted under the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, involved the collection of electronic communications, such as email messages and video chats, including those of people in the United States. These programs began under President George W. Bush and continued under President Obama.
Snowden had a business need to access the data he retrieved but the controls around how that data was used were insufficient to protect it. t Insider Risk breaches often take orders of magnitude longer to discover than traditional, hacker based breaches. Often going undetected for months and many instances, years.
The magnitude of the disclosure shocked many people, including Members of Congress, who were unaware of the extent of the surveillance. Many civil rights advocates viewed the surveillance as an assault on liberty, while law enforcement and national security officials saw the programs as essential weapons in the war on terror, the fight against nuclear weapons proliferation, and the general protection of U.S. national security.
Snowden’s disclosure of the metadata program prompted significant public debate over the appropriate scope of government surveillance. In June 2015, Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act, which effectively ended the NSA’s bulk telephony metadata collection program. Besides ending the bulk collection program, Congress also established new reporting requirements relating to the government’s collection of call detail records.
Documents released by Edward Snowden, a whistleblower, revealed that the Penetrating Hard Targets program of America’s National Security Agency was actively researching “if, and how, a cryptologically useful quantum computer can be built”. In May IARPA, the American government’s intelligence-research arm, issued a call for partners in its Logical Qubits program, to make robust, error-free qubits.
Snowden published a book entitled Permanent Record in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both CIA and NSA. Snowden published his book without submitting it to the agencies for pre-publication review, in violation of his express obligations under the agreements he signed. Additionally, Snowden has given public speeches on intelligence-related matters, also in violation of his non-disclosure agreements.
The United States on 17 September 2019 filed a lawsuit against Edward Snowden, a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), who published a book entitled Permanent Record in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he signed with both CIA and NSA. The United States’ lawsuit did not seek to stop or restrict the publication or distribution of Permanent Record. Rather, under well-established Supreme Court precedent, Snepp v. United States, the government sought to recover all proceeds earned by Snowden because of his failure to submit his publication for pre-publication review in violation of his alleged contractual and fiduciary obligations.
In December 2019, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, found in favor of the United States in the suit against Snowden on the issue of liability and held that Snowden breached his contractual and fiduciary obligations to the CIA and NSA by publishing Permanent Record and giving prepared remarks within the scope of his pre-publication review obligations. This lawsuit is separate from the criminal charges brought against Snowden for his alleged disclosures of classified information.
Economist-author Edward Lucas views Snowden as a “useful idiot,” suggesting that his theft of government documents amounted to sabotage, not whistle-blowing. He recognizes that the charge of mass surveillance resonates with thepublic but warns against over-reaction by the “Snowdeni-stas” that would destroy valuable capabilities and says they are naïve in arguing foreign intelligence services will not have access to or benefit from the stolen material.
Now, cyber professionals are thinking about "zero-trust architecture," which assumes that no one who uses the network can be trusted. In such a setup, users might be allowed access only to that information and those applications that they are pre-authorized to use. Past network security might have put a wall around the whole network, and once inside, a user would free rein to move about. A zero-trust environment uses "microsegmentation," which divides the network into smaller zones, each requiring special access.
Snowden fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia to avoid prosecution. Snowden has been living in Russia since 2013 when he got stuck in the transit area at a Moscow airport after the United States canceled his passport. While he remained in Russia having been granted asylum for one year, he may have to look for another country that will grant him permanent asylum. Snowden has taken refuge in Russia and cannot return to his homeland on pain of life in prison.
The House intelligence committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said 22 December 2016 Snowden isn't a whistleblower as he and his defenders claim. "Most of the material he stole had nothing to do with Americans' privacy, and its compromise has been of great value to America's adversaries and those who mean to do America harm," Schiff said.
Obama, a Democrat, declined to pardon Snowden. In January 2021, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan nominated Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. Corrigan received the 1976 Nobel Prize for her work in resolving the conflict in Northern Ireland.
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