Edward Snowden, born June 21, 1983, is an American computer professional, former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, and former United States government contractor who copied and disclosed classified national security information. Agency in 2013 without authorization. His revelations revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many of which are run by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance, with the cooperation of telecommunications companies and European governments. Snowden's decision to release the NSA documents developed gradually after his March 2007 assignment as a technician at the CIA's Geneva station. Snowden first made contact with Glenn Greenwald, a journalist working for The Guardian, on December 1, 2012. He contacted Greenwald anonymously under the name "Cincinnatus" and said he had sensitive documents that he would like to share. Greenwald found the steps the source asked him to take to secure their communications, such as email encryption, too annoying to use. Snowden then contacted documentarian Laura Poitras in January 2013. According to Poitras, Snowden chose to contact her after seeing her New York Times article about NSA whistleblower William Binney. What initially attracted Snowden to Greenwald and Poitras was a Salon article written by Greenwald detailing how Poitras' controversial films had made her a government target. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get the original essay Snowden's identity was made public by The Guardian at his request on June 9, 2013. "I don't want to live in a world where everything I do and I say it's recorded," he explained. "My only goal is to inform the public of what is being done in his name and what is being done against him ." Snowden told the Washington Post that he wanted to "encourage others to move forward" by demonstrating that "they can win." He told the New York Times that the problem reporting system was not working : “You must report wrongdoing to the people most responsible He highlighted the lack of whistleblower protections for government contractors and the reliance on the Espionage Act of 1917.” pursue the leakers. , and his belief that if he had used internal mechanisms to “sound the alarm,” his revelations “would have been buried forever.” In December 2013, after learning that a U.S. federal judge had ruled the NSA's collection of U.S. telephone metadata likely unconstitutional, Snowden said: "I acted on the belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not would not stand up to constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues decided by public courts. » In January 2014, Snowden said his breaking point was seeing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lie directly under oath to Congress. This referred to testimony from March 12, 2013, three months after Snowden first attempted to share thousands of NSA documents with Greenwald, and nine months after the NSA said Snowden had made his first downloads illegal during the summer of 2012, Clapper denied before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA was collecting data on millions of Americans. Snowden said: “Nothing can save an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and to lawmakers who.