New Delhi: Edward Snowden who is giving a slip to USA was born to an officer of US Coast Guard on June 21, 1983. He pursued his computing career but left mid way. Then he worked with US military at a base in Japan and because of that he grew interest in Japanese culture and said he had basic understanding of Mandarin. He knows martial arts and converted to Budhhism. He joined CIA as a techie in IT security. During the 2008 Presidential election, Snowden claimed that he voted for Third party candidates. He claimed that he had been thinking of disclosing NSA surveillance programs but lastly decided to wait because of belief in Obama's promise. Snowden later disheartened by Obama following the policies of his predecessor. In 2012, he supported campaign of Ron Paul. In June 2013, Snowden done what he decided in 2008. He leaked top details of top-secret American and Britishgovernment mass surveillance programs to the press.After watching the report on NSA whistleblower 'William Binney' of Laura Poitras in January 2013, he contacted her.Being a board member of Freedom of the Press Foundation with Glenn Greenwald, reporting for The Guardian, she introduced them. According to Greenwald, He said he had been working with Snowden since February and Barton Gellman of The Washington Post stated that he was in touch with the whistleblower since 16th May 2013. after The Washington Post decline to publish snowden's leaks he contacted Greenwald.In his encrypted emails, Snowden used codename of "Verax", a latin word refers to the truth teller.Before the meeting with Gellman, Snowden wrote,""I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end". He also told Gellman that untill unless his leaks were published, the journo's working on this assignment would be at risk from the intelligence community of the United States. In May 2013, Snowden took leave from CIA Hawaii office for the treatment of epilepsy and left the country with his girlfriend to Hong Kong shortly before the leaks goes viral.News stories based on documents disclosed by Snowden were as follows:On June 5: A top secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) had been published by The Guardian that commanded Verizon Communications to supply on daily basis metadata of all the telephone calls made within the US and between the United States and abroad.On June 6: Revelation of a Prism, a clandestine electronic surveillance program that allegedly allows the NSA to access e-mail, web searches, and other Internet traffic in realtime jointly by The Guardian and The Washington Post. On June 9:The Guardian published about the Boundless Informant, a system through which NSA collects voluminous amount of information from computer and telephone networks of the country.On June 12: NSA has been hacking into computers of China and Hong Kong since 2009 published by The South China Morning Post. On June 17: During the G-20 London summit the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British Intelligence agency taped the communications of foriegn politicians' reported by The Guardian. On June 20: Publishing of two signed secret documents of Attornet General Eric Holder (NSA) which describes the rule on which the targets of investigations whether foriegn or Domestic is set. On June 21: The Guardian disclosed an 18-month-old British operation by GCHQ whichintercept and store mass quantities of fiber-optic traffic known as 'Tempora'.On June 23: The South China Morning Post reported about the hacking of Chinese Mobile-phone companies to fetch millions of SMS's, Tsinghua University in Beijing and also the Asian fiber-optic network operator Pacnet. Snowden provided documents to the newspaper that included listed details of specific episodes during a four year period. On June 25: Snowden had sent NSA secrets files to associates as insurance for his safety, so that if something happen to him they would be made public as reported by Greenwald. On June 29: Snowden provided documents which stated that NSA had planted bugs in European Unions offices in Washington, New York and Brussels and hacked their computer networks, as reported by Der Spielgel.He went to Moscow from Hong Kong and from Moscow Airport he has sought asylum in Ecuador in South America.Because of the revelations of NSA secrets by Edward Snowden, allmost all the countries have begun criticising the USA for spying on them.
Updated on: July 02, 2013 7:22 IST
