Edward Snowden Affair

The Edward Snowden Affair concerns the alleged and claimed acquisition by Edward Snowden of cache of classified NSA documents, followed by publication of a few of them and the controversy surrounding the motives and loyalties of the people involved. The documents themselves are said to reveal details of illegal mass surveillance programmes by the NSA and its UK equivalent GCHQ.

The affair began with Edward Snowden presenting himself as an NSA whistleblower after fleeing to Hong Kong and subsequently to Moscow. His revelations, although initially not substantially different from other whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake, Mark Klein, or Russell Tice (which were more or less ignored by commercially-controlled media) were reported worldwide. He reportedly copied many tens of thousands of documents, of which less than 1% had been released by December 2013.

Edward Snowden

Full article: Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden came to prominence in 2013 when he featured in a video explaining his motives for leaking NSA documents. At the time he was in Hong Kong, having travelled there from Hawaii. Later he flew to Moscow, reportedly on his way elsewhere. He was granted a one year temporary stay in Russia. The US government is seeking to try him under the Espionage Act.

Glenn Greenwald

Full article: Glenn Greenwald

Edward Snowden reportedly contacted Glenn Greenwald and negotiated access to some (or all?) of Snowden's documents. He subsequently secured a multi-million publication deal for some of them. He is not wanted by US government.

Laura Poitras

Full article: Laura Poitras

Pierre Omidyar

Full article: Pierre Omidyar

Pierre Omidyar of eBay agreed to finance (to the tune of $250M) a new publishing venture fronted by Greenwald and involving, among others, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill of Zero Dark Thirty fame. The Greenwald/Poitras claimed access to the entire document cache was self-evidently a major consideration in this deal.

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