On June 21, 1983, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, Edward Snowden was born to Lonnie, a United States Coast Guard officer, and Elizabeth, a clerk in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. His older sister, Jessica, also worked for the federal government. Snowden relocated to Fort Meade, Maryland, with his family when he was a child. He completed his GED test and enrolled at Anne Arundel Community College after missing nearly nine months of school due to mono. Despite his lack of an undergraduate degree, he enrolled in an online master’s programme at the University of Liverpool, which he did not complete.
Personal Life
Snowden secretly married Lindsay Mills, a writer and acrobat who had joined him in exile in Russia in 2014. The couple began dating in 2009, before the NSA eavesdropping revelations. Snowden and Mills are expecting a child in December 2020.
Career
Snowden has stated in interviews that his highest annual wage prior to living in exile was $200,000 per year. That came from the business world. His income as a government employee peaked at $122,000 per year. Snowden makes roughly $200,000 per year in speaking engagement fees, according to a Snowden acquaintance. Edward published a biography titled “Permanent Record” in November 2019.
Snowden joined the United States Army in 2004, hoping to aid the oppressed people of Iraq. He later became a Special Forces candidate. However, owing to injuries, he was unable to finish training and was discharged later in the year. Snowden later worked as a security guard at the National Security Agency-sponsored Centre for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland.
Snowden visited a career fair for intelligence organisations in 2006, and he quickly accepted an offer to work for the CIA. He quickly earned a reputation as a computer genius and was assigned to the agency’s secret school for technology professionals. Snowden was stationed in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2007, where he was in charge of computer network security. He was picked to support the president at the 2008 NATO summit as the country’s top cybersecurity expert. In early 2009, Snowden resigned from the CIA.
Following his time with the CIA, Snowden began working as a contract employee for the technology firm Dell. He was sent to a National Security Agency unit at Japan’s Yokota Air Base, where he taught government leaders and military commanders how to protect their networks against Chinese hackers. Snowden eventually worked for Dell for four years, going from NSA computer system supervisor to cyber-counterintelligence expert.
He resigned in March 2013 after watching Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lie before Congress under oath. Snowden worked with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton after leaving Dell, where he attempted to acquire and expose information regarding the NSA’s global surveillance programmes; his employment was terminated in June 2013. While working for the NSA, Snowden witnessed several ethical transgressions, particularly severe invasions of people’s privacy.
Snowden began revealing thousands of sensitive papers in 2013 after deciding he could no longer remain silent about the NSA’s breach of ethics. Several foreign media sources, including the Washington Post, New York Times, Guardian, Der Spiegel, and Le Monde, released these papers within months. The public became aware of previously hidden facts about the NSA’s mass surveillance system as a result of the work of Snowden and several journalists.
The stolen documents exposed the extent of the agency’s surveillance efforts, including mobile phone monitoring and collecting of email and other telecommunications data. They also revealed that the US has been eavesdropping on a number of countries, including allies such as Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Mexico. Snowden was charged with three crimes by US federal prosecutors shortly after the release of the secret NSA documents: one count of theft of government property and two charges of breaching the 1917 Espionage Act.
Snowden went to Hong Kong after quitting his job in 2013, intending to stay as long as the authorities permitted. He resided at the Mira Hotel before being sheltered in a series of flats by other asylum seekers. Snowden travelled to Moscow, Russia, when his US passport was withdrawn, and was given temporary shelter for a year. Following this period, he was granted a three-year temporary residence status that allowed him to freely move within the nation and to travel overseas for up to three months. Snowden received his permanent residency permit in 2020, thanks to new Russian regulations passed in 2019.
Despite his fugitive status, Snowden has made several media appearances since leaking the NSA secrets, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars through digital speaking engagements. He gave a teleconference call during the South by Southwest interactive technology conference in Austin, Texas, in 2014. Soon later, he gave a teleconference speech at a TED event in Vancouver. Snowden also appeared at the LibrePlanet conference and the Media Lab’s Forbidden Research event at MIT, as well as on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” Notably, he starred in the Academy Award-winning documentary film “Citizenfour,” directed by Laura Poitras, in 2014.
Net Worth
Edward Snowden is a computer security expert and whistleblower from the United States with a net worth of $500 thousand. Edward Snowden is a former government computer intelligence specialist best known for releasing secret information on extensive worldwide surveillance programmes from the National Security Agency in 2013. In order to avoid prosecution by the US Department of Justice, he sought refuge in Russia, where he became a permanent resident in 2020. Snowden became president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which seeks to protect journalists from government intrusions and spying, to expand his advocacy.
Facts
| Net Worth | $500 Thousand |
| Date of Birth | Jun 21, 1983 (39 years old) |
| Place of Birth | Elizabeth City, North Carolina |
| Gender | Female |
| Profession | Computer security consultant |
| Nationality | United States of America |
