The Russian government has granted Russian citizenship to Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee who uncovered the massive espionage programs of the US National Security Agency (NSA).
It was sung, although it is difficult to assess whether the war in Ukraine, caused by the illegal invasion of Putin, has had something to do with the advancement of the granting of citizenship. It must be said that since 2020 Snowden already enjoyed permanent residence in Russia and had previously obtained asylum based on temporary residence permits.
Thus ends the journey begun by the CIA consultant in 2013 when he fled the United States after the public disclosure of classified information that caused the biggest known scandal against the right to privacy.
Edward Snowden, hero or traitor?
Snowden is still claimed in the United States by espionage and theft of government property for publishing top secret classified documents on various NSA programs, including PRISM mass surveillance, which included access to the central servers of nine major US technology companies: Microsoft Corp, Yahoo Inc, Google Inc, Facebook Inc, PalTalk, AOL Inc, Skype, YouTube and Apple Inc.
Although a US federal court ruled that the communications espionage program carried out by the NSA it was unconstitutionaldescribed it as “almost Orwellian” and cited the horror that would occur in the ‘father’ of the US constitution, James Madison, to learn that the government was invading the freedom of citizens in this waythe charges against Snowden were upheld.
And they grew over time. In 2016, the US Congress released a report saying Snowden had been in contact with Russian intelligence officials since his arrival in the country, a claim the consultant denied. Putin, remember a former head of Russian espionage, said in 2017 that Snowden was wrong to leak American secrets, but he was not a traitor.
In fact, in an interview in 2020, Edward Snowden said he was willing to return to the United States if he was guaranteed a fair trial and a review of the charges that in some states carried the death penalty.
Finally, with Russian citizenship in hand, the odyssey ends (as long as they don’t catch him outside of Russia…) he is a hero to manyfor sticking their necks out to expose the most shameful (and illegal) mass surveillance programs known.
