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EDWARD SNOWDEN; THE “WHISTLEBLOWER”
BY AARUSHI AGARWAL
Worlds most famous “whistleblower” is Edward Joseph Snowden; he leaked top-secret documents that revealed the extent of the global surveillance programmes run by American and British spy agencies.
In 2013 Snowden was hired by NSA and before he was hired, he had worked with Dell and the CIA. On May 20, 2013, Snowden flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii, and in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill.
The scandal broke in early June 2013 when the Guardian newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. The paper published the secret court order directing telecommunications company Verizon to hand over all its telephone data to the NSA on an “ongoing daily basis”.
Edward Snowden has been charged in the US with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence.
After fleeing to Hong Kong, Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post that the NSA had led more than 61,000 hacking operations worldwide, including many in Hong Kong and mainland China. He said targets in Hong Kong included the Chinese University, public officials and businesses.
“We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” Mr Snowden was quoted as saying.
INFORMATION LEAKED BY EDWARD SNOWDAN:
Claims emerged on 29 June that the NSA had spied on European Union offices in the US and Europe, according to Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine. The magazine said it had seen leaked NSA documents showing that the US had spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the 27-member bloc’s UN office in New York.
One document dated September 2010 explicitly named the EU representation at the UN as a “location target”, Der Spiegel wrote. The files allegedly suggested that the NSA had also conducted an electronic eavesdropping operation in a building in Brussels, where the EU Council of Ministers and the European Council were located.
It is not known what information US spies might have obtained. But observers say details of European positions on trade and military matters could be useful to those involved in US-EU negotiations.
After German media reported that the NSA had eavesdropped on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone. The allegations dominated an EU summit, with Mrs Merkel demanding a full explanation and warning that trust between allies could be undermined. She discussed the matter by phone with US President Barack Obama. He assured her that her calls were not being monitored now and that it would not happen in future. But the White House did not deny bugging her phone in the past.
France’s President Francois Hollande meanwhile expressed alarm at reports that millions of French calls had been monitored by the US.
The Guardian later reported that the NSA had monitored the phones of 35 world leaders after being given their numbers by another US government official. Again, Edward Snowden was the source of the report.
Countries targeted included France, Italy and Greece, as well as America’s non-European allies such as Japan, South Korea and India, the paper reported on 1 July. The file allegedly detailed “an extraordinary range” of spying methods used to intercept messages, including bugs, specialised antennae and wire taps. The Guardian report also mentioned codenames of alleged operations against the French and Greek missions to the UN, as well as the Italian embassy in Washington.
US allies in Latin America were angered by revelations in Brazil’s O Globo newspaper on 10 July that the NSA ran a continent-wide surveillance programme. The paper cited leaked documents showing that, at least until 2002, the NSA ran the operation from a base in Brasilia, seizing web traffic and details of phone calls from around the region. The revelations on Latin America kept coming, and in September more specific claims emerged that emails and phone calls of the presidents of Mexico and Brazil had been intercepted.
Also, the US had been spying on Brazil’s state-owned oil firm Petrobras. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff cancelled a state visit to the US in the most high-profile diplomatic move since the scandal hit.
Documents leaked to the Washington Post in mid-August suggested the NSA breaks US privacy laws hundreds of times every year. It also reported that US spy agencies had a “black budget” for secret operations of almost $53bn in 2013.
In January 2014, the Guardian newspaper and Channel 4 News reported that the US had collected and stored almost 200 million text messages per day across the globe. Through the vast database, which was in use at least as late as 2012, the NSA gained information on those who were not specifically targeted or under suspicion, the report says. The revelations came on the eve of an expected announcement by President Obama of a response to recommendations by a US panel on ways to change US electronic surveillance programmes.
The man whose state surveillance revelations rocked the world speaks exclusively to the Guardian about his new life and concerns for the future
Edward Snowden has also released a book ‘permanent record’ in 2019, In an exclusive two-hour interview in Moscow to mark the publication of his memoirs, Permanent Record, Snowden said dire warnings that his disclosures would cause harm had not come to pass, and even former critics now conceded “we live in a better, freer and safer world” because of his revelations.
In the book, Snowden describes in detail for the first time his background, and what led him to leak details of the secret programmes being run by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK’s secret communication headquarters, GCHQ
Snowden also said: “The greatest danger still lies ahead, with the refinement of artificial intelligence capabilities, such as facial and pattern recognition. “An AI-equipped surveillance camera would be not a mere recording device, but could be made into something closer to an automated police officer.”
He is concerned the US and other governments, aided by the big internet companies, are moving towards creating a permanent record of everyone on earth, recording the whole of their daily lives.
NEWS RESOURCE;
While it is a well-written article covering all points that required to be covered, it would have been better explain who a whistleblower is before diving directly into the work of Edward Snowden. There are a few grammatical errors which the author should checked and corrected before submitting the article.
Detailed and nicely explained
All points are covered in this case well deeply explained
It is a well written article which explains every aspect of the situation but if some terms were explained to the readers it would have been more easy to understand. Kindly look into the grammatical errors.
Great article. It is one of biggest example of cyber fraud as sometimes the officials itself leak the important information and sell them to the hacker which they use in to create havoc.
Everyone need to be really aware about the cyber crime it is growing at rapid rate.
Nicely explained article.
A very well analysed and explained case of cybercrime.
Very wonderful article!came to know about the biggest whistleblower!and also some hidden facts of various national agencies!to prevent this frm happening in near future our govt should come up with strong fraud detection technology as well as our NSAB should develop strong network ,defense technology to confront such lethal attacks