Explainer | Edward Snowden: biography, spy career, life in exile from Hong Kong to Russia
- America’s most famous whistle-blower has been living in exile since 2013
- Edward Snowden has been branded a traitor and hero for his bombshell leaks
Edward Snowden, an American contract employee at the National Security Agency, is the whistle-blower behind significant revelations that surfaced in June 2013 about the US government’s top secret, extensive domestic surveillance programmes. Snowden flew to Hong Kong from Hawaii in May 2013, and supplied confidential US government information to media outlets including South China Morning Post, before fleeing to Russia. Here’s what we know about him.
Biography
Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21, 1983 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. He grew up in both North Carolina and suburban Washington, where his mother Elizabeth worked as a clerk at the National Security Agency (NSA) and his father Lonnie served in the US Coast Guard. He has an older sister, Jessica. His parents divorced in 2001, around the time Snowden would have graduated from high school.
Snowden dropped out of Arundel High School midway through the 1998-1999 academic year, when he was in the 10th grade. He later got a high school equivalency certificate and took courses at a nearby community college, although he never graduated. He also studied online for a Master's degree in computer security at the University of Liverpool in the UK, but did not complete the course.
Snowden was a fan of Japanese anime and seemed more interested in computers and technology than school homework. As a child, he took apart and reassembled a Nintendo console and, as a teenager, discovered a gaping vulnerability in the Los Alamos nuclear laboratory network.
Snowden is married to long-time partner, American performance artist Lindsay Mills. They live in Russia, where Snowden has been granted asylum. They were expecting their first child, a boy, in December 2020.
In a tweet in November 2020, Snowden said the couple planned to be “raising our son with all the values of the America we love – including the freedom to speak his mind” and that he looked forward to the day he can return to the US, “so the whole family can be reunited”.
