Vladimir Putin has granted a Russian passport to the NSA whistleblower who fled the USA after leaking top-secret paperwork
President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Russia’s TASS information company confirmed on Monday. The American’s identify was included with out fanfare on a listing of 72 foreigners who grew to become residents.
Snowden, who utilized for citizenship in 2020 upon receiving everlasting residency rights, has not commented on the choice as of Monday night Moscow time. His spouse may also apply for citizenship, based on Snowden’s lawyer.
The previous Booz-Allen contractor isn’t eligible for mobilization to the Ukrainian entrance as he didn’t serve within the Russian military, the legal professional stated in an announcement to media, pouring chilly water on feverish social media hypothesis that Snowden could be drafted now that he was formally a Russian citizen of army age.
Whereas the truth that Snowden has lived in Russia since fleeing the US in 2013 has been held up as “proof” he was undermining the US authorities on behalf of Moscow, he was marooned in Sheremetyevo Airport upon arriving from Hong Kong to catch a connecting flight to Cuba after the US canceled his passport mid-flight. He was reportedly en path to Ecuador, the place he had lodged an asylum request with what was then a authorities pleasant towards American dissidents.
The US nonetheless desires Snowden returned dwelling to face espionage costs associated to his 2013 leak of a mammoth cache of information revealing the NSA’s sprawling surveillance operations, which focused American civilians to a far larger diploma than beforehand identified to the general public. Quite than launch the paperwork himself, nevertheless, the whistleblower reached out to a small group of journalists and filmmakers together with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, instructing them to curate and publish them as wanted.
After the publication of a handful of disturbing revelations alongside their supply paperwork within the Washington Put up, The Guardian, and different institution retailers led to Washington calling for Snowden’s head, billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar shortly bought the whole archive, utilizing it as the inspiration for his firm First Look Media, which launched The Intercept with the Snowden docs as its headliner. Nevertheless, the positioning by no means launched greater than 10% of the leaked information in the course of the 15 years it hosted them. Regardless of Omidyar’s billions, The Intercept cried poverty when it shut down entry to that small fraction of the archive in 2019.
That call that was made with out consulting Snowden, who had rendered himself a de facto stateless particular person for the sake of constructing their contents public. Since then, the surveillance program he uncovered was declared illegal by a US appeals courtroom.
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