Vladimir Putin and former US National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden
It was recently announced that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency employee who leaked information about America's top-secret surveillance programs and is still wanted by Washington for espionage.
The executive order signed by Putin covered 72 foreigners, but Snowden was the most prominent. Russia granted him asylum in 2013 after he fled the United States to escape.
The Snowden Revelations, first published in The Washington Post and The Guardian, sand found among the leaks of information most important in the history of the United States.
Former NSA intelligence agent fled first to Hong Kong, then to Russia, to escape federal prosecution after leaking confidential documents to journalists. She was granted asylum in Russia in 2013, then permanent residence. Snowden, 39, has been in Russia ever since.
The revelations of Snowden revealed the existence of the NSA's collection of millions of records phone numbers of Americans, a program that was later found illegal by a federal appeals court and has since been shut down. It also revealed details of industry collaboration with NSA intelligence gathering in a separate show.. These revelations have severely damaged relations between the intelligence community and the US technology industry.
The information that followed, drawn from more than 7.000 classified documents, revealed the inner workings of a colossal US government surveillance operation. Intelligence officials have previously said that Snowden may have seized 1,7 million classified files. This information revealed an extensive government spy program that monitored the communications of criminals, potential terrorists, and law-abiding citizens. Other accounts showed how Washington was also secretly monitoring some of America's closest allies, such as then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Snowden was charged with theft of US government property., unauthorized disclosure of national defense information, and intentional disclosure of classified communications information. These charges carry a prison sentence of up to 30 years.
In 2017, Putin said in a documentary directed by US director Oliver Stone that Snowden was "not a traitor" for leaking government secrets.
“Think what you will of Snowden and Russia. He has done an immense public service by exposing mass surveillance programs that multiple courts have subsequently ruled unconstitutional,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, wrote in a tweet on Monday.
Snowden explained his decision to apply for dual citizenship on Twitter in 2020.
“After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I do not want to be separated from our children. That is why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we are calling for dual American-Russian citizenship,” she wrote.
“Lindsay and I will continue to be Americans, raising our children with all the American values that we love, including the freedom to speak our minds. And I look forward to the day that I can return to the United States, so that the whole family can be reunited,” she added.
Putin's decision to grant Snowden citizenship comes just days after he ordered some 300.000 people to join the fight in Ukraine.
Putin's decree granting Snowden citizenship quickly sparked jokes on social media that the whistleblower will soon be recruited by the Russian military to fight in Ukraine as part of the country's national mobilization campaign.
Though about the case, Snowden's Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the state-run Ria Novosti news agency that his client could not be recruited because he had never served in the Russian armed forces.
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