Snowden följer NSA på Twitter: ”Hör ni mig nu?”

Edward Joseph "Ed" Snowden, född 21 juni 1983 i Elizabeth City, North Carolina, är en amerikansk visselblåsare och tidigare CIA-anställd som arbetat som konsult åt USA:s signalunderrättelsestjänst National Security Agency. Snowden läckte sekretessbelagda dokument som påvisade existensen av storskaliga och topphemliga övervakningprojekt såsom PRISM och Boundless informant (gränslös informant). Han har även läckt dokument som han menar visar på att USA och Storbritannien bedriver hackingattacker riktade mot datorer över hela världen, bland annat mot delegaterna på G20-mötet i London 2009, samt i Hongkong och fastlands-Kina. Snowden överlämnade dokumenten till tidningarna The Guardian och The Washington Post i juni 2013. I december 2014 tilldelades Snowden Right Livelihood Award (som ibland kallas "det alternativa nobelpriset). ^ ”Edward Snowden did enlist for special forces, US army confirms | World news | guardian.co.uk” (på engelska). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/10/edward-snowden-army-special-forces. Läst 11 juni 2013. ^ [a b] Mannen som röjde USA:s övervakning träder fram, Svenska Dagbladet 9 juni 2013 ^ Britter spionerade under G20-mötet, Expressen 17 juni 2013 ^ Snowden: USA hackar datorer globalt, Svenska dagbladet 12 juni 2013 ^ ”Right Livelihood Award: 2014 - Edward Snowden”. Right Livelihood Award. http://www.rightlivelihood.org/snowden.html. Läst 13 december 2014.

Ongoing news reports in the international media have revealed operational details about the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and its international partners' global surveillance of foreign nationals and U.S. citizens. The reports mostly emanate from a cache of top secret documents leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who obtained them while working for Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the largest contractors for defense and intelligence in the United States. In addition to a trove of U.S. federal documents, Snowden's cache reportedly contains thousands of Australian, British and Canadian intelligence files that he had accessed via the exclusive "Five Eyes" network. In June 2013, the first of Snowden's documents were published simultaneously by The Washington Post and The Guardian, attracting considerable public attention. The disclosure continued throughout 2013, and a small portion of the estimated full cache of documents was later published by other media outlets worldwide, most notably The New York Times, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Der Spiegel (Germany), O Globo (Brazil), Le Monde (France), L'espresso (Italy), NRC Handelsblad (the Netherlands), Dagbladet (Norway), El País (Spain), and Sveriges Television (Sweden). These media reports have shed light on the implications of several secret treaties signed by members of the UKUSA community in their efforts to implement global surveillance. For example, Der Spiegel revealed how the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) transfers "massive amounts of intercepted data to the NSA", while Swedish Television revealed the National Defence Radio Establishment (FRA) provided the NSA with data from its cable collection, under a secret treaty signed in 1954 for bilateral cooperation on surveillance. Other security and intelligence agencies involved in the practice of global surveillance include those in Australia (ASD), Britain (GCHQ), Canada (CSEC), Denmark (PET), France (DGSE), Germany (BND), Italy (AISE), the Netherlands (AIVD), Norway (NIS), Spain (CNI), Switzerland (NDB), Singapore (SID) as well as Israel (ISNU), which receives raw, unfiltered data of U.S. citizens that is shared by the NSA. On June 14, 2013, United States prosecutors charged Edward Snowden with espionage and theft of government property. In late July 2013, he was granted a one-year temporary asylum by the Russian government, contributing to a deterioration of Russia–United States relations. On August 6, 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama made a public appearance on national television where he reassured Americans that "We don't have a domestic spying program" and "There is no spying on Americans". Towards the end of October 2013, the British Prime Minister David Cameron warned The Guardian not to publish any more leaks, or it will receive a DA-Notice. Currently, a criminal investigation of the disclosure is being undertaken by Britain's Metropolitan Police Service. In December 2013, The Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said: "We have published I think 26 documents so far out of the 58,000 we've seen." The extent to which the media reports have responsibly informed the public is disputed. In January 2014 Obama said that "the sensational way in which these disclosures have come out has often shed more heat than light" and critics such as Sean Wilentz have noted that many of the Snowden documents released do not concern domestic surveillance. In its first assessment of these disclosures, The Pentagon concluded that Snowden committed the biggest "theft" of U.S. secrets in the history of the United States. Sir David Omand, a former director of GCHQ, described Snowden's disclosure as the "most catastrophic loss to British intelligence ever".

PRISM is a clandestine surveillance program under which the United States National Security Agency (NSA) collects internet communications from at least nine major US internet companies. Since 2001 the United States government has increased its scope for such surveillance, and so this program was launched in 2007. PRISM is a government code name for a data-collection effort known officially by the SIGAD US-984XN. The PRISM program collects stored internet communications based on demands made to internet companies such as Google Inc. under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to turn over any data that match court-approved search terms. The NSA can use these PRISM requests to target communications that were encrypted when they traveled across the internet backbone, to focus on stored data that telecommunication filtering systems discarded earlier, and to get data that is easier to handle, among other things. PRISM began in 2007 in the wake of the passage of the Protect America Act under the Bush Administration. The program is operated under the supervision of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court, or FISC) pursuant to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Its existence was leaked six years later by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who warned that the extent of mass data collection was far greater than the public knew and included what he characterized as "dangerous" and "criminal" activities. The disclosures were published by The Guardian and The Washington Post on June 6, 2013. Subsequent documents have demonstrated a financial arrangement between NSA's Special Source Operations division (SSO) and PRISM partners in the millions of dollars. Documents indicate that PRISM is "the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports", and it accounts for 91% of the NSA's internet traffic acquired under FISA section 702 authority." The leaked information came to light one day after the revelation that the FISA Court had been ordering a subsidiary of telecommunications company Verizon Communications to turn over to the NSA logs tracking all of its customers' telephone calls. U.S. government officials have disputed some aspects of the Guardian and Washington Post stories and have defended the program by asserting it cannot be used on domestic targets without a warrant, that it has helped to prevent acts of terrorism, and that it receives independent oversight from the federal government's executive, judicial and legislative branches. On June 19, 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama, during a visit to Germany, stated that the NSA's data gathering practices constitute "a circumscribed, narrow system directed at us being able to protect our people."