Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21 of 1983. He grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina. In 2004 he tried to become a soldier in the Special Forces of the US Army. But he was discharged after he broke both his legs during special forces training. The CIA recruited him for a job and he worked for the agency for two years. In 2009 he left the CIA to work for a private contractor in a NSA facility!
In march 2013 he worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a private contractor for the NSA. Snowden was working with classified files on the PRISM program. This program is about the NSA/CIA ability to easily spy on people through the internet. 98% of all data collected by PRISM are coming from huge social media groups like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Skype. With their data the NSA/CIA spied on the American and the people of the world. Because not only Americans are targeted, also foreigners can be watched by PRISM!
Edward Snowden discovered that the USA was spying on the people of the world. Then he made the biggest decision of his life. He left his family, his girlfriend, his nation and fled to Hong-Kong. There he contacted the British newspaper; The Guardian and told them the true about PRISM. Until June 2013 only the US government knew about the PRISM program!
News stories based on documents disclosed by Snowden were as follows:
By Wikipedia.com
On June 5, The Guardian released a top secret order of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) that ordered a business division of Verizon Communications to provide "on an ongoing daily basis" metadata for all telephone calls "wholly within the United States, including local telephone calls" and all calls made "between the United States and abroad''
On June 6, The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the existence of PRISM, a clandestine electronic surveillance program that allegedly allows the NSA to access e-mail, web searches, and other Internet traffic in realtime.
On June 9, The Guardian revealed Boundless Informant, a system that "details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information collects from computer and telephone networks."
On June 12, the South China Morning Post disclosed that the NSA has been hacking into computers in China and Hong Kong since 2009.
On June 17, The Guardian reported that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency, had intercepted foreign politicians' communications at the 2009 G-20 London Summit.
On June 20, The Guardian revealed two secret documents, signed by Attorney General Eric Holder, describing the rules by which the NSA determines whether targets of investigations are foreign or domestic.
On June 21, The Guardian made further disclosures about 'Tempora,' an 18-month-old British operation by GCHQ to intercept and store mass quantities of fiber-optic traffic.
On June 23, the South China Morning Post reported that Snowden had said the NSA had hacked Chinese mobile-phone companies to collect millions of text messages and had also hacked Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Asian fiber-optic network operator Pacnet. The newspaper said Snowden provided documents that listed details of specific episodes during a four-year period!
On June 25, Greenwald reported Snowden claims that he had sent files with NSA secrets to associates for his personal insurance, and that their contents would be revealed should something untoward happen to him!
Edward Snowden has a good reason to fear for his life. Because the criminal CIA has agents all around the world. Also the US imperialist government has already send threats to nations who are sympathetic to Snowden. The Republic of Ecuador offered him political asylum. Soon the US government said that if Ecuador would offer Snowden asylum, then the financial aid the nation received could be halted. The right-wing propaganda network; Fox News said ''For its own good, Ecuador might want to reconsider rolling out the red carpet for NSA leaker Edward Snowden as he crisscrosses his way through anti-American countries while seeking asylum''
For revolutionary socialists, Edward Snowden is a hero. A very brave American who stood up against government abuse of their power. We revolutionary socialists know first hand how criminal the CIA and NSA are. During the Cold War the CIA was the main counterrevolutionary agency of the capitalist ruling class. They were instrumental in helping right-wing dictatorships. The CIA aided the South Korea military junta and spread the lies that ''communists'' were responsible for the murder of 150.000 Koreans in the Bodo League camps. Also they trained numerous death squads in Latin American nations. Squads who would murder left-wing activists and trade unionists. In the Republic of Colombia, these right-wing forces were trained by the CIA, to fight the guerrilla's of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia!
In Western Europe, the CIA tried to stop the growing of communist parties. In Italy they worked with the media and the Catholic Church to destroy the mighty Italian Communist Party. In Western-Germany the CIA and the government of Konrad Adenauer made sure that West-Germany became a anticommunist nation, that would raise children as enemies of socialism and communism. In Asia, the CIA aided the dictatorship of Chiang-Kai-Shek and they supported the absolute monarchies in Cambodia, Laos and Thailand!
CIA criminals brought Mobutu to power in the 60's. This African kleptomaniac, murdered 160.000 people and stole all the wealth from the Republic of Zaire ( now Congo ). They also supported the racist government of South Africa. So we revolutionary socialists had no illusions about the CIA and NSA. We knew that these agencies were spying on people. A capitalist state must spy on people to protect those who own the means of production. Revolutionary socialists have always been the target for government agencies, because of our opposition to their capitalist masters!
The US media is mostly against Edward Snowden. Only progressive Americans like The Young Turks are supportive of him. TYT is led by Cenk Uygar and Ana Kasparian, together with their TYT supporters they are the biggest American online news show on the internet. But when we look at the regular media, we see that most American media networks call Edward Snowden a traitor!
Now Edward Snowden is lost. At this moment ( 27-06-2013 ) we don't know if he left Russia. His last know location was the Moscow Airport, but he did not entered the Russian Federation. So he maybe still on international grounds at the airport. What his next destination is we don't know but one thing is sure, the USA will stop at nothing to capture him. We know that the criminal US government does not love people who expose their crimes. That is why Edward Snowden is a hero, he dared to stand up against US imperialism and he exposed their criminal spying business!
A demonstration in Hong-Kong for Snowden!
