Edward Snowden: Privacy Hero or Dangerous Traitor? 

When Edward Snowden leaked thousands of NSA intelligence documents in 2013 he triggered an international debate: Is Snowden a hero or a traitor? 

Russia's decision to grant Snowden Russian citizenship in September 2022 has rekindled the war of words.

Richard Ledgett, former deputy director of the NSA, has called Snowden’s leaks ‘inappropriate’. “He put people’s lives at risk in the long run,” Ledgett said. “I know there’s been a lot of talk by Edward Snowden and journalists who say the things disclosed did not put national security or people at risk. That is categorically not true. They actually do.”

A 2016 report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence concluded that “the public narrative cultivated by Snowden and his allies is rife with falsehoods, exaggerations, and crucial omissions” and that “the vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests - they pertain instead to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries.”

Snowden's Tweeted response to the Committee's findings? "After three years of investigation and millions of dollars, they can present no evidence of harmful intent, foreign influence, or harm. Wow.”

The former CIA employee has become an unlikely poster boy for privacy campaigners, however. His defenders included journalist Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian reporter who first published documents provided by Snowden that detail the NSA PRISM program to monitor the phone calls and emails of US citizens. "Every time there's a whistleblower - somebody who exposes government wrongdoing - the tactic of the government is to try and demonize them as a traitor," Greenwald told ABC News.

In 2020, Snowden said that he and his wife were applying for Russian citizenship to ensure they would not be separated from their Russian-born son in the midst of the pandemic lockdowns and closed borders. It was granted in 2022.

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