Edward Snowden

• He is 29 years old at the time of the incident, still looking a little juvenile. Small glasses on the eyes and a friendly air of young man of good family.

• He is not fond of reading books and is passionate about problem solving.

• The one parallel scandal arrived was not part of the NSA. In the spring of 2013, it operated on behalf of Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the agency's subcontractors. He played the role of system administrator working on network infrastructures. He disposed of what is called a privileged account.

• The thing will look incredible in retrospect but it is so: the most sophisticated spy agency in the world puts its computers and their entire contents, including information 'secret defense' (the highest level in The hierarchy of confidentiality) available to consultants from outside companies!

• It's like that. Even though it has more than forty thousand employees, the NSA can not claim to have all the necessary skills in high technology. It therefore makes regular use of consultants, experts of the highest level, in the field of mathematics, computer science, artificial intelligence, data analysis, etc. These handpicked people get access to top secret information. Thus, for the management of its computer system, the NSA employs some 250 subcontracting companies.

• There was a time when secret documents were kept in chests. Before accessing it, several levels of authorization were required. No subordinate would have had the slightest chance of being able to take a look at it.

• Nowadays, everything is kept on computer. The reverse, for the intelligence agencies, in an era where everything is stored on servers is that computers are potentially fragile, in terms of data protection.

• One of the most surprising factors is that at the time Snowden was able to copy thousands of confidential documents, the agency had become aware of such potential risks and the NSA was preparing to launch an internal monitoring program. Objective: To avoid a subcontractor from attempting to misappropriate documents. The leaks made by Private Bradley Manning and transmitted to the Wikileaks site in relation to abuses committed in Iraq had highlighted the extent of the risks potentially related to the states of souls of internal interveners. An alert system and detection of anomalies would be set up. Snowden has therefore benefited from an ideal 'window' ...
  

The childhood of Edward Snowden

"He's part of a generation that has learned to use computers before they even know how to talk," says an NBC News columnist.

• In fact, Edward Snowden was born on June 21, 1983, the month when the famous movie Wargames was released, in which a young hacker infiltrated the computer system of the American army and failed to trigger a world conflict. Snowden was born in North Carolina, but soon enough, her parents moved to Maryland - ironically, they live in a town, Elicott City, about twenty minutes from Fort Meade, The headquarters of the NSA.

• In its 10 June edition, USA Today interviewed some of those who had known Snowden and got a portrait worthy of the classic 'nerd': 'a nice kid who spoke little,' says a neighbor, Other people who have cotyyed him: polite, sympathetic, able to speak with confidence when the occasion requires it but also a little withdrawn. If his father is in the gendarmerie, his mother works in the computer office of the court of Baltimore.

• Shortly after the second, Snowden drops out of high school - while in parallel, his parents are about to divorce. No matter if he does not have an official degree, his computer skills serve him as a sesame in the labor market. We are in 2002 and the boy has approached an edition, Ryuhana Press, which sells Japanese works in the spirit of the mangas. On his profile, he calls himself True HOOHA and describes himself thus:

"I love Japanese, food, martial arts, ponies, guns, food, girls, my feminine face that attracts girls and my non-hacker friends. Here's the best biography you'll get from me, the cops! "

• Edward Snowden, however, describes himself as a 'chic guy' who may seem arrogant and cruel because he was not tight enough in his arms when he was a child and who would have been spoiled by the education system.

• Snowden is a fan of video games, including a bare-handed fighting game called Tekken. At a convention dedicated to the Anime (Japanese cartoon), it attracts a whole band of fans, stunned by its computer skills. A colleague from the Ryuhana Press website wrote:

"It spontaneously tends to be a ray of sunshine and inspiration. He listens well to people and loves helping others to improve. "

When Snowden wanted to enter the US Army

• Meanwhile, the tone rises between George W. Bush and Sadam Hussein and despite the reservations of the UN, an American attack is looming. Snowden feels concerned about the fate of his country and ready to assume a role in this direction. On May 7 he traveled to Fort Benning, Georgia with the firm intention of engaging in the elite forces that will fight in Iraq.

• When he indicates his religion, he writes 'Buddhist'. Yet, as he will later say, he would have gladly indicated 'agnostic' if this choice had been present on the card.

• Harsh training for elite forces must last 14 weeks. Yet Snowden's military career is abbreviated earlier than expected - after three months - following a fracture of both legs during an exercise. He left the army on 28 September 2004.

"I was ready to die for my country and I still believe the United States is worth it," he said later.

"He did not complete any training and did not receive the slightest distinction," said George Wright, army spokesman.

In filigree, a certain disillusion is drawn in the soul of the young man:

"Most of those who were training us were motivated to eliminate Arabs, not to help anyone else," he said to the Guardian.

• Back in Maryland, Snowden finds herself idle - Ryuhana Press has closed its doors. Whatever, Snowden has developed a gift to break into closed networks at the public consultation and steal some confidential files. It is therefore noticeable here and there.

Virtuoso and very popular

• Returning to civilian life, Snowden landed a guard post at the University of Maryland. Now, NSA agents come to college to perfect their knowledge in foreign languages. Quickly, Snowden's skills in computer science make him notice by these men of the shadow and contacts are established little by little. Could a career in intelligence make it possible?

• During the year 2006, Snowden is recruited by the CIA who wishes to benefit from his computer virtuosity. Under diplomatic cover, he is sent to Geneva to help with the maintenance of the agency's network.

• In 2006, on a forum, he gives advice to other users in finding a job in the IT industry. The key: gaining a solid experience. As he explains, he himself did not have a university education, did not have any qualification, did not even finish high school and yet, he is in great demand.

• If it starts at the bottom of the ladder, Snowden will gradually climb the ladder. In 2007, he was transferred to the US Embassy in Switzerland with the job of maintaining computer security. As he then confides on a forum:

"I have $ 0 of debt, I earn $ 70,000. I have just refused offers of 83,000 and 180,000 dollars (they do not correspond to the direction I wish to follow). My colleagues are full of diplomas and have ten or fifteen years of experience. Employers are struggling to get me when I'm only 22 years old. I owe this to my business on the network. "

• As an intelligence worker, has Snowden already had his first doubts about the validity of his activity? At the Ars Technica site, he allows himself an insidious joke, suggesting that the noise produced by his Xbox console when turned off is due to the fact that the NSA uses it to spy on people. Moreover, it was in Switzerland that the temptation to play the alert throwers for the first time crossed the mind. He discovers that the CIA is using the embassy to spy on the Palais des Nations, the European office of the UN.

"Most of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me with how my government works and how it impacts the world. I realized that I was part of something that did more harm than good. "

• In order to better identify US tax fraudsters, the CIA is seeking the cooperation of some Swiss bankers. They want to be able to collect lists of customers - these are normally under the seal of secrecy.

• What made Snowden uncomfortable was how CIA agents recruited a Swiss banker to obtain secret information. They drunk it and then encouraged him to go home by car. Once the banker was arrested in an intoxicated state, one of the officers offered to help him. The man has come to work for the CIA.

• Snowden also discovers that the NSA is spying on telecommunications, in Europe but also in the USA. However, following the revelations of December 16, 2005, "Bush authorizes the espionage of telephone calls without justice required", the American president affirmed that these intercepts were targeted and that were operated after authorization of a court Secret, FISA Court. Snowden now knows that G.W. Bush lied.

• If Snowden is already tempted to collect secret documents, he is afraid of endangering people - a scruple that will cruelly miss Julian Assange, a few years later, who will publish lists of Afghan collaborators on Wikileaks at the risk of putting their existence in danger.

• It also happens that Snowden cultivates a hope in the election of Barack Obama who claims to be 'Constitutionalist'.

As a discomfort ...

Obama keeps surveillance program

• In the fall of 2008, Snowden voted neither for Obama nor McCain but for a third-party candidate - without specifying who. However, he is disappointed by the new American president, who in practice does not change the secret surveillance program of the Americans. Snowden is gradually approaching the libertarian current, which advocates individualism at every turn, with a tinge of economic liberalism, but reasoned - everyone can do with his person and his goods, as long as he does not encroach on The freedom of others. He will go so far as to make a donation to the campaign of a follower of this current, Ron Paul.

• Towards the end of 2008, Snowden's illness increased. He noticed serious anomalies in the security of information. It would seem easy for a particularly curious mind to intrude into home computers. Worried, he makes recommendations to his superiors. One of his superiors will even write a critical notation to this computer specialist whose behavior seems to him a little suspect. However, the warning will not follow. And anyway, Snowden decided to leave the CIA.

Snowden enters the NSA

• In February 2009, Snowden resigned and proposed to the NSA as a consultant. The agency hires, again at a computer station. Affected in the EC-Council business, he is trained to the ultimate intrusion in computers of all kinds. A teaching which he will make more than just use of, even if it is not the one that his employer could expect.

• A year later, the NSA places Snowden at the computer manufacturer Dell, which acts as subcontractor of the agency. Assigned to Japan on a military base, he operates as part of a listening mission for the NSA's Technology Department and receives a princely salary of $ 200,000 a year.
  

The time of the questioning

• On 5 June 2010, Private Bradley Manning was charged with relaying documents from the army's computers on the Wikileaks site, including a video that caused a scandal when it was posted: it was a scene Of the war in Iraq during which two Reuters journalists were killed and a man who tried to rescue one of the injured reporters was killed and his two children injured. President Obama showed no empathy for Manning, saying:

"We do not allow individuals to decide how the law works. And Bradley Manning broke the law. "

• If he himself had the desire to reveal what he knew, Snowden feels in a pause. While continuing to play online and following a weight training program, he defends some advanced positions in his online cats as the right to bear arms or even the removal of the public pension system. He has just joined Lindsay Mills, a pole dance teacher (the dance practiced by strippers around a bar). As for denouncing the NSA's mistakes, Snowden thinks that sooner or later someone will take action.

"I was waiting for someone to take the lead and solve these problems. And then, one day, I realized that it was useless to wait ... "

• In the spring of 2012, Snowden is transferred to Hawaii. He is followed by his companion Lindsay Mills. They live a quiet life, indulging in camping, scuba diving, and spending time with friends.

• At the professional level, the exact situation appears more blurred. More months pass and more questions invade the spirit of Snowden. It became clear that the NSA is collecting information about Americans without any authorization from Congress or a court - it has been since GW Bush ordered it. If permits were subsequently obtained, it was as a result of more restrictive laws passed in 2007 and 2012. However, these texts were secretly interpreted doubtfully, which enabled them to be transgressed. According to a source from Booz, Allen & Hamilton (his employer the following year), as of April 2012, while still under contract with Dell and based in Hawaii, Snowden would have secretly downloaded a certain amount of confidential documents.

• Snowden maintains regular conversations with colleagues and superiors on this topic of government abuse. In October 2012 he began to voice his fears to two of his superiors at the NSA Technology Directorate and two others at the regional base of the NSA's Threat Operations Center in Hawaii. He also spoke with 15 other colleagues. (All interested parties denied that such conversations had taken place).

• "My colleagues were often very surprised to learn that we were collecting more data on Americans than on Russians living in Russia," he told journalist Barton Gellman. "Most of them were troubled, and some said they did not want to know more."
  What is most troubling to him is that he is far from being the only one to know what he knows and to be troubled about. Yet everyone is silent.

• "It seemed like we had to try to do something rather than just do nothing."
  One of Snowden's moral problems is the commitment he has made to comply with the rules of the NSA. He is, however, changing his mind: he feels as bound by a vow to the American Constitution. As he will later say:

• "I have kept this commitment to the Constitution while Keith Alexander [NSA Director General] and James Clapper [Director of National Intelligence] did not keep it."
  

Alert launcher

• Snowden has gradually decided that it is up to him to return what he knows. However, he reflects at length on the transgressive act he proposes to commit. The decision is not easy: he knows full well that from the moment he spoke he will have to say goodbye to the easy life of an analyst, exchange that comfortable existence for that of an outlaw, obliged to hide And protect its existence. In any case, there is no question of committing the same blunders as Bradley Manning, who had entrusted himself to a hacker, Adrian Lamo, without suspecting for a moment that this one can henceforth be in the pay of the Therefore, Snowden judiciously plans the least of the actions, including the erasure of any trace of its activities on the network.

• Shortly before taking the plunge, Snowden reviewed the issues. Above all, he must overcome the fear of consequences for himself. He clearly knows what to expect - and in fact today he is facing the death penalty in the US.

• In an interview with a German reporter, That for him the decisive moment was to see James Clapper, the Director of Intelligence, lying before the Congress.

Contacting Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras

• Unable to seduce the collaborator of The Guardian, in January 2013, Snowden falls back on the director Laura Poitras. It was by reading an article by Greenwald that he discovered his existence. Poitras has distinguished itself by its documentary My country, my country, fruit of an 8-month work in Iraq occupied by the American forces. Since the release of this film, Laura Poitras says she was placed on a watch list and constantly bothered by border agents. At one point, she was threatened not to be allowed to return to her native land. The article that Greenwald devoted to him states that Laura Poitras is preparing a film on American surveillance programs. She has just made a short film about the NSA and is part of Bradley Manning's supporters.

• Laura Poitras, given her activity, is used to encrypting her messages. The exchanges with Snowden are thus facilitated. To converse quietly, Poitras and Snowden, use a secure communication system called Tails. Initially, she distrusts this unknown, sniffing a potential trap. Little by little, they mutually reciprocate and she ends up trusting him. Snowden advises him to use very long passwords. For her part, she intends to ensure that he does not know the fate of the unfortunate Bradley Manning.

Booz, Allen & Hamilton ...

• In March 2013, Snowden was recruited by Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA IT subcontractor, with a comfortable salary of $ 122,000 per month, which was lower than the one he received from Dell.

• However, this post has many advantages for the one who has crossed the Rubicon and wants to access specific documents.

"My duties with Booz Allen Hamilton gave me access to the lists of programs and devices spied around the world by the NSA.
That's why I accepted this position, "Snowden said later.

• As of April, he activates to copy a very large number of documents on a USB key, in addition to those he collected a year earlier. How many copies are there, the opinions diverge. According to Rick Ledgett, the NSA's deputy director in late 2013 [1], he would have downloaded some 1.7 million documents. Snowden shows an extraordinary mastery of the system - it will then appear that he has acceded to the systems under artificial identities, neutralized all the warnings put in place, erased the least trace of his passages. His talent is such that he will tell a former intelligence officer:

"You do not have to hire bright people anymore. Only competent people. Brilliant people are going to cause trouble. "
For now, Snowden still hesitates as to what he could do with his booty.

The point of no return

• In the same month of April, Laura Poitras begins to receive documents from her anonymous interlocutor. She suggests bringing them to the New York Times but Snowden is opposed. After all, in 2004, this magazine left a year before publishing the Trailblazer materials provided by alert launcher Russel Tice, which probably helped re-election G. W. Bush.

• Failing this, Poitras proposes to contact the Washington Post, a newspaper famous for having been at the origin of the case Watergate. She proposes the name of Barton Gellman. This journalist who covered at length the war in Iraq and the security problems.

• Snowden found the idea excellent, but he insisted however that Greenwald was also part of the game. However, the chance is that the latter will visit New York in April. Laura Poitras meets her and tells her about the contact she had with a stranger - Greenwal does not establish the link with the one who wrote to her in December ...

• Then on May 16, Snowden had a direct exchange with Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman. Snowden is known by the code name Verax (the one who speaks the truth, in Latin). The great offensive is preparing.

• This time, Glenn Greenwald is convinced. From Rio to Brazil, he went back to New York to meet Laura Poitras. Together they negotiate the scoop for the American edition of The Guardian. However, Snowden asked them to come and meet him in Hong Kong.

• Greenwald and Laura Poitras fly to Hong Kong, where they are joined by another Guardian reporter, Ewen McAskill. During the flight, Greenwald discovers some of the documents that the alert launcher sent to Laura Poitras, the one that evokes the access that the telephone operator Verizon has opened to its hundreds of millions of users. Everything is ready for revelations on a very large scale ...

In Hong Kong, the three journalists must find a person wearing a Rubik's Cube in front of a restaurant. They ask him the agreed question:

"Do you know what time the restaurant opens?"

• They are astonished to contact that Snowden can be so young. He takes them to the Mira Hotel where he has taken a room. On the spot, he answers their innumerable questions, handing over 58,000 documents to them, while commenting on them and making them understand that he has retained many others. Greenwald will show his amazement at the way the files were meticulously filed, in order to facilitate their apprehension by novices.

• From his hotel room, Snowden speaks in front of Glenn Greenwald while Laura Poitras films the video interview.

• Greenwald immediately starts writing an article, which will finally be published on June 5 in the evening. On his return from Hong Kong, Glenn Greenwald deems it opportune not to return to the United States and go directly to Brazil.

• On June 6, 2013, the world discovers the pot-aux-roses, via the special editions of the Washington Post, and then an hour later, that of The Guardian. Der Spiegel followed suit the next day, under the pen of Laura Poitras. Very quickly, the news is taken up on Twitter on a global scale.

• The same message: the NSA monitors the entire Internet and phone calls, including American!

• And under the Prism program, 9 giants of the Net collaborate, willy-nilly with this collection ...

To know more about him there are movies that you can watch-