Edward Snowden, born June 21, 1983, is an American computer professional, former Central Intelligence Agency employee, and former United States government contractor who copied and leaked classified information from Security National Agency of 2013 without authorization. His revelations revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many operated by the NSA and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance with the cooperation of telecommunications companies and European governments. Snowden's decision to leak NSA documents developed gradually after his assignment in March 2007 as a technician at the CIA's Geneva station. Snowden first contacted Glenn Greenwald, a journalist working at The Guardian, on December 1, 2012. He contacted Greenwald anonymously as "Cincinnatus" and said he had sensitive documents he would like to share. Greenwald found the measures the source asked him to take to protect their communications, such as email encryption, too troublesome to take. Snowden then contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in January 2013. According to Poitras, Snowden chose to contact her after seeing her New York Times article on NSA whistleblower William Binney. What originally attracted Snowden to Greenwald and Poitras was a Salon article written by Greenwald detailing how Poitras' controversial films had made her a government target. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Snowden's identity was made public by The Guardian at his request on June 9, 2013. "I don't want to live in a world where I do everything and say it's on the record," he explained. “My only motive is to inform the public about what is being done in their name and what is being done against them.” Snowden told the Washington Post that he wanted to "encourage others to come forward" by showing that "they can win." He told the New York Times that the system for reporting problems didn't work. “You must report wrongdoing to those most responsible.” He highlighted the lack of whistleblower protections for government contractors and the use of the Espionage Act of 1917 to do so. prosecute those who reveal information, and his belief that if he used internal mechanisms to "raise the alarm", his revelations "would be buried forever". In December 2013, after learning that a US federal judge had declared the NSA's collection of US telephone metadata likely unconstitutional, Snowden stated: "I acted under the belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge , and that the American public deserved the chance to see these matters resolved by open courts." In January 2014, Snowden said his breaking point was seeing the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress. This referred to testimony on March 12, 2013, three months after Snowden first tried to share thousands of NSA documents with Greenwald, and nine months after the NSA said Snowden made his first illegal downloads during In the summer of 2012, Clapper denied to the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the NSA collects data on millions of Americans. Snowden said: “You cannot save an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and to lawmakers who must be able to trust it and regulate its actions. Seeing this meant to me that I could not go back..