Who is Edward Snowden, the whistleblower granted Russian citizenship through decree? Read to know

Edward Snowden, a whistleblower, exposed in 2013 that US government's National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on its own citizens and foreigners within the US and abroad. In a recent development, Snowden was granted Russian citizenship by President Vladimir Putin through a decree.

Snowden also shared a picture of his family on Twitter and talked about never being separated from his sons in the future. It has been 10 years since Snowden separated from his mom and dad. Snowden has also applied for dual Russian-US citizenship as he wanted to reunite with his mom and dad.

After the news spread, some people wanted to know if Edward Snowden, who is an American by birth, would join the war against Ukraine after Putin ordered the 300,000 reservists to help in the fight.





In the expose, Snowden showed that the NSA collected data from companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook and Yahoo. It was informed that the German Chancellor, at that time, Angela Merkel, also was spied on.

All this information was revealed to the public by Snowden, who was then 29 years old. The young man fled the US, fearing arrest, and landed in Russia via Hong Kong. Snowden stayed at the airport for a month after reaching Russia and was taken as an asylum seeker.

Meanwhile, the court in the US had also ruled that the mass scale spying by the NSA of US citizens and foreigners was illegal.

FAQs

1. Name a significant spy of the cold war era.
   Klaus Fuchs
2. Name a spy of Germany in France during the First World War.
   Mata Hari.