What did Edward Snowden do? In June 2013, the former National Security Agency contractor handed journalists secret documents showing that the NSA was collecting the phone records of millions of Americans. Knowing that story gives you a clear base for judging every surveillance debate since.
You may know the name from headlines, a movie, or a lively family dinner. You may already have strong feelings about him, or none at all. Either way, the public record is long but readable, and you can learn the core of it in one sitting.
Start by setting aside the question of whether Snowden is a hero or a criminal. First learn what the government was doing, what the documents showed, and what changed afterward. With those facts in hand, the arguments about the man himself become much easier to weigh.
Before Snowden: Fifty Years of Files
Learn the earlier history and you can see the 2013 leak as one chapter in a long American story. Each era wrote new rules, and each new technology tested them. The four milestones below set the rules that Snowden's documents later put on trial.
COINTELPRO
COINTELPRO was an FBI program that ran from 1956 to 1971. The name is short for Counterintelligence Program. The FBI used it to watch, infiltrate and disrupt American groups it viewed as threats. Targets included the Communist Party, antiwar groups, Black Panther chapters and civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. The public learned of it in 1971. Activists broke into an FBI field office in Media, Pennsylvania, took files and mailed them to newspapers.
The Church Committee
In 1975 the Senate formed a special committee to investigate the intelligence agencies. Senator Frank Church of Idaho chaired it. The committee documented abuses by the FBI, the CIA and the NSA. One NSA effort, Operation SHAMROCK, had copied international telegrams leaving the country for decades. Another, Project MINARET, kept watch lists of Americans, including well-known public figures. The reports led Congress to create permanent intelligence committees in both the House and the Senate.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, in 1978. The law set rules for spying on foreign powers and their agents inside the United States. It also created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to approve those requests. The court meets in secret. In most cases, only the government appears before it.
The USA PATRIOT Act and Section 215
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act in October of that year. The law widened the government's powers to investigate terrorism. Section 215 let the FBI ask the FISA court for "any tangible things" relevant to an investigation. The public text sounded narrow. In secret, the court approved a far broader reading. Ask what did Edward Snowden do, and the answer starts with that secret reading.
What Did Edward Snowden Do?
Learn the plain facts of the leak and you can separate the record from the rumors. Below you get who Snowden was, what the documents showed, and how he ended up in Russia. The reaction and the reforms come right after.
Who He Was
Edward Snowden was born in North Carolina in 1983. He worked for the CIA and then as a contractor for Dell and later Booz Allen Hamilton. In 2013 he worked at an NSA facility in Hawaii. His systems work gave him wide access to classified files. In May 2013 he flew to Hong Kong. There he met journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill. Barton Gellman of The Washington Post also received documents.
The Phone Records
On June 5, 2013, The Guardian published a secret FISA court order. It required Verizon to hand the NSA, every day, records of all calls on its systems. That included calls inside the United States. The order covered metadata: the numbers on each end, the time and the length of each call. The recorded words of calls fell outside this program. Officials soon confirmed that the program reached multiple carriers and had run under Section 215 since 2006.
News of the bulk phone program quickly drew comparisons to 1984, the film of George Orwell's novel, in which the state watches citizens through telescreens in their homes and workplaces. The NSA program collected metadata rather than spoken words. Keep that difference in mind when the comparison comes up.
What Did Edward Snowden Leak?
The next day, The Washington Post and The Guardian reported on PRISM. PRISM collected emails, chats and files of foreign targets from major American tech companies. Named firms included Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Apple. The companies said they handed over data only under legal orders. PRISM ran under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Section 702 targets non-Americans believed to be outside the country. Americans who talk with those targets get swept in, a practice called incidental collection.
Later stories described XKeyscore, a tool for searching internet data. They described MUSCULAR, which tapped links between Google and Yahoo data centers overseas. They reported that the NSA had monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. When people ask what did Edward Snowden leak, the total is still disputed. U.S. officials estimated he copied well over a million files. Journalists published a much smaller share. Snowden has said he gave everything to journalists and kept no copies.
The Flight to Moscow
Snowden revealed his identity in a video released on June 9, 2013. Federal prosecutors filed charges against him days later. On June 23 he flew from Hong Kong to Moscow, reportedly on his way to Latin America. The United States had revoked his passport. He spent more than a month in the transit zone of a Moscow airport. Russia granted him temporary asylum on August 1, 2013.
What Changed and What Did Not
Know which reforms passed and which stalled, and you can follow today's surveillance votes with confidence. Below you get the reaction, the laws, Snowden's current status and both sides of the debate about him. After that, the story moves to cameras and commercial data.
The Reaction
President Barack Obama defended the programs and also ordered a review. In January 2014, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board reported that the phone records program had not been essential to stopping any terrorist attack. In May 2015, a federal appeals court ruled in ACLU v. Clapper that Section 215 never authorized bulk collection. The Guardian and The Washington Post shared the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Tech companies expanded encryption across their products.
The USA FREEDOM Act
Congress passed the USA FREEDOM Act, and it became law on June 2, 2015. It ended the NSA's bulk collection of phone records under Section 215. Phone companies kept the records instead. The government now had to get a court order tied to a specific selection term, such as a phone number. The law also added outside legal advisers, called amici, to the FISA court. The NSA stopped using the narrower call records program in 2019, and the authority lapsed in 2020.
Section 702 Renewals
The 2015 reform left Section 702 in place. Congress renewed it in 2012, 2018 and April 2024. The 2024 law is called the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act. The main fight is over backdoor searches, where the FBI searches 702 data for Americans' information without a warrant. A House amendment to require a warrant failed on a 212 to 212 tie. The 2024 law extended Section 702 to April 2026, setting up the next round of debate.
Where Snowden Is Now
As of the most recent public reporting, Snowden lives in Russia with his wife, Lindsay Mills, and their children. Russia granted him citizenship in 2022. In the United States, he still faces charges of theft of government property and two counts under the Espionage Act. He has said he would return for a trial that allowed a public interest defense. Some lawmakers and advocates continue to call for a pardon. No pardon has been granted.
The Case That He Is a Whistleblower
Supporters point to results. A program he exposed was ruled unlawful by a federal appeals court, and Congress changed the law. They note that the Espionage Act does not let a defendant argue that a leak served the public. They add that contractors had weak whistleblower protections in 2013. Snowden says he raised concerns inside the NSA before he left.
The Case That He Broke the Law
Critics point to scale. A bipartisan House Intelligence Committee report in 2016 concluded he was not a whistleblower. It found that most of the files concerned military and foreign intelligence, with little link to Americans' privacy. Officials have said the leaks harmed national security. The NSA released one email he sent its legal office and described it as a question about legal authorities, with no complaint attached. Critics also question his move to Russia. However you answer what did Edward Snowden do, both views rest on parts of the documented record.
From Phone Records to License Plates
Understand where surveillance lives today and you can make informed privacy choices for your family. Many preppers treat privacy as part of preparedness, right alongside food storage and first aid. The answer to what did Edward Snowden do now leads to a newer story about private companies, and three steps to follow it close the story.
Data for Sale
Data brokers are companies that collect and sell personal information. Phone apps often share location data, and brokers buy it, package it and resell it. In 2018 the Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that police need a warrant for historical cell phone location records from carriers. Agencies have since bought similar data from brokers without a warrant. A 2023 declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed that agencies buy commercially available information. The report said such data can be as sensitive as records that need a warrant. The House passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act in 2024 to limit these purchases. The Senate did not pass it.
Cameras on the Corner
Automated license plate readers photograph every passing plate and log the time and place. Flock Safety is one of the largest sellers. Its Flock cameras serve police departments, homeowner associations and businesses. Many agencies share plate data across city and state lines. The laws that govern these cameras vary widely from state to state.
Contractors and the Software Layer
Snowden himself was a contractor, and that pattern has grown. Palantir Technologies builds software that links large data sets for agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Defense. Supporters say tools like these help find criminals and threats faster. Critics say they concentrate a great deal of information in few hands. Either way, much of the modern surveillance system runs on private products bought with public money.
The film Gattaca shows a society where routine screening of personal records, in its case DNA, decides who gets which job and who walks through which door. Its data is genetic rather than commercial. It still raises the same question these tools put in front of you: who holds your records, and what they decide with them.
Three Steps to Follow the Issue
1. Read the primary sources. The Church Committee reports, the 2014 oversight board report and the annual intelligence transparency reports are all free online. Reading them firsthand gets you facts without anyone else's spin.
2. Track the next Section 702 deadline. Bookmark the bill pages on congress.gov and note how your representatives vote. You get a clear view of where each lawmaker stands, whatever your own politics.
3. Audit your own data trail this weekend. If you have one hour, review the location permissions on your phone and switch off the ones you rarely use. If you have a full weekend, search your name on data broker sites, file opt-out requests, and check city council minutes for license plate reader contracts. A tight budget works in your favor here, because most opt-outs are free, and doing them by hand shows you exactly who holds your data. For the wider history behind each step, read The Rise of the Surveillance State on Prepper Life.
