The man credited as the NSA whistle-blower who spilled the beans on the surveillance program that has everyone in the U.S. talking, is Edward Snowden. The 29 year-old currently works for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and was once a undercover employee for the CIA. Not shrinking from fear, Snowden said, "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong." Sacrificing a $200,000 annual salary and a comfortable life, he flew to Honk Kong on May 20th and has remained holed up in the same hotel room for a few weeks.
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden
Snowden expects that he will be punished and the NSA police and other law-enforcement officials have already visited his girlfriend and his home in the U.S. So why go through all of this? "It's important to send a message to government that people will not be intimidated," he says.
For those who haven't been keeping with the news, the NSA's PRISM program allows the U.S. government to access information from some of the country's major tech firms such as Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. Most of the companies named, such as Google and Facebook, have denied their involvement in the program. The information is supposedly used to help the government proactively prevent terror attacks. Last week, the U.S. said that information taken from the PRISM program helped prevent a terrorist attack on the New York City subway system in 2009.
"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things. I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under ... I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."-Edward Snowden, NSA whistle-blower
Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
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