Show Notes

COLD OPEN

The following presentation is not suitable for young children. Listener discretion is advised. 

SFX: A clock ticks two seconds

It's May 20th, 2013 and Edward Joseph Snowden zips up his backpack, grabs the Rubik's cube off of his desk and deliberately makes his way out of his office. He starts down a mile-long tunnel that leads to the exit of the National Security Agency facility deep inside of a mountain in Hawaii. He’s the only person marching toward the light today. His footsteps echo through the empty corridor making it feel like he's marching toward his execution instead of his liberation. 

Snowden has been at this NSA facility for a year now, silently collecting data and storing it on his trusty Rubik's Cube. Data that would send the world into shock, panic and give everyone another reason why they shouldn’t trust the United States government.

But first Snowden needs to get the hell out of dodge. He needs to get out of this mountain facility and into the fresh Hawaiian air so he can breathe again. He walks on, fidgeting with his Rubik's cube. Spinning and turning, spinning and turning over and over again. It's cemented in his clammy hand as he strides toward the exit. He's solved the damn thing over a thousand times now. What started as a mental exercise has now grown into a tick. Spinning and turning, spinning and turning. He's never seen without his Rubik's Cube close by. But today, he wants to keep that thing as close to him as humanly possible. Not because he cares about the toy all that much - he has piles of those cubes at home. But because of what this toy, this specific cube contains.

For the last six years of his life, Snowden has gone from starry-eyed white hat computer hacker with a sense of patriotic duty, to a man holding top secret security clearance; trusted with the government's deepest, darkest secrets. 

Get the fuck out of here, his brain screamed. But he keeps his pace even as he approaches the end of the tunnel and toward the armed security guard at the exit. Snowden knows how to keep his cool. He learned it during his training at the CIA.

Sup Marks!

Snowden.

It was Officer Marks working the security door today, just as Snowden had predicted. He tosses Marks the Rubik's Cube. This is the moment of truth.

You ever solve one of those?, Snowden asks the guard.

Marks looks at the Cube. Spinning it. Turning it. Pulling it. Snowden holds his breath. He's trying to keep his heart rate down and his asshole puckered. He puts his backpack on the metal scanner and continues to hold his breath. Breathe, goddammit before you start sweating.

Next step: the body scanner. Get in, put your hands up and wait. Let the machine do its thing.

SFX: A clock ticks twice

The seconds tick by excruciatingly slow. 

What the hell is going on? Had they seen something in the scanner? Did I forget to put the chip back into the cube? Would the cube set alarms off on a secret NSA scanner behind the counter? I didn't account for that.

Snowden was scanned from fingertips to toenails. He wonders how much longer it would take for the polymer tube to open and release him.

SFX: A clock ticks twice

One false move and Edward Snowden would be spending the rest of his life in a windowless CIA black site being waterboarded, electrocuted and, maybe, executed. No judge, no jury, no trial. Thanks, Patriot Act.

Edward Snowden doesn't believe in God, not after the things he's seen. But he prays, at this exact moment, just in case anyone is listening. Please just let this fucking plan work.

Snowden can't stand it anymore. Is all hell about to break loose?

SFX: Alarms blare, commotion, slowly fading out.

Nope. The female guard working the body scanner gives Officer Marks the thumbs up and Edward Snowden walks out of the body scanner, one step closer to his freedom. 

For now…

On this episode, one aimless computer nerd from a Maryland suburb, invasions of privacy and that goddamn Rubik's Cube. 

I'm Keith Korneluk and this is Modem Mischief.

SFX: Theme song

INTRODUCTION

You're listening to Modem Mischief. In this series we explore the darkest reaches of the internet. We'll take you into the minds of the world's most notorious hackers and the lives affected by them. We'll also show you places you won't find on Google and what goes on down there. This is the story of Edward Snowden

ACT 1

It was May 19th, 2013, when Edward Snowden shoved pillows under the cracks of his hotel room door. He pulled the blinds closed, shutting out the neon street signs glowing on the Hong Kong streets below. He felt like a pot that was about to boil with the lid still on. All the pressure he had been feeling for the past seven years was bubbling up inside and threatening to flip his lid.

Curled up on the bed alone in the hotel room, he finally let himself succumb to the emotions he had been burying for so long and he sobbed. Fear, sadness, retribution, and pain all came bubbling to the surface. He was finally here. The plan that he had been working on since 2011 was finally going to happen, and Snowden had no idea whether he would be branded an American Hero or prosecuted as a traitor.

Snowden thought back to the beginning, where his story all started. If you asked his parents, they would tell you that the Ed’s drive to save the world and help the oppressed wasn't born until after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. The Pentagon and World Trade Center attacks were enough to jolt Ed out of his slacker-hacker life and into the real world, but Ed knew his story began when he joined the CIA.

Snowden applied to the CIA with nothing but his H.S. Diploma and extensive knowledge of hacking and computers. He knew he wasn't the typical choice for a recruit, but he also knew what the government needed: more cybersecurity. As it turned out, Snowden was right.

After completing extensive background checks, interviews, and skill tests, Snowden passed with near-perfect scores and was immediately thrown into CIA training. Here, his home-grown obsession with hacking, software engineering, encryption, and data mining were sharpened and weaponized.

Snowden graduated CIA training in 2006 and gathered in the hall among his peers, awaiting his first official assignment. Student after student received their orders for Iran outposts and Afghanistan bunkers. By the time the instructor made it down to S, Snowden was vibrating with anticipation. So, when the instructor spoke, Snowden thought he misheard him.

"Can you repeat that, sir?" he asked. But the answer was the same.

Snowden was being stationed in Geneva. Fucking Geneva, of all the places. Geneva as in Switzerland. Home of cheese fondue, yodeling, and Roger Federer. Geneva was a far cry from fighting terrorist cells in the middle east, surrounded by nothing but sand and trenches.

Instead of fighting side-by-side with the men and women on the front line and taking down cyber-terrorist cells, Snowden was running security checks on the CIA's systems. He felt trapped by the office work and begged his supervising agent for a field case to work on.

After stonewalling Snowden's request for a few months, his superior finally relented and threw Snowden an easy assignment.

The job was to investigate assassination attempts on newly elected President George W. Bush. The analyst, Agent Huntington, assigned to work the case with Snowden called him into his office on March 12th, 2007, to give Snowden profiles on possible subjects. It was Ed’s job to narrow down the leads.

When Snowden visited Huntington’s office to collect the subject profiles, he was surprised when Huntington invited him in and even more surprised when Snowden saw the software, XKeyscore being used for the first time.

From what Snowden could tell, Huntington was using XKeyscore to search people’s entire online presence and internet history in order to make his list of suspects. Huntington printed off a few pages and handed them to Snowden.

Flipping through the pages, Snowden noticed that most of the communications listed in each file weren't from public chats or message board postings. The communications listed in each person's profile were private emails, text messages, and chats.

This can't be right, he thought, but each report was the same. The government was searching people's private internet history. It seemed impossible to Snowden, or, more likely, illegal.

Snowden asked the analyst about the profiles and whether they needed a particular court order that would permit them to look at the size and scope of documents he held in his hand, but the analyst laughed it off. "Court order?" he echoed, "fuck that." They didn't need a court order. They were the fucking CIA, and XKeyscore had been CIA-approved as a matter of national security.

National security? Again, something wasn't right. Snowden left the analyst's office and continued looking at the stack of reports. Most of the profiles he held in his hand weren't detailing criminals or even people who had made public threats against the President. More than half of the flagged profiles were two college kids making a stupid joke over text.

The revelation slightly unhinged Snowden, who felt like he was effectively spying on people who had done nothing wrong. Citizens who hadn't broken any laws or done anything criminal and, yet, had ended up on Snowden's list where he was now reading their texts. It was maddening and shocking, but before Snowden could even think about what to do, he made a darker discovery.

Working on a new case, Snowden was introduced to a new software called TEMPORA. TEMPORA, the analyst explained, was a British black-ops program that allowed CIA operatives live webcam access and phone tapping. Without a warrant, agents could tap into the live webcam feed of a laptop that wasn't even turned on. Snowden had never seen anything like it in his life.

When he learned about the new system, Snowden also discovered more of the NSA's dark secrets. After doing a little digging and chatting with his peers around the water cooler, Snowden found out that operatives were using the software to spy on ex-girlfriends and wives. Reading their chats and emails, checking their porn history and phone, even hacking into their webcams and watching them live while they showered, cooked, even fucked. The NSA had a name for this hacking practice called LOVE-INT, modeled after other intelligence terminologies like SIG-INT (which stands for Signals Intelligence, aka intelligence gathered by intercepting signals).

Snowden fully believed that the government could do some Bruce Wayne kind of justice with these programs. With simple search parameters or a base of known fugitives to work off, the software might have actually been able to do a lot of good and put a ton of bad and dangerous people in prison. But that's not what the NSA was doing with the resources and power at their fingertips, not by a long shot and the reality of the situation made him feel slimy and gross.

Snowden had seen enough from the government to know that nothing good or helpful was really happening with these technologies, at least, not that he could see. If anything, they were hurting people more than helping them, but he worried about reporting the abuse to his superiors, who had authorized the use of these programs. At best, he would be ignored, and, at worst, he would be burned as an agent. Instead of going to battle with the CIA, Snowden resigned in 2009.

Since making a bit of a name for himself in the CIA, Snowden didn't stay jobless for long. By the end of the year, Snowden already had a new job as an NSA contractor for Dell Computers in his dream city of Tokyo, Japan.

In his new role, Snowden was helping Dell manage computer systems for the CIA, FBI, and sixteen other black-ops agencies that would kill him for muttering their name in his sleep or writing it down on a diner napkin. He also instructed top-ranking officials and military officers on how to defend their systems from Chinese hackers.

What that really meant though, was more spying. At Dell, Snowden saw how the NSA was gathering data on the Chinese and hacking into their communication hubs. Snowden himself regularly hacked into the country's primary I.P. address blocks to phish for data; it wasn't a criminal offense but part of his job.

Discovering the global surveillance systems at Dell should have shocked Snowden to his core. Still, he was starting to understand that this was just how the government operated, widely and without oversight. To make matters worse, Snowden's health had become a major problem.

In Tokyo, Snowden collapsed on the floor of his apartment and was treated for a seizure at a local hospital. Internally, Snowden was falling apart and struggling to hold himself together in the face of the lies and injustice he witnessed daily. The stress and secrets were weighing on his conscience, and he was living in fear of being secretly stalked online.

While Snowden battled on the inside, he kept his demeanor calm and cool on the outside. Everyone who met Snowden was endlessly impressed by him, and as a result, he continued to move up the ranks with Dell and the NSA. Coworkers had called Snowden a genius amongst geniuses, and his superiors took notice. Snowden was offered a promotion that he gladly accepted.

In 2011 Snowden bounced from Tokyo to Maryland and, a year later, moved again from Maryland to Hawaii. Both career changes were intended to be promotions for Snowden. His counterparts liked him, and Snowden was good at winning the favor of the chief officers.

From April 2012 to May 2013, Snowden toiled away at Dell's NSA base in Hawaii. As much as Snowden tried not to think about all the government's spying, it always managed to creep back into his mind. Every picture his girlfriend snapped, every time a webcam was left open, every message he sent from his phone became dangerous; a potential weapon that his government could wield against him. He wouldn’t even know until it was too late. Snowden's presence in both the virtual and real-world were rapidly fading from existence.

After a year at Dell, Snowden quit. He had grown increasingly restless and dissatisfied and had gone from sick to sicker. His anxiety and paranoia were mounting the higher he rose in his career, and Snowden wondered if the stress from his job would kill him.

Booz Allen Hamilton hired Snowden immediately after he left Dell. The information and technology consulting firm worked out of the NSA's Hawaii regional operation center and was known as "The Tunnel" because it was built underground. To help him troubleshoot all the systems and help any staff member on-site with their tech, Snowden was given wide-ranging access to all NSA's computers.

By 2013, Snowden's declining health was also becoming something that he couldn't brush under the rug any longer. He had headaches, nausea. He’d been experiencing seizures and they were growing more frequent, even with medication. When he asked for an extended leave of absence from work, he had only been in Hawaii for 15 months. It was without question that Snowden's extended leave was approved.

It was May 23rd, 2013, when Booz Hamilton ran their security checks at the base. Snowden had packed up his Rubix cube and left the building on a Friday only three days prior. Usually, during the grunt-work security checks, only the occasional sounds of sipping coffee and tapping keyboards can be heard. Today, however, after only a few minutes of scanning, one computer let out a small but startling 'ding' and the words: SYSTEMS BREACH flashed onto the main screen.

The first alert was followed by another and then another after that. In a matter of seconds, the entire front screen was covered in red, flashing messages. Analysts were all furiously typing, pages were printing, and the system seemed to be crashing around them.

The site manager looked at the data being streamed to the large computer screen at the front of the room and saw that all the breeches had one thing in common: originating from the same code name, Verax. The codename belonged to none other than Edward J. Snowden.

The site manager rang up the CIA director, who gave the order less than 30 minutes after the chaos had begun. The CIA would need to find Edward Snowden.

ACT 2

Snowden had done something so unprecedented that the CIA and NSA didn’t know what had even hit them. They knew that Snowden had stolen documents but had no idea how many. There was no way for the agencies to know exactly what had been stolen or what information and programs could be compromised.

The American government had to take matters of national security seriously, and the quiet manhunt for Edward Snowden began unbeknownst to the public. The government planned on keeping it that way. Could Snowden be selling government secrets to Russia or exposing all the assignments of his other fellow agents to U.K. intelligence? With no way to know for sure, all they could do was sit and wait to see what Snowden had planned.

No one at the CIA or NSA could have known that Snowden’s decision to steal classified NSA documents and expose their black-ops programs began after his posting in Geneva. Snowden was appalled by what was happening and made a silent but solemn vow to do everything in his power to stop it. But to take his plan from dream to reality, he needed to play along with the agencies he planned to exploit. He had to be a good little spy who answered to then-CIA Director James Clapper’s every beck and call and pleasantly smile as the NSA Director asked him about tapping into citizens’ phone lines.

Even though the plan had been hatched by Snowden early in his contractor career, it wasn’t until April 2012 that he began stealing government documents that he later hoped to use against them. At Dell alone, Snowden could steal almost 200,000 documents, and once he copied as many documents as possible, he quit.

When Snowden took his next job at Booz Allen Hamilton, it appeared like Snowden was merely working his way up the cyber-intelligence ladder. However, he only took the job with Booze for one thing: more documents. Booz Hamilton is a company controlled by the well-connected Carlyle Group. The Carlyle Group was one of the world’s largest, secretive government investment groups that funded most Booz Allen Hamilton’s top-secret activities.

The position at Booz was the last stop on Snowden’s document gathering list. And his job allowed Snowden access to NSA data mining machines worldwide and promised a trove of incriminating documents he planned to use to prove that the domestic surveillance done by the American government was unconstitutional. After stealing another 200,000-something-documents from Booz Allen, Snowden decided that it was time for the next step of his plan; to bring in the media.

On Saturday, December 1st, 2012, after spending Thanksgiving alone and eating Chinese food, Snowden sent his first encrypted email to journalist Glenn Greenwald using the code name, Verax.

Ed didn’t have the luxury of time on his side. Each hour and minute that ticked by was another hour or minute the government could discover what he had done. He would avoid setting off most of their alarms for now, but it wouldn’t last forever

After a month without hearing from Greenwald, Snowden moved on to recruiting videographer Laura Poitras. Greenwald had published a column in Salon about Poitras that sparked Snowden’s interest in her reporting. Snowden saw a documentary Poitras made about domestic spying by the Nation Security Agency that sealed the deal for him; he needed Poitras on his team. Again, it seemed like Snowden had found the perfect journalist to work with, but he was worried she would ignore him like Greenwald did.

Snowden reached out to her in a series of encrypted emails and continued to go by a code name. To his delight, Poitras responded and was able to hop on an encrypted network so that she could easily communicate with Snowden. But the encrypted network wasn’t enough to appease the young operative. After their initial communications, Snowden instructed Poitras to get on an even more secure network, and she again complied. With each hoop that Snowden made Poitras jump through, anxiety for them both rose.

After going back and forth with Poitras for a month, Snowden started keeping tabs on her online communications. He needed to know that he could trust her before revealing his identity and the entirety of his documents. In May, Snowden saw that Poitras had been communicating with journalist Barton Gelman about Verax aka Snowden. Poitras didn’t reveal his identity or anything about the case, and Snowden knew he could trust her. That month, Snowden asked Poitras to message Barton Gellman and bring him on the team.

The careful juggling of the three journalists was all part of Snowden’s plan. Each one (Greenwald, Poitras, and Gellman) offered a different but sound perspective. But his act was more than just about testing their loyalty to the story and him as a source; Snowden was fucking petrified that the government would catch wind of his plan and blow the whole thing to pieces.

After working in the most top-secret channels of the American government, Snowden knew he would be hunted and that the CIA, NSA, and Booz contractors would do everything in their power to shut him down. They would go to the ends of the Earth to stop the one person, reporter, news channel that got their hands on the documents he stole and the information they contained. The NSA and CIA would go to any length to protect their secrets, even if it meant taking out anyone involved one by one. Snowden needed the information spread as far and wide as possible. He required multiple journalists, records and accounts, news outlets, and media types for good measure. The government wouldn’t eradicate this threat with a sniper or drone strike; they would be forced to face the consequences of their actions.

When Snowden left the NSA building in Hawaii on Friday, May 17th, 2013, he wasn’t stopped or even extensively searched. He hopped on the first plane to China and entered stage three of his plan; get the hell out of dodge. He spun the Rubix cube in his hand and thought of the tiny chip tucked safely inside. The chip held years of data collection and government secrets. Secrets that would soon be shared if everything else went according to plan.

After 24 hours of layovers and traveling, Snowden arrived at The Mira, a luxury hotel connected to a busy urban mall in downtown Hong Kong. Snowden paid with a credit card to avoid looking extra suspicious. He didn’t want to be a shadowy figure hiding away in the dark if he could help it. He wanted the public to know that he was funding his way in Hong Kong, not some opposing spy agency; his hands were as clean as could be.

From his room in the Mira, Snowden entered phase four of his plan. He needed to meet with his chosen journalists in China so they could write these stories and share them with the public before the government found Snowden and tried to arrest him. Poitras was able to get Glen Greenwald on board with Snowden’s plan, and the reporting team was complete with three seasoned reporters.

He didn’t have a minute to waste. It was only a matter of time before the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI would start looking for him, if they hadn’t already, and it wouldn’t take them long to locate him. He needed to spread the documents in his possession before that happened.

If he failed, he would be led out of the front door of the Mira in handcuffs. Failing wasn’t an option.

On Monday morning, June 3rd, Greenwald and Poitras met their shadowy source at the Hong Kong mall. Snowden had said to meet outside a restaurant at the mall; he would be carrying a Rubik’s Cube. They arrived early; he wasn’t there.

Snowden peered at them from inside a shop window, watching the journalists as they stared into weathered faces in the crowd with calculated anticipation. Snowden checked his watch. It was approaching five after the hour, the time that he instructed them to leave if he hadn’t yet arrived. He could see them talking with arms waving and red faces. He took a breath and left the store; he was ready.

Snowden strolled over to the two, tossing his Rubix cube in the air as he approached them. They seemed surprised and looked at Snowden up and down and then up again.

“Wh-what time does the restaurant open?” Greenwald stuttered, following Snowden’s emailed instructions to the letter.

“At noon,” Snowden replied. “But don’t go there. The food sucks.”

Then Snowden glanced around. “Follow me,” he said.

Both Poitras and Greenwald shared a look and took off after the man. They followed him down the stairs and into a hotel, careful to keep their eye on him as they walked. Snowden knew what they were thinking; he was too young. Too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to have the knowledge and experience he claimed. He would gladly prove them wrong.

Poitras, Greenwald, and Gellmen initially had their doubts about the young man sitting before them, but the more they all spoke, the more their doubts seemed to fade. Snowden provided credible information to show that he was, indeed, who he claimed to be. The most damning evidence of all wasn’t just Snowden’s accounts of military operations or his photos with high-ranking officials; it was the abundance of government documents.

Snowden had easily stolen over 1 million documents from the NSA, and the story was laid out plainly in each file they read. In the swath of information, a clear picture emerged for the journalists about what was really happening inside the American government.

It was clear that the NSA was collecting almost every phone call made in America and overseas. The government was intercepting all internet and phone history traveling through underground fiber-optic hubs. The NSA had also targeted video games, cell phone apps, and every other corner of the digital world under the guise of national security. They broke encrypted networks and hacked into secret platforms.

The journalists quickly came to the same conclusions Snowden did years ago; the American government was spying on everyone, which seemed highly illegal.

By the end of their first day as a group, Greenwald had finished his first article written about the FISA court order that secretly allowed the government to spy on its citizens without informing them. The Guardian planned to publish it the next day but worried that they could be monumentally breaking the law. They called the White House to make sure that they weren’t breaking any laws, but the White House wasn’t even able to acknowledge the document. Now, the White House knew that there was a leak in the government. And they would be one step closer to narrowing in on Snowden himself.

The group didn’t waste any time publishing the articles, including the story by The Guardian and an interview released late on Sunday night. The story immediately started going viral, ricocheting to media outlets and news stations worldwide.

Around 8 am later that morning, Greenwald and Gellman emerged from their rooms to find the W’s lobby filled with camera crews and reporters, and both journalists looked at each other filled with worry; where was Snowden?

If reporters found him, then so could the Chinese Police or worse- the American government. The two men dodged the press before making it up to Snowden’s room at the Mira, but the room was empty, and Snowden was nowhere to be found.

ACT 3

Snowden had made it out of the Mira only a few moments before the hotel lobby was flooded with reporters followed closely by Chinese police.

Snowden dressed as a cameraman and met an attorney who hid him with a group of Chinese refugees. The plan was for Snowden to wait there until the lawyer could secure him a safe way out of China and into a country without an extradition agreement with the United States.

As Snowden stayed in an underground bunker, sharing floor space with thirteen other people, none of whom spoke any English, the rest of the world was spiraling into complete and utter chaos.

From the moment he left the Mira that Monday morning, Snowden became a pawn in an international chess game. In the next few weeks, various players would crowd around the board, including the U.S. Justice Department, China, Russia, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Each country speaking up on behalf of the revelation had its own motives and strategy. It was still hard to tell which country was backing which party—except for the White House, who made it incredibly clear that their sole object was to arrest Snowden as a traitor.

SFX: Obama or Sec of State quote on Snowden when the story broke.

When Snowden wasn't immediately found by Chinese police or reporters racing around Hong Kong, law enforcement turned their attention to countries without an extradition treaty with the United States and the Chinese government. With each day Snowden remained off the radar, it was another day that he would be closer to traveling and closer to potentially being detained by the Chinese government. 

Snowden's attorney was contacted discreetly by Julian Assange, the owner of Wikileaks. Assange was desperate to be a part of the entire Snowden affair. The site had, at one time, been the go-to source for political news and celebrity gossip. It had been used by Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley Manning) and other whistleblowers to share their stories. But now, WikiLeaks was on its last legs. Assange wanted to use Snowden to bolster his site and generate new interest in the platform. 

Snowden's attorney told him that Assange might be their only way out of China and Ed welcomed the support. Since going into hiding, Snowden felt stranded on an island all alone and he gladly took the assistance. By now, Snowden had been hiding for nearly fifteen days. Assange needed to do more than just publicly announce his support of Snowden, which he had done; he needed to get one of his people by his side.

Unfortunately for both Assange and Snowden, WikiLeaks had no central office or permanent employees; it had only backers and volunteers. Among them was an eager woman named Sarah Harrison. She was a trusted assistant of Assange who was traveling in Australia but immediately offered to fly to Hong Kong. Assange announced that Harrison would serve as Snowden's legal researcher despite her lack of legal experience. 

Harrison made it to Hong Kong by mid-June, and Assange began working on the second stage of his plan: finding a country that would grant Snowden asylum. Assange began consulting with foreign embassy's legal teams and his government connections in an attempt to craft some kind of document that would grant Snowden safe passage to a country of his choice but it was proving more difficult than Assange had planned. Things were not looking good for Snowden. 

By Friday, June 21st, it was clear that the U.S. government was circling in on Snowden. They didn't know where he was staying but had been working to block his exit at every turn. The White House reached out to Chinese law enforcement, asking them to detain Snowden if he tried to fly out of their airport. The FBI and CIA had also reached out to other countries, threatening them with legal sanctions if they didn't arrest Snowden and turn him over to American officials if he landed in their countries.

Snowden's attorneys had made little headway with the Hong Kong government. The best-case scenario ended with Snowden locked in a Hong Kong Jail while his lawyers argued his fate, and the worst case was that he would get shipped back to America to face the jury, judge, and executioner of the NSA. That is, if he even made it that far without succumbing to "suicide" or an "unfortunate accident" orchestrated by the agency he once served.

Snowden couldn’t wait any longer as a sitting duck, and the one claim that gave him hope was the rumor that Hong Kong would welcome his departure. They wanted Snowden OUT of China, and Snowden was happy to oblige. At the last minute, Assange was able to book Snowden a flight to Ecuador with layovers in Russia and Cuba in order to evade US Agents. The flight for Moscow left the next night, Saturday, June 22nd. From Moscow, they would be in Quito in two days.

But by later that night, the situation went from bad to terrible when the evening the news broke. The U.S. government had filed a criminal complaint against Snowden, charging him with espionage and they asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant. 

All three of Snowden's attorneys convened at his hiding place to decide what to do. Snowden, backed by Harrison, decided to leave Hong Kong as quickly as possible. It was possible that the announcement was a trap, but he couldn’t wait to find out. 

The moment of truth came the next evening when Snowden presented his passport to the Chinese officer at the airport for inspection. The day before, the American government canceled it.

Snowden felt time slow down. A second felt like an hour as his passport was scanned. His heartbeat was the only thing he could feel or hear. He waited to see a red light or to be tackled to the floor by police.

Instead, he was ushered right through.

And so, that Saturday, Snowden and Sarah Harrison boarded Flight SU213 to Russia without incident. Snowden had his four laptops, but cleared them all of America documents for his trip; his job was done, and he no longer needed them. Snowden wondered what his fate would be. Would he become nothing more than a forgotten relic shoved away into a dark corner of America's past or hailed a hero? 

When Snowden's plane was taking off, fewer than a dozen people knew that the most wanted man in the world was on a flight toward Moscow. And yet, by the time Snowden and Harrison peered out their window at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport, a crowd of reporters and cameramen were waiting. Reporters and police waited to greet Snowden but they never saw him get off the flight and wasn’t seen outside of customs. 

As soon as his plane landed in Moscow, two Russian Intelligence Officers were waiting outside the terminal to grab him. Instead of making it to his next terminal, Snowden was searched and brought to the airport lodging motel, where a guard stood at attention 24/7 outside his room. 

The Russians made it clear that Snowden wasn't under arrest since he had committed no crime in Russia. But their government didn't know what to do with Snowden and started discussions with the United States and Snowden's lawyers to decide what the next steps should be.

With no passport, his plan shot to shit, and no allies in Russia, Snowden was stranded. The United States, who had engineered this plan, had Snowden exactly where they wanted him. They could spin a story about how Snowden was a double agent, working with the U.S. to deliver tech secrets back to Russia in exchange for money and fame. 

Again, Snowden was forced to relinquish his fate to his lawyers and the government officials arguing over his actions. The question pinging around his mind was if the U.S. government would recognize Snowden's status as a whistleblower, or would they reduce him to nothing more than a Cold War traitor?

Snowden spent his days in the shitty airport motel appealing to every country that even mentioned the possibility of granting Snowden asylum. The U.S. government was not shy about eliminating those opportunities for him as well. The U.S. was actively putting pressure on foreign leaders who offered Snowden asylum causing them to retract their offers. Snowden’s prospects were starting to dwindle.

High-ranking government officials had adamantly denied accounts of foreign espionage in the media and in public Congressional hearings. These powerful Intelligence hot shots thought they were untouchable but now found themselves being drug through the media. It wasn't just a public vendetta against Snowden but a personal one.

After 39 days in isolation, Snowden had all but given up hope. His thoughts drifted to the possibilities that awaited him back on American soil, and none of it was pleasant. He knew what was going on in Guantanamo.

Snowden was sure that he would be sent back to America to face the crimes that the United States had charged him with but on that 39th day, to his utter shock, Russia quietly let him go.

On August 1st, Snowden was permitted to leave the Moscow airport lodgings. Snowden’s lawyer had prevailed in getting him granted temporary asylum in Russia for one year. The night that Snowden was released from his motel cage, was the first night in years that he finally felt free.

Snowden had single-handedly facilitated the most enormous government security breach in history. In the wake of his disclosures, Snowden was left to wonder if his actions would create change and accountability in the government's data collection, or would his efforts be in vain? Most importantly, would the U.S. government ever stop chasing Snowden, or would he spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder? 

ACT 4

For the first few months in Russia, Snowden couldn't sleep or eat. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was still on the run. That agents could come bursting through his door at any time and drag him to an unmarked jail where he would rot. It sounded bleak, and it was. The thoughts and fears consumed Snowden day in and day out.

It didn't help that his name was still in every headline and dominating every news cycle. Some government employees attempted to keep their statements about Snowden focused on how he went about disclosing the documents. They complained that he should have considered alternative means, but there was no other way in Snowden's mind. No other way that would end with real accountability or justice. James Clapper condemned the leaks, and the EX-CIA director noted that Snowden should be hanged if he was ever convicted of treason. An NSA analyst commented that if murder wasn't illegal that he would personally kill Snowden himself.

Members of Congress cried that Snowden was nothing more than a low-level analyst who wouldn't have access to top-secret files. Other White House Officials painted him as a Russian and Chinese double agent. Their goal was to paint a picture of Snowden as a traitor to his country and attack his character. But Snowden didn't need to defend himself against their accusations because he knew that they would all bury themselves in the end.

Before Snowden released the documents in 2013, James Clapper gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute where he unequivocally stated that "[the government doesn't] hold data on U.S. citizens." Yet, documents leaked by Snowden show that the NSA holds onto data of American citizens for a minimum of five years. All the data. It wasn't Clapper's first lie, and it wouldn't be his last. In response to the array of lies Clapper fed the public, the ACLU immediately brought formal criminal charges against him, and the case remained in the court system for years.

In response to Snowden's disclosures, then-President Obama went on the Charlie Rose show and stated that the NSA wasn’t listening to phone calls or targeting emails, but multiple media outlets had documents to prove that those claims made by Obama were false.

Lie after contradiction, contradiction after lie, the American government, couldn't seem to get its story straight. The more the government tried to backpedal and cover up their tangled web of lies, the deeper they got caught. Every time they publicly rebuked a claim, Snowden already provided the documents that substantiated his side of the story, proving the government false.

The public quickly grew fed up and infuriated with the government's handling of the Snowden case. They could tell, plain as day, that they were being lied to, and still, the government wouldn't own up to what they had done. Citizens around the world grew weary of their governments, and a growing sense of paranoia and general distrust of the state seemed to dominate the rest of the year and persist today.

For Snowden, the leak and disclosures were about principle. He wanted to show people that anyone can stand up to the government and do the right thing, even when it feels impossible. He believed that the public deserved to know what was happening in the deep and dark underground tunnels hidden beneath a remote island. Snowden risked giving up his entire life in the pursuit of making a difference and keeping our government honest and accountable. It was a huge risk and his biggest worry, as the media attention died down around the case as if his efforts were merely in vain. Change wouldn't happen right away, he knew, but he desperately hoped it would happen.

On June 2nd, 2015, the U.S. Senate passed, and President Obama signed the USA Freedom Act. The Freedom Act restored modified provisions of the Patriot Act that had expired the day before, while also, for the first time, imposed some limits on the bulk collection of telecommunication data on U.S. citizens by American intelligence agencies. The goal of the new Act was to have more enforced restrictions around the data collected and the way it's accessed. The new limits were widely seen as stemming from Snowden's revelations.

In 2020, the now 38-year-old Snowden was ready to watch one of the biggest decisions of his life play out on an international stage. In September, the Federal Court announced that they were prepared to render a ruling in their review of the 2013 court case. Today was the day.

Snowden watched the verdict while standing on a cobblestone street through the window of a local coffee shop. Russian subtitles flashed across the bottom of the tiny tv inside. His heartbeat echoed in his head as he waited for the judge’s lip’s to move.

Each heartbeat felt like an hour until the Federal Court ruling flooded the screen. The court decided that the U.S. intelligence's mass surveillance program, exposed by Snowden, was undoubtedly illegal and possibly unconstitutional. They also asserted that U.S. intelligence leaders, who publicly defended the government against claims of domestic spying, lied during a criminal trial.

The American political system still had a long way to go. The war on digital rights and online privacy is far from over, and to see real change, the people would need to start holding the government accountable. The wheels of justice turn slow, and even if it didn't feel like a win now, this is what a win looks like now.

The United States government has yet to budge on its charges against Snowden, and he remains exiled and blacklisted in Russia. Snowden is still a wanted criminal and setting foot in America would still land him life in a dank underground cell. In the wake of the court's verdict, however, Snowden hoped he would one day be truly free again. Maybe he will be.

I’m Keith Korneluk and this is Modem Mischief..