Conspiracy theories. Edward Snowden

In 2013, a quiet systems administrator changed the world. Edward Snowden leaked thousands of classified documents, exposing the largest surveillance machine in human history. But was he a hero… or a pawn in a deeper game?

Born in North Carolina in 1983, Snowden came from a family steeped in government service — his father was a Coast Guard officer, his mother worked for a federal court, and his grandfather was a senior FBI official present at the Pentagon on 9/11.

Despite lacking a college degree, Snowden’s talent with computers earned him top-secret clearance. He worked for the CIA, Dell, and finally Booz Allen Hamilton — a contractor for the NSA.

In May 2013, he took medical leave from his job in Hawaii and flew to Hong Kong. There, he met with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, handing over thousands of documents that revealed the NSA’s global surveillance programs.

Snowden exposed PRISM — a program that gave the NSA direct access to servers of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Apple.

He revealed that Verizon was forced to hand over metadata from millions of phone calls.

He showed that the NSA and its allies were monitoring internet activity in countries like Mexico, Kenya, and the Philippines.

These revelations sparked global outrage. Courts in the U.S. and UK ruled parts of the surveillance programs illegal. Tech companies began encrypting user data by default. And the USA Freedom Act was passed to curb bulk data collection 4.

But not everyone believes Snowden acted alone — or even in good faith.

Some claim he was a deep-cover NSA operative, sent to scare the public into accepting surveillance as inevitable.

Others say he was a Russian asset, recruited long before the leaks.

A few conspiracy theorists go further:

That Snowden doesn’t exist — he’s an actor created by the NSA

That he uncovered alien-related files and encrypted space signals the government couldn’t decode

That Iran claimed leaked Snowden documents proved the U.S. was run by “tall white aliens” — a story later traced to a hoax blog

Snowden said: “I had a duty to inform the public about what is done in their name — and against them.”

But the U.S. government charged him with espionage. His passport was revoked. He spent a month in Moscow’s airport before receiving asylum. In 2022, he became a Russian citizen.

His memoir Permanent Record and the Oscar-winning documentary Citizenfour tell his side of the story.

A U.S. court later ruled that one of the surveillance programs he exposed was illegal and possibly unconstitutional.

So who is Edward Snowden? A whistleblower who risked everything for truth? A traitor who endangered national security? Or a symbol — of how fragile privacy has become in the digital age?

The truth may be more dangerous than the leak itself.