NSA Spying “Worse Than Anything Orwell Imagined” – Edward Snowden
In a special Christmas Day interview, Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contract employee who stole and then leaked documents about massive NSA spying, stated that the NSA spying was “worse than anything” imagined by George Orwell in his classic novel 1984.
He added that how the spying revelations affect U.S. policy “will determine the amount of trust between emerging technology around us, and government policies regulating that technology.”
Stories based on the Snowden-released documents were first published on June 5, 2013, and continued for another year. For the publication of Orwell’s 1984, go to June 6, 1949.
On April 14, 2014, The 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to the Guardian US and the Washington Post for their stories on National Security Agency (NSA) spying based on documents leaked to them by Edward Snowden. And on February 16, 2014, reporters also won the prestigious George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism for their stories based on the Snowden-released documents.
Watch Snowden’s Christmas message: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqkpxMrxWkI
Get the full story: Luke Harding, The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most Wanted Man (2014)
Read Snowden’s autobiography: Edward Snowden, Permanent Record (2019)
Watch the acclaimed film about Snowden: Citizenfour (2014)
Read George Orwell’s classic, prophetic novel: 1984 (published in 1949; many editions available)
Learn more about the NSA: James Bamford, The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America (2008)
Search the ACLU database of Snowden-related NSA documents (searchable by date, relevance, or date of release): https://www.aclu.org/nsa-documents-search?page=1