Who is Edward Snowden, the US whistleblower who just got Russian citizenship?

Edward Joseph Snowden was born on June 21, 1983 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. He grew up in both North Carolina and suburban Washington, where his mother Elizabeth worked as a clerk at the National Security Agency (NSA) and his father Lonnie served in the US Coast Guard. 

Snowden is married to long-time partner, American performance artist Lindsay Mills. The couple has been together since Snowden first came on the radar of the US government. The couple has a kid together and after Snowden received citizenship on Monday, he took to Twitter to state:

"After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our SONS. After two years of waiting and nearly ten years of exile, a little stability will make a difference for my family. I pray for privacy for them—and for us all."

Snowden joined the military in 2004 with the idea of aiding the US war effort in Iraq and to “help free people from oppression”. He enlisted in the US Army Reserve as a special forces recruit, but lasted only four months after breaking both legs in a training exercise. He then went to the CIA in information technology security, rising quickly because of his understanding of the internet and his computer programming skills.

By 2007, the CIA had stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland, where he maintained computer network security. 

Later, as an NSA contractor, Snowden observed hi-tech spy powers. One particular spy tool the NSA called XKEYSCORE allowed the government to scour the recent internet history of average Americans.

The documents leaked by Snowden showed the NSA and its counterpart in the UK, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had found ways to bypass the encryption offered to consumers by various companies on the Internet. Such was Snowden's shock that he culd not even teell his then girlfriend about the discovery he had made.

In an interview, Snowden said, “I couldn’t tell her that her information was being collected, that everyone’s information was being collected, which was tantamount to a government threat: if you ever get out of line, we’ll use your private life against you.” 

Snowden made several claims about the NSA partaking in several global surveillance programmes, with the cooperation of European governments and several telecommunication agencies, raising a question on private and national security. By the time he went public, he was already outside the US, and later found himself welcomed in Russia.

Since then, Snowden has been charged by the US government for theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorised person.