Edward Snowden's New Job: Tech Support

Nerval's Lobster writes "Government whistleblower Edward Snowden, exiled in Russia after releasing top-secret documents about the National Security Agency's surveillance activities to the press, has a new job: tech support. Snowden's lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told the Associated Press that his client starts work Nov. 1 for a "major" Russian Website, which he declined to name. In June, Snowden—a former CIA employee who worked as a contractor for the NSA—began feeding an enormous pile of classified charts and documents about federal surveillance programs to The Guardian and other newspapers. Many of those documents suggested that the NSA, ordinarily tasked with intercepting communications from terrorists and foreign governments, collects massive amounts of information on ordinary Americans, which in turn ignited a firestorm of controversy. The Snowden revelations have continued into this week, with The Washington Post reporting that the NSA has aggressively targeted Google and Yahoo servers. Snowden's documents suggest that the agency has figured out how to tap the links connecting the two tech giants' datacenters to the broader Web. Google told the Post that it was "troubled" by the report. A Yahoo spokesperson insisted that the company had "strict controls in place to protect the security of our datacenters" and that "we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency.""

Comments

The US, for all its power, hasn't plugged the leak

[davide marney]

Whatever Snowden did to bottle up his stolen cache of documents, it has apparently kept the entire US security apparatus at bay.

Now, THAT'S a project that would look good on an IT resume, anywhere.

Good life

[skaag]

After having lived in Russia for some 6 month cumulatively, I have this to say: Edward Snowden is going to love it.

A few reasons:

- Incredibly beautiful women
- Incredibly cool clubs and bars
- Awesome Moscow Ballet / Classical Music / Cultural Events / Arts / Museums
- McDonalds has a whole wheat bun, need I say more?