Community Corner

NSA Leaker Edward Snowden Has Strong Maryland Ties

The 29-year-old reportedly lived near Fort Meade and worked at a University of Maryland NSA facility.

Edward Snowden, the former Central Intelligence Agency employee and National Security Agency contractor responsible for a series of recent leaks about top secret intelligence activities, has a number of close ties to central Maryland.

The Guardian, the British newspaper which published most of the initial reports on the secret programs, disclosed his identity in an extended interview with Snowden. The 29-year-old is reportedly hiding in Hong Kong.

Snowden was raised in Elizabeth City, NC, according to the paper, but his family later moved to Maryland near NSA headquarters at Fort Meade.

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He enrolled in—but did not graduate from—a Maryland community college and eventually enlisted in the U.S. Army, The Guardian reports. He later became a security guard at a University of Maryland NSA facility before landing a job in IT security with the CIA.

Snowden most recently worked as an NSA contractor in Hawaii, according to the paper.

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The Baltimore Sun reports that Snowden's name is listed to an address in an Ellicott City subdivision—one that's been visited by reporters and camera crews in recent hours.

Snowden's disclosures brought to light numerous counterterrorism intelligence activities, including a program to collect and analyze Americans' phone records en masse, and PRISM, a system said to allow the agency to tap into users' data with many major tech firms without requiring individual court orders.

Read more from The Guardian and The Baltimore Sun.


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