“The laws under which Snowden is charged don’t distinguish between sharing information with the press in the public interest, and selling secrets to a foreign enemy,” Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union and a Snowden legal adviser, told the Guardian in 2014. Snowden revealed that the US government was engaged in illegal dragnet surveillance of telecoms and internet communications including by US persons, conduct the government had explicitly denied and continued to deny even as Snowden described how the programs worked. Legal analysts have pointed out that the charges against Snowden make it impossible for him to argue that his disclosures had served the common good. In 2014, John Kerry, secretary of state under Barack Obama, accused Snowden of betrayal and said “he should man up and come back to the US”. While seeking to interfere with Snowden’s livelihood, the US government has repeatedly demanded that he return to face charges under the Espionage Act.

Other fees include $28,000 for a 2016 speech to the University of Colorado Boulder, $32,000 from a Portuguese tourism bureau, $30,000 from a Canadian motivational consultancy, $12,000 from Georgetown University and $18,000 from Middlebury College in Vermont. On, he earned $10,000 for a speech to Deutsche Telekom. The first such event, on 16 September 2015, was for CSLA, a Hong Kong brokerage, and earned Snowden $50,000. Snowden’s speaking fees, as listed by the government, cover a total of 67 engagements from 2015 to May this year. His right to an undisclosed advance on the book has not been challenged by the US government, Politico reported, but it does want to seize its profits. The federal government is seeking to strip the former National Security Agency contractor, whom Donald Trump last week suggested he may pardon, of profits earned since his disclosures of US surveillance programs in June 2013.Īs well as speaking fees, Snowden released a book, Permanent Record, in September 2019.

Ed snowden permanent record