
CAST your mind back to the summer of 2013, when a brave young American, Edward Snowden, was holed up in a Hong Kong hotel hounded by the US authorities for whistleblowing on the activities of the United States National Security Agency (NSA), where he had worked as a contractor.
Deciding that he had to expose what he considered to be the “criminal” nature of much of the NSA’s work, Snowden fled his home in Hawaii and made for Hong Kong, where he told his story and shared documents with a number of media outlets, including Britain’s Guardian.
The US charged Snowden with theft of US government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorised person.



