Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Let's Get To The Bottom of That
Episode: Edward Snowden | Hero or Traitor?
Description: The topic starts @ 5:30
In 2013, Edward Snowden was an IT systems expert working under contract for the National Security Agency when he traveled to Hong Kong to provide three journalists with thousands of top-secret documents about U.S. intelligence agencies' surveillance of American citizens.
To Snowden, the classified information he shared with the journalists exposed privacy abuses by government intelligence agencies. He saw himself as a whistleblower. But the U.S. government considered him a traitor in violation of the Espionage Act.Â
After meeting with the journalists, Snowden intended to leave Hong Kong and t...