According to a report by British newspaper The Guardian, the man responsible for leaking information about the U.S. government’s domestic surveillance briefly worked at this university.
Edward Snowden, 29, revealed to Guardian journalists his motives behind the leak, how he obtained the information and his history with the National Security Agency — including time spent as a security guard at a secret NSA facility at the University of Maryland. Snowden turned down offers of anonymity.
On June 6, The Guardian reported that the National Security Agency had access to the supporting servers of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Skype and AOL and was using a program called Prism to monitor user behavior. Federal officials confirmed the existence of the program as well as programs that harvested phone records and announced a probe to find the source of the leaked information.
“I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building,” Snowden told the paper.
According to The Guardian’s report, Snowden did not graduate high school. He instead joined the military in 2003, but was discharged after breaking his leg. It was then that he accepted a job as a security guard at an NSA building at this university and later moved onto to a position with the CIA.
Which facility and exactly where it was Snowden worked is unknown, but the NSA has connections to several university facilities, including the Laboratory for Physical Sciences, the Office of Technology Commercialization and the Lab for Telecommunication Science.
