BRIEF: Snowden granted Russian citizenship

Edward Snowden receives the Sam Adams award for Intelligence Integrity on November 7, 2013, in Moscow. (Photo courtesy McZusatz under Attribution 3.0 Unported)

Multiple sources are reporting Edward Snowden has been granted Russian citizenship. It has been 9 years since material leaked by Snowden was used by The Guardian in 2013 to reveal a top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) granted an order requiring Verizon to hand over data on all telephone calls in their system to the FBI over a 3-month period.

According to the Guardian, “Under the terms of the blanket order, the numbers of both parties on a call are handed over, as is location data, call duration, unique identifiers, and the time and duration of all calls. The contents of the conversation itself are not covered.”

Snowden citizenship coverage options:

AP

The Guardian

Reuters