Snowden: Any Cell Phone Can Be Hacked | NBC News
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden tells Brian Williams that any country will a significantly well-funded intelligence organization can hack an individual #39;s cell phone. Subscribe to NBC...

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Snowden: Any Cell Phone Can Be Hacked | NBC News - Video

Glenn Greenwald stands with Snowden
Glenn Greenwald, journalist at The Intercept who first broke the NSA surveillance story, explains why reporters rely on whistleblowers, and why Rio de Janiero stands with Edward Snowden. Learn...

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Glenn Greenwald stands with Snowden - Video

Ueslei Marcelino / ReutersPeople wearing masks with pictures of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden during the testimonial of U.S. journalist Glenn Greenwald, who first published the documents, in Brazil.

To me, Edward Snowden is a hero, Oliver Stone said last July. U.S. Vice President John Kerry recently described him as a coward and a traitor. In truth, Edward Snowden is a much more ambiguous figure than either of those two extreme descriptions. For a man with such a global profile, his actual life in Moscow is low profile, though he has recently been interviewed by several news organizations, notably the Brian Williams interview on NBC.

This month he will be celebrating both his 31st birthday in Moscow as well as the first anniversary of his arrival. Is Snowden lonely? Does he yearn for the U.S. and his family? Alan Bennett called his 1980s play about Guy Burgess in Moscow An Englishman Abroad. Snowden could well be An American in Exile and Bennett said in a BBC interview in May: The Edward Snowden stuff I am wholly on his side.

Luke Harding was The Guardians Moscow correspondent between 2007 and 2011, before being expelled following a series of highly critical articles and books about the state and Putin regime. Harding extensively researched Snowden for his book The Snowden Files, published in the Britain and U.S. to great acclaim in February. It has been announced that Oliver Stone is adapt Hardings book to film before the end of the year. Harding spoke to The Moscow Times about Snowdens life in the Russian capital and helped dispel some of the myths of misinformation which have emerged.

Edward Snowden arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport in June 2013. Russia was not intended as his final destination, as he was attempting to gain political asylum in South America. It was there he met Anatoly Kucherena, a Russian attorney who persuaded Snowden to abandon his attempts for South American asylum and remain in Russia instead. But was it Snowden who approached Kucherena, and how important is he in the Snowden story?

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Journalist Luke Harding

We do not know the answer to that question, says Harding. Snowden has not said, nor has Kucherena. Kucherena has close links with the FSB he sits on its supervisory board. I have talked to other Russians about Kucherena and they say he is not formally an FSB agent, although some people have suggested he might be. They describe him as a person of the system and I think that is right. He is clearly someone inside the state rather than outside the state.

Kucherena played an important role during Snowdens initial weeks in limbo at Sheremetyevo as the only one between the American and the outside world. Now that Snowden has asylum, Kucherena has become less relevant.

After 39 days in limbo, Snowden left the airport. But then he disappeared for several months I think what we do know is something slightly more strategic, Harding explains, that after he got his asylum and was driven away from the airport, that Snowden took a decision that he would disappear, that he would vanish and the reason he did that was because he wanted the focus to be on the documents he leaked to The Guardian and other newspapers, which we were interrogating and publishing a lot of stories on. He did not want the focus to be on him. He was being bombarded with requests via Glenn Greensward every single U.S. network wanted to interview him, everybody wanted a piece of him. Actually, until December of last year, he turned everybody down.

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Snowden Book and Upcoming Film Chronicle Exile

The NSA gives unprecedented access to the agency's HQ and, for the first time, explains what it does and what it says it doesn't do: spy on Americans

The following is a script from "Inside the NSA" which aired on Dec. 15, 2013. John Miller is the correspondent. Ira Rosen and Gabrielle Schonder, producers.

No U.S. intelligence agency has ever been under the kind of pressure being faced by the National Security Agency after details of some of its most secret programs were leaked by contractor Edward Snowden. Perhaps because of that pressure the agency gave 60 Minutes unprecedented access to NSA headquarters where we were able to speak to employees who have never spoken publicly before.

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A conversation with John Miller and 60 Minutes producers about their experience reporting in top-secret areas of the NSA

Gen. Keith Alexander: The fact is, we're not collecting everybody's email, we're not collecting everybody's phone things, we're not listening to that. Our job is foreign intelligence and we're very good at that.

The man in charge is Keith Alexander, a four-star Army general who leads the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command.

John Miller: There is a perception out there that the NSA is widely collecting the content of the phone calls of Americans. Is that true?

Gen. Keith Alexander: No, that's not true. NSA can only target the communications of a U.S. person with a probable cause finding under specific court order. Today, we have less than 60 authorizations on specific persons to do that.

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NSA speaks out on Snowden, spying - CBS News