Edward Snowden Crimes

Edward Snowden had taken asylum in Russia because of the information he had leaked to the public which proved that the NSA was spying on Americans. The U.S. government wanted every country that Snowden was in at the time, that they knew of, to extradite him to the United States. Not a single country would do so. He did not leak any secrets or put anyone's lives in danger but of course those in the government claimed that he did. But the government would not produce any evidence that would prove that claim. Edward Snowden did commit a crime. But so did the US Government. Snowden felt he had a responsibility to warn the U.S. citizens as to what the government was doing.
Documents that were released by Edward Snowden included details on the SSO unit. Internet service providers which include AOL, Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, PalTalk, YouTube, and Yahoo allowed the NSA to collect communications data for analysis under the PRISM program. Also part of SSO are the programs which tap fibre-optic cables around the world. And through this industry cooperation some of the access to these fibre-optic cables is achieved. And without the knowledge of the companies included, there are other operations taking place.
The CO-TRAVELER system enables the NSA to gather location data to gain knowledge of relationships between individuals. Mobile apps are also targeted by NSA programs which collect cookies and data. Text messages are also collected.
Documents also released by Edward Snowden show a program called Boundless Informant. This program maps and graphs data from every Digital Network Intelligence (DNI) record in the SIGINT (signal intelligence) system and gives a full view of collection capabilities of GAO. The XKeyscore database allows the NSA to analyze data from the combination of data from PRISM, SCS sites (also called F6 sites) and FORNSAT