Ramstein Air Base or Ramstein AB is a United States Air Force base in Rhineland-Palatinate, a state in southwestern Germany. It serves as headquarters for the United States Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA) and also for NATO Allied Air Command (AIRCOM). Ramstein is located near the town of Ramstein-Miesenbach, which stands outside the base's west gate, in the rural district of Kaiserslautern.
Veronica Maria Cäcilia Ferres is a German film, television, and stage actress. Her 2007 portrayal of Sara Bender in Die Frau vom Checkpoint Charlie, based on the true story of Jutta Fleck, earned her the award for Best Actress at the Deutscher Fernsehpreis.
The Federation of German Scientists - VDW is a German non-governmental organization.
Claus-Detlev Walter Kleber is a German journalist and former lawyer. He anchored heute-journal, an evening news program on ZDF, one of Germany's two major public TV stations. He is also known for his expertise in United States politics and German-American relations, as evidenced by his 2005 bestseller Amerikas Kreuzzüge.
The Sam Adams Award is given annually since 2002 to an intelligence professional who has taken a stand for integrity and ethics. The Award is granted by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, a group of retired CIA officers. It is named after Samuel A. Adams, a CIA whistleblower during the Vietnam War, and takes the physical form of a "corner-brightener candlestick".
Laura Poitras is an American director and producer of documentary films.
Thomas Andrews Drake is a former senior executive of the National Security Agency (NSA), a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, and a whistleblower. In 2010, the government alleged that Drake mishandled documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. Drake's defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award.
William "Bill" Edward Binney is a former intelligence official with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and whistleblower. He retired on October 31, 2001, after more than 30 years with the agency.
Edward Joseph Snowden is an American and naturalized Russian former computer intelligence consultant and whistleblower who leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013, when he was an employee and subcontractor. His disclosures revealed numerous global surveillance programs, many run by the NSA and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance with the cooperation of telecommunication companies and European governments and prompted a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.
Ongoing news reports in the international media have revealed operational details about the Anglophone cryptographic agencies' global surveillance of both foreign and domestic nationals. The reports mostly emanate from a cache of top secret documents leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which he obtained whilst working for Booz Allen Hamilton, one of the largest contractors for defense and intelligence in the United States. In addition to a trove of U.S. federal documents, Snowden's cache reportedly contains thousands of Australian, British, Canadian and New Zealand intelligence files that he had accessed via the exclusive "Five Eyes" network. In June 2013, the first of Snowden's documents were published simultaneously by The Washington Post and The Guardian, attracting considerable public attention. The disclosure continued throughout 2013, and a small portion of the estimated full cache of documents was later published by other media outlets worldwide, most notably The New York Times, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Der Spiegel (Germany), O Globo (Brazil), Le Monde (France), L'espresso (Italy), NRC Handelsblad, Dagbladet (Norway), El País (Spain), and Sveriges Television (Sweden).
The Intercept is an online American nonprofit news organization that publishes articles and podcasts.
The United States is widely considered to have one of the most extensive and sophisticated intelligence network of any nation in the world, with organizations including the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, amongst others. It has conducted numerous espionage operations against foreign countries, including both allies and rivals. Its operations have included the use of industrial espionage, cyber espionage. and mass surveillance.
The German Parliamentary Committee investigation of the NSA spying scandal was started on March 20, 2014, by the German Parliament in order to investigate the extent and background of foreign secret services spying in Germany in the light of the Global surveillance disclosures (2013–present). The Committee is also in search of strategies on how to protect telecommunication with technical means.
Citizenfour is a 2014 documentary film directed by Laura Poitras, concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal. The film had its US premiere on October 10, 2014, at the New York Film Festival and its UK premiere on October 17, 2014, at the BFI London Film Festival. The film features Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, and was co-produced by Poitras, Mathilde Bonnefoy, and Dirk Wilutzky, with Steven Soderbergh and others serving as executive producers. Citizenfour received critical acclaim upon release, and was the recipient of numerous accolades, including Best Documentary Feature at the 87th Academy Awards. This film is the third part to a 9/11 trilogy following My Country, My Country (2006) and The Oath (2010).
Snowden is a 2016 biographical thriller film directed by Oliver Stone and written by Stone and Kieran Fitzgerald. Based on the books The Snowden Files (2014) by Luke Harding and Time of the Octopus (2015) by Anatoly Kucherena, the film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) subcontractor and whistleblower who copied and leaked highly classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) beginning in 2013. In addition to Gordon-Levitt, the film features an ensemble cast including Shailene Woodley, Melissa Leo, Zachary Quinto, Tom Wilkinson, Scott Eastwood, Logan Marshall-Green, Timothy Olyphant, Ben Schnetzer, LaKeith Lee Stanfield, Rhys Ifans and Nicolas Cage. An international co-production of Germany, France, and the United States, principal photography began on February 16, 2015 in Munich.
Hajo Seppelt is a German journalist and author.
Operation Eikonal is a collaboration between the National Security Agency (NSA) and Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) for the sharing of telephony and Internet data captured in Germany. It is based on an agreement that dates to 2002, and is part of the NSA operation "RAMPART-A". Surveillance started in 2003, telephony data was collected from 2004 onwards, and all Internet traffic from the Deutsche Telekom (DT) switching center in Frankfurt was captured starting in 2005.
Bastian Obermayer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning German investigative journalist with the Munich-based newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and the reporter who received the Panama Papers from an anonymous source as well as later on the Paradise Papers, together with his colleague Frederik Obermaier. Obermayer is also author of several books, among them the best selling account of the Panama Papers: The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money, co-authored by his colleague Frederik Obermaier.
Edward Snowden in popular culture is part of the reactions to global surveillance disclosures made by Edward Snowden. His impact as a public figure has been felt in cinema, advertising, video games, literature, music, statuary, and social media.
Daniel Everette Hale is an American whistleblower and former National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence analyst who sent classified information about drone warfare to the press. Hale served in the United States Air Force 2009–2013 before joining the National Security Agency and leaking classified documents to The Intercept. In 2021, he pled guilty to retaining and transmitting national defense information and was sentenced to 45 months in prison. As of October 2021, he was incarcerated at United States Penitentiary, Marion, Illinois, with a scheduled release date of July 5, 2024.
