Logo

American Security Council Foundation

Back to main site

Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Putin Grants Russian Citizenship to Edward Snowden

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Categories: ASCF News Emerging Threats

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2022/09/26/putin-grants-russian-citizenship-edward-snowden/

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Monday granted Russian citizenship to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who fled to Russia in 2013 after leaking classified documents about NSA surveillance programs.

Snowden, 39, has been a permanent resident of Russia since 2020 and has reportedly been seeking full citizenship for some time. The U.S. government wants Snowden to return to America to face espionage charges.

Putin granted Snowden citizenship in a decree that listed over 70 other foreign-born persons. The decree included no special commentary about Snowden’s case.

Reuters noted some characteristically bleak humor on Russian social media in response to the citizenship news, wondering if Putin would conscript Snowden and ship him off to combat in Ukraine. Snowden’s Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena actually responded to the joke and said Snowden would not be conscripted because he has no previous experience serving in the Russian military and the mobilization order is currently limited to veterans.

Kucherena also stated that Snowden’s wife Lindsay Mills would also apply for Russian citizenship. The couple has a son, born in 2020.

Kucherena said at the time the child would have Russian citizenship, while Snowden said he and Mills desired dual American-Russian citizenship. Russia began granting citizenship without requiring applicants to renounce other nationalities in 2020.

Opinions of Snowden vary widely between “whistleblower” and “traitor,” including sharp differences of opinion within the same U.S. party, and even the same administration. Former President Barack Obama, for example, delicately but publicly disagreed when his Attorney General Eric Holder hailed Snowden as a whistleblower who performed a “public service” by revealing the extent of U.S. government surveillance. Obama thought the charges against Snowden were “serious” and his leaks put American lives in danger.

In December 2020, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) likewise credited Snowden with “revealing the unconstitutional spying that was going on, even beyond what was envisioned from the Patriot Act” and asked then-President Donald Trump to pardon him.

“Snowden should be pardoned, and this president, who distinguished himself as an opponent of the Deep State on issues of war and spying on Americans, should be the one to do it,” Paul declared.

“Snowden has American blood on his hands and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” shot back Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC). “Snowden betrayed his country, sought shelter in Putin’s Russia, and put American lives at risk — as well as those who risked their lives to help us in foreign lands.”

Trump, who at one point referred to Snowden as a “spy who should be executed,” said he considered granting a pardon but did not issue one before leaving office. Snowden was, to put it mildly, not grateful for President Trump’s consideration.

For his part, Putin asserted in a 2017 interview with movie director Oliver Stone that Snowden did nothing wrong.

“Snowden is not a traitor. He did not betray the interests of his country. Nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly,” Putin said.

Snowden’s associates claim Russia’s FSB security service, the successor agency to the infamous KGB, tried to recruit him as an agent when he arrived in Russia in 2013, but he turned them down.

The Associated Press noted that for all of Snowden’s claims of being an international champion of peace and individual privacy, he has yet to criticize Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine. He also had no immediate comment Monday on Putin’s grant of Russian citizenship.

Comments RSS feed for comments on this page

There are no comments yet. Be the first to add a comment by using the form below.