Snowden's life surrounded by spycraft

[struggle4progress]

Jun. 15, 2013 1:36 PM
Written by ADAM GELLER and BRIAN WITTE

... When Snowden went on to Anne Arundel Community College in the spring of 1999 after leaving high school halfway through his sophomore year, he arrived on a campus developing a specialty in cybersecurity training for future employees of the NSA and Department of Defense, though, according to the records, he never took such a class ...

Snowden left the Army at the end of that September. He mentioned on the tech forum that he was discharged after breaking both legs in accident, a detail the Army could not confirm.

He returned home, enrolling again in classes at the community college and working through most of 2005 as a security guard at the University of Maryland's Center for Advanced Study of Language, a mile off campus. The center, affiliated with the Department of Defense, says on its LinkedIn page that it was founded after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to help the intelligence community improve language preparedness. But a university spokesman said the center's work is not classified ...

http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/20130615/NEWS01/130615015?nclick_check=1

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. Is he real?

[pscot]

2. In a slightly unreal way

"he is apparently a successful autodidact. After dropping out of high school, Snowden developed a very rigorous academic curriculum for himself, drawing on community college courses, online education programs and self-directed reading and programming. The fruit of these efforts was a lucrative job with an elite consulting firm, and a top secret clearance that gave him access to a treasure trove of state secrets."
http://blogs.reuters.com/reihan-salam/2013/06/14/edward-snowden-model-dropout/

This is the Bill Gates model of self-developement. When you look at the world these Millenials are facing, it's not too surprising that they aren't buying it.

[struggle4progress]

3. Dunno. Years ago, I knew a kid who quit high school after his sophomore year:

he's since become a lawyer and has served several terms in elected local office. So I'm not put off by the possibility that smart kids can drop out and go places

On the other hand, this particular story has a foggy aspect to it: his version of events often fails somewhat to match exactly what can be verified. My current impression is that we have here a bright kid, with friends whose parents had connection to the state-security complex, so some college credit and a GED got him into the Army -- though it's not clear why he so quickly left. Maybe he broke both legs, as he says, and so rendered himself unfit for duty; or maybe he didn't get along well with authority figures, so they separated him quickly and quietly; or maybe he was good enough with computers that he got routed to the state-security folk, with an army discharge and a return stint at the junior college as cover. Perhaps some of his friends' parents vouched for his reliability when he wanted a government job; maybe the Army vouched for him

[nenagh]

5. Great article...thanks...