Portrait of Edward Snowden
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Edward Snowden

American whistleblower and former intelligence contractor

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Leaked documents in 2013 revealing mass surveillance by US and allied spy agencies, and has lived in Russia ever since.

Edward Snowden sits in the right-libertarian part of the Caucus economy and liberty compass: slightly free market and strongly libertarian. The clearest positions are strongly libertarian on liberty and authority, strongly anti-establishment on institutions and strongly non-interventionist on interventionism. The profile is close to the middle on environment.

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Where Edward Snowden sits on ten dimensions

Each scale runs from one pole to the other, and the dot shows the overall tendency of this person's record and public life. These are simplified estimates and open to debate.

💰EconomySlightly free market
State-ledFree market
⚖️Liberty and authorityStrongly libertarian
LibertarianAuthoritarian
🎭CultureLeaning progressive
ProgressiveTraditional
🌍NationLeaning globalist
GlobalistNationalist
🌱EnvironmentCentered on environment
Growth-firstNature-first
🤖TechnologyLeaning tech-optimist
Tech-cautiousTech-optimist
🕊️War and peaceStrongly peace-first
Peace-firstStrength-first
🏛️InstitutionsStrongly anti-establishment
Anti-establishmentInstitutional
🙏ReligionLeaning secular
SecularReligious
🛡️InterventionismStrongly non-interventionist
Non-interventionistInterventionist

People most like Edward Snowden

Julian Assange Australian publisher and WikiLeaks founder99%Glenn Greenwald American journalist and lawyer99%Gene Sharp American theorist of nonviolent resistance, 1928 to 201898%Ai Weiwei Chinese artist and dissident97%Mark Twain American writer, 1835 to 191097%Vitalik Buterin Russian-Canadian co-founder of Ethereum94%Liu Xiaobo Chinese writer and Nobel laureate, 1955 to 201794%Edward Said Palestinian-American scholar, 1935 to 200394%

People furthest from Edward Snowden

Louis XIV King of France, 1643 to 17152%Mojtaba Khamenei Supreme Leader of Iran, 2026 to present2%Joseph de Maistre Savoyard counter-revolutionary thinker, 1753 to 18213%Vladimir Putin President of Russia, 2000 to present (with a term as prime minister)3%

Political views closest to Edward Snowden

Pirate politicsChampions digital rights, transparency, privacy and copyright reform.95%MutualismA market-based anarchism in which workers and small producers trade fairly through…95%Left-libertarianismCombines strong personal freedom with the view that natural resources and wealth should…95%CypherpunkUses cryptography and open software to protect privacy and to weaken state and corporate…93%

Read more about Edward Snowden

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Biographies of Edward SnowdenBooks on pirate politics

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Percentages show how close two profiles are across all ten dimensions. Including a person here is for study and comparison, not approval. Portrait: https://www.youtube.com/user/TheWikiLeaksChannel, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; see all photo credits.