In May 2013, a young American fled Hawaii, bound initially for Hong Kong. He planned to seek political asylum in Ecuador, knowing that massive amounts of classified information he had leaked to liberal newspapers in the United States and the United Kingdom about surveillance carried out by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) would lead to his arrest. Rather than escape in total secrecy, he conducted a television interview in Hong Kong with the journalist Glen Greenwald. His name, he told Greenwald, was Edward Snowden. Snowden justified passing on the restricted material by saying that citizens needed to know about the scope of surveillance carried out by their governments, surveillance that accessed their personal information and communications to an unprecedented degree. He argued that the public should be in control of the decision-making processes on mass surveillance. Snowden understood, he told Greenwald, that as a result of his actions he might be ‘rendered’ by United States security agencies, and that possibly his life was at risk. Within days, the previously unknown operative was a global celebrity, denounced as a traitor by some, lauded as a courageous whistle blower by others. Revealingly, his defenders came from across the political spectrum, as did his accusers.

Ultimately, the United States government ensured that Snowden was denied access to Ecuador. At one point, Bolivian President Evo Morales's jet was held up in Europe on suspicion that Snowden might be on board, secretly en route to Ecuador. This incident temporarily threatened diplomatic relationships between the United States and several Latin American countries. By the end of 2013 Russia had granted Snowden asylum, to the obvious annoyance of United States officials. Many suspected that the Putin regime had aimed for just that effect, part of a larger, self-assertive diplomatic push. The Snowden revelations created a rolling sequence of international and internal scandals, inquiries and debates. Commentators, politicians and citizens in the United States decried what they saw as the violation of the Fourth Amendment of that country's constitution, which prohibits unreasonable searches. US President Barack Obama was forced to apologise to German Chancellor Angela Merkel after it was revealed that her personal mobile phone had been tapped. China expressed possibly disingenuous outrage at the scale of United States monitoring, warning that it threatened Sino-US ties. Global corporations denied allowing governments access to information their customers believed was private.