NSA Leaker Lived in Ellicott City

A 29-year-old man who says he leaked top secret documents that exposed a government surveillance program has ties to Ellicott City.

The man, Edward Snowden, is a former CIA employee and National Security Agency contractor, working for Booze Allen Hamilton, who told The Guardian newspaper that the U.S. Government can easily access vast amounts of personal information stored online through a program called PRISM.

Snowden grew up in Elizabeth City, N.C., but then moved to a house near Fort Meade when Snowden was a teenager, according to The Guardian.

Snowden is still listed in public records as a resident of a house in the 7700 block of Mayfield Circle, which is near Meadowridge Road in Ellicott City.

On Monday, reporters from local news stations and national outlets wandered about as rain fell in the neighborhood.

A neighbor, Joyce Kinsey, 63, said she hadn't seen Snowden at the home in the last eight to ten years.

She said she understood he was doing well, working with the NSA, living in Hawaii, according to her conversations with Snowden's mother, who still lives in the home.

Kinsey said that when Snowden lived in Ellicott City, "he hardly ever said anything. He was like a studious guy."

She said the Snowdens always kept their curtains open and she would occasionally see him doing homework upstairs.

"He seemed like a good kid," said Kinsey. "Whatever he did, those are his own personal views he's expressing."

Snowden is currently believed to be in Hong Kong, where he participated in a series of interviews with the The Guardian.

The paper reported the only time he became emotional was when he was asked about the effect on his family, "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up night," said Snowden to the paper.

Besides Ellicott City, Snowden has other ties to the state.

He enrolled in—but did not graduate from—a Maryland community college and eventually enlisted in the U.S. Army, The Guardian reports. He later became a security guard at a University of Maryland NSA facility before landing a job in IT security with the CIA.

Snowden most recently worked as an NSA contractor in Hawaii, according to the paper.

Snowden's disclosures brought to light numerous counterterrorism intelligence activities, including a program to collect and analyze Americans' phone records en masse, and PRISM, a system said to allow the agency to tap into users' data with many major tech firms without requiring individual court orders.

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Disclosure: Patch is owned by AOL, which has denied knowledge of the PRISM program.