Education

By 1999, Snowden had moved to Maryland with his family, where he studied computing at a community college. He failed to complete the coursework.

He later obtained a General Educational Development (GED) certificate, a test which proves the taker has the required American or Canadian high school-level educational skills.

In 2011, he worked towards an online master's degree in computing security from the University of Liverpool.

Snowden reportedly also studied the Japanese language and has a basic understanding of Mandarin. He has previously listed Buddhism as his religion.

Career

On May 7, 2004, Snowden enlisted in the U.S. Army, but was discharged four months later because he broke both of his legs in a training accident.

He subsequently served as a NSA security guard at the Center for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland before joining the CIA to work in IT security.

In August 2006, Snowden referred to himself on an online forum as a "computer wizard." Three months later, he wrote on that same forum that he might get a job in government service, perhaps involving China, but said it didn't seem like it would as much "fun as some of the other places."

In 2007, Snowden was working for the CIA under diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was responsible for maintaining computer network security.

In 2009, Snowden left the CIA for a private contractor inside an NSA facility on a Japanese U.S. military base.

Before leaving the U.S. in May 2013, he had been working as a system administrator for less than three months for Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm, inside the NSA in Hawaii.