Edward Snowden
E18616
Edward Snowden is a former National Security Agency contractor who became internationally known in 2013 for leaking classified documents revealing global mass surveillance programs.
All labels observed (4)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Edward Snowden canonical | 30 |
| Snowden | 12 |
| @Snowden | 1 |
| Edward Joseph Snowden | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T153438 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Edward Snowden Context triple: [Right Livelihood Award, hasLaureate, Edward Snowden]
-
A.
Jeffrey Wigand
Jeffrey Wigand is an American former tobacco executive turned whistleblower who exposed health risks and corporate misconduct in the cigarette industry, most famously depicted in the film "The Insider."
-
B.
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British science fiction author, technology activist, and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing, known for his work on digital rights, copyright reform, and internet freedom.
-
C.
Ron Klain
Ron Klain is an American attorney, political consultant, and longtime Democratic operative who served as White House Chief of Staff under President Joe Biden.
-
D.
Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward is an American investigative journalist and author best known for his reporting on the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post, which helped lead to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
-
E.
John Perry Barlow
John Perry Barlow was an American poet, essayist, and digital rights activist best known as a lyricist for the Grateful Dead and co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Edward Snowden Target entity description: Edward Snowden is a former National Security Agency contractor who became internationally known in 2013 for leaking classified documents revealing global mass surveillance programs.
-
A.
Jeffrey Wigand
Jeffrey Wigand is an American former tobacco executive turned whistleblower who exposed health risks and corporate misconduct in the cigarette industry, most famously depicted in the film "The Insider."
-
B.
Chris Hughes
Chris Hughes is an American entrepreneur and philanthropist best known as one of the co-founders of Facebook and a former owner of The New Republic magazine.
-
C.
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow is a Canadian-British science fiction author, technology activist, and co-editor of the blog Boing Boing, known for his work on digital rights, copyright reform, and internet freedom.
-
D.
Ron Klain
Ron Klain is an American attorney, political consultant, and longtime Democratic operative who served as White House Chief of Staff under President Joe Biden.
-
E.
Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward is an American investigative journalist and author best known for his reporting on the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post, which helped lead to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (53)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
computer security specialist
ⓘ
former intelligence contractor ⓘ human ⓘ whistleblower ⓘ |
| authorOf | Permanent Record ⓘ |
| causeOfNotability | leaking classified NSA documents in 2013 ⓘ |
| charge |
theft of government property (United States)
ⓘ
unauthorized communication of national defense information ⓘ willful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person ⓘ |
| chargedUnder | Espionage Act of 1917 ⓘ |
| countryOfCitizenship |
Russia
ⓘ
surface form:
Russian Federation
United States of America ⓘ |
| dateOfBirth | 1983-06-21 ⓘ |
| disclosedTo |
Ewen MacAskill
ⓘ
Glenn Greenwald ⓘ Laura Poitras ⓘ |
| educatedAt | Anne Arundel Community College ⓘ |
| employer |
Booz Allen Hamilton
ⓘ
Central Intelligence Agency ⓘ Dell ⓘ National Security Agency ⓘ |
| familyName |
Edward Snowden
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
Snowden
|
| fullName |
Edward Snowden
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
Edward Joseph Snowden
|
| givenName | Edward ⓘ |
| grantedPermanentResidencyIn |
Russia
ⓘ
surface form:
Russian Federation
|
| knownFor |
advocacy for privacy rights
ⓘ
criticism of mass surveillance ⓘ |
| languageOfWorkOrName | English ⓘ |
| leakedInformationAbout |
PRISM surveillance program
ⓘ
Upstream collection programs ⓘ XKeyscore ⓘ
surface form:
XKeyscore surveillance system
global mass surveillance ⓘ internet communications surveillance ⓘ telephone metadata collection by NSA ⓘ |
| militaryBranch | United States Army ⓘ |
| notableEvent | 2013 global surveillance disclosures ⓘ |
| notableWork | disclosure of NSA mass surveillance programs ⓘ |
| occupation |
IT consultant
ⓘ
author ⓘ systems administrator ⓘ |
| placeOfBirth | Elizabeth City, North Carolina, United States ⓘ |
| politicalAlignment | civil liberties advocate ⓘ |
| receivedAsylumFrom |
Russia
ⓘ
surface form:
Russian Federation
|
| residence |
Moscow
ⓘ
surface form:
Moscow, Russia
|
| servedIn |
Army Reserve
ⓘ
surface form:
United States Army Reserve
|
| spouse | Lindsay Mills ⓘ |
| subjectOf |
Citizenfour
ⓘ
Snowden (2016 film) ⓘ |
| twitterHandle |
Edward Snowden
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
@Snowden
|
| workedForAgency |
Central Intelligence Agency
ⓘ
National Security Agency ⓘ |
| yearOfAsylum | 2013 ⓘ |
| yearOfPermanentResidency | 2020 ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Edward Snowden Description of subject: Edward Snowden is a former National Security Agency contractor who became internationally known in 2013 for leaking classified documents revealing global mass surveillance programs.
Referenced by (44)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Edward Joseph Snowden
this entity surface form:
@Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden
subject surface form:
Citizenfour
subject surface form:
PRISM
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden
this entity surface form:
Snowden