Snowden - Man of The Year in GUARDIAN

Year of Snowden and his revelations

Below is an extract of an article in China Daily on 2013-12-13 by Chen Weihua

There is no doubt in my mind that former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden should have been Time magazine's Person of the Year in 2013.... if the Person of the Year is someone who has done the most to influence the world in 2013 for better or worse, then Snowden should have had no competitor this year.
Snowden's revelations since early June awakened the whole world - government, corporations and ordinary people alike.
People have realized that they are under massive surveillance, through various NSA programs, such as PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora, and the mining of telephone metadata. They have had to redefine the word privacy....

Snowden's revelations came as the US was busily attempting to label China a major hacker against the US, and showed that whatever China or any other country is doing in cyberspace simply pales to insignificance compared with the actions of the NSA. The NSA has not only hacked into China's cell phone and telecom companies as well as universities and hospitals, it has also spied on many other countries, including many of its allies, as well as 35 world leaders.
Last week, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom, said that his paper had published only 1 percent of the 58,000 files passed on by Snowden. If 1 percent of Snowden's disclosures are so damning of the US, it's hard to imagine what the impact would be if the remaining 99 percent is also made public....

While Snowden is widely seen as a hero and a whistleblower, the US government and many US politicians have tried hard to paint him as a criminal and traitor. The US federal prosecutors have charged Snowden with violating the 1917 Espionage Act....

I don't know why Time magazine did not select Snowden as the Person of the Year. Hopefully it is not because that the controversial nature of his revelations inside the US. It is certainly not controversial at all in the rest of the world....

If the arrival of Pope Francis has been a breath of fresh air, the revelations by Snowden have been an earthquake whose shockwaves have been felt around the world. Time magazine got it wrong. There was no one more influential this year.
The author, based in Washington, is deputy editor of China Daily USA.