Snowden takes up website job in Russia

The whistleblower had been granted asylum in Russia three months ago

This photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden, who worked as a contract employee at the National Security Agency, on Sunday, June 9, 2013, in Hong Kong. The National Security Agency, working with the British government, has secretly been unraveling encryption technology that billions of Internet users rely upon to keep their electronic messages and confidential data safe from prying eyes, according to published reports Thursday, Sept. 5, 2013, based on internal U.S. government documents.(AP Photo/The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras)

The former U.S. spy agency analyst, Edward Snowden, has taken up a website job in Russia, his Russian lawyer said.

“Edward starts work on November 1,” Anatoly Kucherena was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency on Thursday. “His job will involve support and development at a large Russian website,” he said.

Mr. Kucherena refused to identify Mr. Snowden’s employer for “security reasons.”

Earlier, the lawyer said his client was getting many job offers in Russia and was planning to start working as he had run out of money.

The only web resource that has publicly admitted offering Mr. Snowden a job is VKontakte, Russia’s biggest social network.

“Snowden is a professional in data protection and it would be great to have him work for us,” said VKontakte head Pavel Durov.

Secretive life

The former National Security Agency contractor, who disclosed U.S. global electronic surveillance programmes, has been leading a secretive life in Russia after he was granted asylum three months ago.

His location has not been disclosed and he has only appeared once in short video clips from a meeting with fellow U.S. whistleblowers somewhere in Moscow.

Mr. Snowden’s father visited him earlier this month, but the meeting was also kept secret.

Lifenews.ru, a Kremlin-linked news resource, on Thursday published what it claimed to be a photo of Mr. Snowden enjoying a Moscow riverboat cruise in September. The same site earlier published a photo of a man it said was Mr. Snowden pushing a shopping cart in a supermarket parking lot.