NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has found a new job, his lawyer says.
The former US spy
agency contractor will work for a major private website in Russia, where he was
granted asylum after fleeing the United States.
"Edward starts
work in November," his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena told the Russian news
agency RIA Novosti.
Mr Snowden, 30,
fled to Russia in June after leaking details of far-reaching US telephone
espionage.
Mr Kucherena would
not disclose which site has employed Mr Snowden, citing security concerns.
However, Mr Snowden
had a very public job offer earlier this year from the head of VKontakte, a
popular social networking site seen as a rival to Facebook.
Pavel Durov, who
founded VKontakte in 2006, invited Mr Snowden through a post on his own webpage
to join the company's St Petersburg headquarters to work on data protection.
Unknown location
Little has been
heard of Mr Snowden's private life in Russia, where he has lived since being
granted temporary asylum in August.
Leaks from the
former intelligence analyst have rocked the US government, revealing an
extensive programme of espionage that covered China, Russia and Western allies
including Germany and Brazil. The US wants him extradited to face trial on
criminal charges.
Lawyer Anatoly
Kucherena shows the document allowing Edward Snowden to remain in Russia
Mr Snowden spent
more than a month in a hotel at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport before being
allowed into the country.
It is unclear
whether he remains in Moscow, though tabloid pictures of the former contractor
occasionally surface.
A Russian website,
Life News, this week published a
smartphone picture it said was purchased from a reader for
100,000 rubles (£1,943), purporting to show Mr Snowden taking a boat trip down
the Moscow River through the city's centre. Mr Snowden was without his
trademark glasses but wearing a red shirt and cream-coloured cap; the photo's
background includes Moscow's landmark Christ the Saviour cathedral.
Learning Russian
In an accompanying
interview, Mr Kucherena told Life News that Mr Snowden was learning to speak
Russian and had visited the Kremlin and other museums and cities in the
country.
"He's already
gone a pretty long way, in terms of Russian words, in terms of knowledge of our
culture...
"For the time
being, given his interest in Russia, given the attitude of Russians towards him
... given the love for him, he's receiving a fair amount of correspondence, and
I don't think he has any desire to leave for another country at the
moment," Mr Kucherena said.
The lawyer did not
disclose where Mr Snowden is living but said he will work in information
technology at "our country's largest website".
Russian President
Vladimir Putin said in an interview recently that Mr Snowden could "feel
safe" in Russia, though he told the Associated Press news agency that he
found him "a strange guy".
VKontakte has
itself come under pressure from the Russian government, as legislators try to
gain more control over what is said online. Mr Durov's residence and VKontakte
headquarters were both raided by police earlier this year, ostensibly in a
traffic accident investigation.
The site has nearly
80 million users, according to industry researcher Comscore, including about 47
million inside Russia, and is controversial for allowing users access to
pirated music and video content.
BBC
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