GoKawiilPublished on 20 Sept 2026
The last document from the Snowden archive was published on 29 May 2019. The Guardian stopped publishing documents in February 2014, Der Spiegel in January 2015, and The New York Times and ProPublica in August 2015. After that, only The Intercept was still publishing documents, with only a few exceptions, until it closed its archive in March 2019. Eleven weeks later, on 29 May 2019, it released what would become the final batch of documents from the archive. Since then, no news outlet, journalist, or institution anywhere has published a single document from the Snowden archive.
Snowden started reaching out to journalists months before having any material to share. In December 2012, he contacted Guardian columnist and former attorney Glenn Greenwald, requesting that he set up a secure communication channel, though Greenwald didn't know how to do so.[1] After a second attempt in January failed to make progress, Snowden shifted his focus to Laura Poitras, an American documentary filmmaker. Poitras then teamed up with an investigative journalist Barton Gellman.[1]
Snowden shared the archive gradually. On 31 March 2013 he sent Poitras a link to an encrypted file called astro_noise,[2] which she downloaded and filmed herself doing so, but had no key to open it.[3] On 10 May Snowden posted a box from Hawaii to a Brooklyn address he had asked her to supply. It went to Jessica Bruder, a journalist who had agreed to receive a package without being told what it was, and who passed it unopened to Dale Maharidge, and then Maharidge handed it to Poitras on 15 May.
On 21 May 2013 Snowden sent Poitras and Gellman the keys to an encrypted archive called Pandora containing about 50,000 documents.[4][5][1]
At some point in late May, Snowden warned Poitras about what he called a "single point of failure," and urged her to get copies of the material into other hands. She distributed three. One went to Trevor Timm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, with a note asking him to hold the material and not to give it to anyone but Greenwald, and only if Greenwald asked in person. One went to a person who has asked not to be identified. The third went to someone who remains unknown. Maharidge kept a copy himself, saying in 2017 that he still had it.[6] Aside from Poitras, Gellman, and Greenwald, it's unclear whether the others holding copies can actually read the documents, since the copies are likely encrypted and they may not have the key.
Greenwald received the Pandora copy from Poitras on 1 June 2013, on the way to the airport,[1] and read it for the first time on the flight to Hong Kong.[7] The Guardian journalist Ewen MacAskill was handed the GCHQ material in Hong Kong,[1] and brought it to the Guardian's London office.[8] Der Spiegel obtained their archive from Poitras in that summer.[9] The New York Times and ProPublica got theirs from the Guardian.[10][11]
Greenwald said in 13 March 2019 that he and Poitras "individually and independently, continue to possess full copies of the archive, as do other individuals and institutions."[12]
Poitras said in 2022 that the archive "still exists, and there is still more to report," describing "a vast amount of information that hasn't been reported of enormous contemporary and historical significance." Greenwald said in 2023 that the archive runs to "hundreds of thousands of documents, if not more." But neither has published anything from it in seven years, and neither has explained why.
The Guardian
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