On June 23, 2013, former NSA leaker Edward Snowden fled Hong Kong for Moscow in the company of WikiLeaks activist Sarah Harrison. Snowden enlisted the help of WikiLeaks to seek political asylum in Ecuador following US requests for his extradition from Hong Kong.

After a massive public outcry concerning the material of Above the Game: A Guide to Getting Awesome with Women, a “seduction guide” by Redditor Ken Hoinsky, Kickstarter, which prohibits “offensive material,” issued an apology. However, it did not shut down Hoinsky’s campaign, which raised over $16,000.

After both The Guardian and The Washington Post published articles regarding the NSA’s top-secret PRISM program and its connection to private communications and internet companies, Google filed a motion with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to publish the aggregate data on the national security requests it receives.

via NYT

Following the Obama Administration’s announcement that it would begin to send arms to the Syrian rebels combatting Bashar al-Assad’s forces, Senators Paul (R-KY), Murphy (D-CT), Udall (D-NM), and Lee (R-UT) introduced a bill that would prevent such military assistance, fearing US involvement in another intractable Middle East conflict.

On May 10, 2013, the Department of Justice revealed that it had secretly subpoenaed two months of phone records of several Associated Press journalists in a leak investigation. Six weeks later, Pruitt discussed the fallout from these actions and the impact of such government intrusion on journalistic freedom and news-gathering.