Lindsay Mills: Born February 20, 1985 is an acrobat and blogger from the United States. She rose to public prominence in 2013 as Edward Snowden’s companion during global surveillance revelations.
By October 2014, Mills had departed the United States to join Snowden in exile in Moscow. In 2017, they tied the knot.
Prior to the global surveillance revelations
Jonathan Mills, Mills’ father, lives in Laurel, Maryland. She studied dance and acrobatics at the Maryland Institute College of Art and went on to become a professional dancer and acrobat.
In Baltimore, Japan, and Hawaii, Mills and Edward Snowden lived together. They’ve been together since at least 2009.
Mills maintained a blog where she posted photographs of herself posing and performing.
Snowden departed Hawaii for Hong Kong on May 20, 2013, telling her he was going on a business vacation.
Agents from the National Security Agency searched Mills’ home on June 6, 2013, in pursuit of Snowden.
The Guardian released a report on June 9, 2013, confirming that Snowden was the source of the global spying leaks.
“I’ll be refraining from blog posts for awhile,” Mills said on her website on June 10, 2013, before deleting all of her posts the next day.
Following the global spying revelations,
Lindsay Mills was taken aback when he learned about Snowden’s actions. “I feel alone, bewildered, overwhelmed, and yearning for a reprieve,” she said on her personal blog.
With her identity as Edward Snowden’s lover, Mills became a media star following the global surveillance revelations. Mills was dubbed “the girlfriend Edward Snowden left behind” by one news agency. Mills’ personal blog was evaluated by Buzzfeed in 2013.
It stated that she had a lover named “E” who she referred to as her “guy of mystery.” Soon after Snowden left, Mills blogged about it.
Following Snowden’s departure from Hawaii, reporters tried to interview members of the Waikiki Acrobatic Troupe in order to learn more about Mills and Snowden’s relationship.
I never got to know her,” “I wasn’t even aware she was in a relationship,” and “I have no idea how much pole and other stuff she’d done” were among the newsworthy comments revealed from the interview.
There was no public awareness of any interaction between Mills and Snowden in the media between June 2013 and 2014.
After June 2013, the public had no idea where Mills lived.
Mills had gone seven months without speaking to the media by January 2014. Mills’ father revealed that she was attempting to make sense of what had occurred and make plans for the future.
Later, a sequence in the Citizenfour documentary showed Snowden and Mills reuniting in Moscow.
This news in October 2014 was the first hint that they were still dating in the public. The news that Mills and Snowden were together and happy came as a shock because, before to the documentary, the media had reported that Snowden’s existence in Russia had been a living hell.
At the 87th Academy Awards, Mills and Glenn Greenwald accompanied director Laura Poitras on stage to accept the Academy Award for Citizenfour.
The Oscar performance was dubbed “Mills’ most significant public appearance” by one reporter in September 2016. Mills makes a brief appearance in Citizenfour, cooking with Snowden in their Moscow flat.
Mills received one of the three sculptures presented during the ceremony. “We won a motherfucking Oscar!” Mills later said as he reflected on the sensation of receiving the award for Snowden on stage.
Mills resurrected her site in March 2015 and published two “strange” entries, according to a Jezebel writer.
Mills shared photos of herself and Snowden dressed up as Carmen Sandiego and Waldo from Where’s Waldo? for Halloween 2015.
Both of these well-known fictional characters have a reputation for hiding. Mills and Snowden appear to be posing in front of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in the shot, but this is likely photo manipulation considering they are allegedly still in Russia.
Mills’ words from her journal are included in Snowden’s 2019 book, Permanent Record, as part of the narrative of the surveillance revelations.
Mills was pregnant in 2020, and she and Snowden planned to petition for Russian citizenship without relinquishing their American citizenship.
In December 2020, their son was born.
Lindsay Mills Images in the public eye
Mills has a long history of involvement with new media publishing, such as social networking, blogging, and video sharing.
Her father compared her to Edward Snowden, describing her as artistic, free, and open.
Mills’ blog is described as “a combination of conversational reports of Mills’s days in Hawaii, stories of her athletic and pole-dancing achievements, descriptions of pleasant evenings with pals, and vows of lady power” by a reviewer for The New Yorker.
Mills’ blog and social media presence were praised as lively by a journalist at The Daily Telegraph.
Snowden has chastised the media for portraying Mills in a seductive light.
Lindsay Mills is a major character in Snowden, a 2016 dramatisation of Edward Snowden’s global surveillance revelation.
The bond between Mills and Snowden was a key part of director Oliver Stone’s film, he added. Mills is played by Shailene Woodley in the film.
Woodley based her portrayal on material from Mills’ blog and social media posts because she was unable to see her in person before to filming.
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