Edward Snowden and Alan Rusbridger won Right Livelihood Award 2014

Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden and Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian on 24 September 2014 won Right Livelihood Award. The award was shared between the two.
The Right Livelihood Award is also known as Alternative Nobel prize of Sweden.

Edward Snowden was awarded for his courage and skill in revealing the unprecedented extent of state surveillance violating basic democratic processes and constitutional rights. While, Alan Rusbridger, was awarded for writing extensively on government surveillance, based on leaks of Edward Snowden.

Cash prizes went to three activists from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the US.

About Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden fled to Hong Kong and then Moscow in 2013. He is believed to have taken 1.7 million computerised documents. Those published so far revealed massive programmes run by the NSA that gathered information on emails, phone calls and Internet use by hundreds of millions of Americans.

In 2013, he was charged in the United States with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorised person.

About Alan Rusbridger

Alan Rusbridger is the editor–in-chief of the UK based newspaper The Guardian.

In 2013, Rusbridger gave evidence before a Home Affairs Select Committee hearing on counterterrorism at the UK Parliament with regard to the publication of information leaked by Snowden.

About Right Livelihood Award

The Right Livelihood Award was established in 1980.

The award was given to honour and support those offering practical and exemplary answers to the most urgent challenges facing us today.

The prize money is shared among the winners, usually numbering four, and is EUR 200000. Very often one of the four laureates receives an honorary award, which means that the other three share the prize money.