German researcher Christian Lukhaup is a pretty big Edward Snowden fan. So he decided to name a new species of crayfish after the former National Security Agency contractor.

The Cherax snowden, which doesn't bear any particular resemblance to Snowden, lives in freshwater tributary creeks in West Papau, Indonesia. Lukhaup and two other researchers described the crayfish in an article published by the journal ZooKeys.

Lukhaup has named other species before, including earlier this year when he described the brightly colored Cherax pulcher in ZooKeys. In his latest paper, Lukhaup explained the new crayfish name, writing that Snowden is an “American freedom fighter” and “the name is used as a noun in apposition.”

The typical naming convention follows a genus-species construction, per International Code of Zoological Nomenclature guidelines, and researchers who describe species to science for the first time have free rein on naming rights.

“After describing a couple new species, I thought about naming one after Edward Snowden because he really impressed me,” said Lukhaup, an independent researcher. “We have so many species named after other famous people who probably don't do so much for humanity. I wanted to show support for Edward Snowden.”

In 2013, Snowden leaked top-secret document caches to three journalists (including a Washington Post reporter), which led to a series of articles revealing the scope of the NSA's surveillance program. Snowden is a controversial figure in the United States, where some have called for leniency and lauded him as a hero, while others have cast him as a criminal who put American security at risk.

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