In June 2013, approximately 200,00 classified documents were brought to light by none other than Edward Snowden. Did he “damage the country” as said by former U.S. President, George W. Bush or did he help bring some uncovered secrets to light for the betterment of the People?
Snowden was a contractor and computer specialist for the National Security Agency (NSA) and was also an employee for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In May of 2013, Snowden began to collect top-secret documents about the NSA domestic surveillance practices. Snowden didn’t like that at all. After finding out about all of the surveillance practices, he fled to China. When he fled to China, there were newspapers being printed, talking about how Snowden had leaked the top-secret documents to China, many of them were very detailed and and spoke of spying practices against U.S. citizens. The United States charged Snowden under the Espionage Act but many other Americans are calling this man a hero. Now, why would someone who was living a very comfortable life-style and is living with a $200,000 salary throw it all away?
The Washington Post and the Guardian released articles on Snowden’s leaked information on the PRISM program. “PRISM is an NSA program that allows real-time information collection.” Snowden described, “I’m willing to sacrifice [my former life] because I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.” The U.S. government, however saw this from a different perspective. They charged Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence with an unauthorized person. Fun Fact: The last two facts qualify for violation of the Espionage Act. (Before President Barack Obama took office, the act has only been used three times since becoming a law in 1917; Since President Obama took office, it has been used seven times as of June 2013).
My friend and colleague, Caleb Schlabach made some very valid points in his blog about Edward Snowden.
“Chris Soghoian explains just how much power the NSA has “The NSA sorta performs two kinds of surveillance. They perform dragnet surveillance of everyones communications and then they perform targeted surveillance on individual communications and if the NSA wants to get into your computer or phone they’re gonna get in and there really isn’t any way to stop them.”
Why does this matter? Maybe you share the same idea as many and say “I have nothing to hide, I don’t really care.” What you may not know is that the NSA is allowed to target surveillance somebody who is “three hops” away from their intended suspect. That means somebody who talks to somebody who talks to you. The amount of people three hops away from you is enormous. The website theguardian.com has a calculator up to determine just how many people are three hops away from you based off your number of Facebook friends. I have 390 friends on Facebook, that means that I have 63,726 people that are connected to me in just “two hops” on Facebook. That in itself is already a huge number but if we go one more level I have 10,412,828 3rd degree friends. Basically what that means is if anyone of those nearly 10 and a half million people are being targeted in any reason by the NSA then the NSA can target surveillance me by hacking into my phone or computer.”
Although spying on American citizens can be a bad thing but what do we do in situations like we
Tweets from the Washington Post article.
just had on April 14? American Airlines was receiving bomb Tweets. Is it ok to then spy on the individual tweeting stuff like this for safety measures? Even though nothing happened, would it be okay to make sure that this isn’t something that could be harmful to hundreds of people? These kind of things keep people on the edge, especially for those who are in the airports. These types of ignorance just isn’t alright to joke about. Could these types of circumstances be the reasons why the U.S. feels the need to spy on Americans? I’ve always said that “it’s better to be safe than sorry.” I appreciate what Edward Snowden did in terms of letting the people know about what the government was doing behind our backs but I don’t appreciate the fact that he went overseas to China. There are probably things that he told them that we may never know or find out.
I read an article on npr.org between David Green and Jennifer Granick, director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center of Internet and Society. She made a good point about the Snowden’s decision to release information about the U.S.’s surveillance.
“Well, we would not know what our government is doing, we would not know the extent to which they spy on us, were it not for Edward Snowden. There were whistleblowers before him about the NSA, but the documents that Snowden took proved the truth of what those whistleblowers and what Edward Snowden was saying. And only because we have those documents, our government has had to come clean about its practices.”
So the real question is… What do you think? Do you think Edward Snowden was a traitor or a hero?
Aye, yo! You See My Tweet?! 