Edward Joseph Snowden popularly known as Edward snowden was born on 21 June 1983 in Elizabeth city, Northern Carolina, who is an anex, who is an American Computer Professional and also a former employee of the National Security Agency NSA. He also worked for Central Intelligence Agency “CIA”. Snowden moved with his family to Ellicott City in the year 1995 where he studied computers at Anne Arundel Community college between the years of 1999 and 2005. During this period he was also in the army for a period of 4 months. Snowden attained his Master’s degree at the University of Liverpool in the year 2011. After completing his course, snowden joined in a job as a security guard for the NSA where he managed to bring himself up to a position of an information technology department. He worked here for a period of two years and then he moved on to work for a private contracting company, where he was posted in a position working for NSA in Hawaii. After working for a period three months, snowden discovered some data that requires him to make a decision that would affect his life in future.
Snowden had access to high security files while working there and he noticed that the US government was spying secretly on all of its citizens via calls and internet usage. This information was from a program which is known as PRISM (Planning tool for resource integration, synchronization and management). Snowden began collecting information about this program and the activities it is carrying out. He did not try to meet any of his higher officials regarding this incident but while he was still working in NSA. He approached his higher officials for a leave of absence. Snowden flew to Hong Kong in china, it was where he decided to blow the whistle and ...
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...ard Snowden to me is a Hero who put his life at risk in saving the privacy of millions of people.
References
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Greenwald, G. MacAskill, E. Poitrais, L. The Guardian. Edward Snowden: The whistleblowerbehind the NSA surveillance revelations. Retrieved April 3, 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
Anonymous. (2014,03 18). Wikipedia. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden Cooper, T. (2012). Responsible Administrator: An Approach to Ethics for the Administrative Role (6th Edition). Hoboken, NJ, USA.
Thompson, D. (1985). Public Administration Review. The Possibility of Administrative Ethics.
Sep/Oct 1985, Vol. 45 Issue 5, p555, 7p
Kevin M. Gallagher. 2013. Freedom of the Press Foundation. Glenn Greenwald, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'. Video file posted on YouTube on June 9, 2013.
Edward Snowden, former CIA employee and contractor for the NSA, revealed last year the secret NSA surveillance programs that were used to monitor the United States and foreign countries for terrorists. In May 2013, he met with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras and disclosed countless NSA files, that were then published. The files contained information on several secret surveillance programs, as well as other not yet published files. Snowden has fled to other countries for asylum, since the United States government has charged him with espionage and theft of government property. A charge that was expected, as he he predicted that they would "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how ma...
Recently in global news, the name Edward Snowden has became quite popular as he snatched millions of people’s attention along with breaking news headlines. Snowden released numerous documents via internet that were private to the NSA; these leaks revealed the dirty work the NSA and government have ...
Yes, legally Edward Snowden did break a law however, when the law he broke is looked at it makes people a little uneasy. Legally Edward Snowden broke the U.S Espionage act however, when looked at this law it seems a little unsettling to people. Under this act, no person shall let the American people know of any kind of government affair (PoliticalUSA). No matter what it is, no matter what it could mean for the American people, or no matter who horrible it is, if that organization of government doesn’t want people to know than legally then no person no matter who it is shall tell. This law is extremely dangerous in the hands of people who will abuse its power, which has already been proven is the U.S government. This allows them to be able to get away with anything they please no matter what. They can go about the horrible things that they are doing in secrecy but, this law allows them to be able to get away with it. They are doing things that the American people need to know however, under this act it allows them to do it. A lot of people think that this is okay because, they don’t want people telling important American military strategies to the wrong people. However, this act and those wishes are two very different things that they are trying to cover up. Military strategies do need to be able to kept secret because, our troops do need to be able to keep safe overseas fighting for our country. This however, is having whatever they do become such an important thing. Things like the NSA spying on its own citizens are being throw under the rug. This act, which was passed during 1917 during the first world war, goes against the first amendment (OWS). The first amendment states that no law should be passed that diminishes a person’s right to free speech, right to free religion, and freedom of speech. However, the espionage act is somehow in affect in todays world and
After September 11th, Americans looked to the government for protection and reassurance. However, they did not expect to find out thirteen years later that the government did this by using technology to spy on Americans, as well as other countries. George W. Bush began the policy shortly after the terrorist attack and Barack Obama continued it. There have been many confrontations over the years about the extent of the N.S.A.’s spying; however, the most recent whistle-blower, Edward Snowden, leaked information that caused much upset throughout America (EFF). It has also brought many people to question: is he a hero or a traitor?
In early June 2013, Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former defense contractor who had access to NSA database while working for an intelligence consulting company, leaked classified documents reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) is recording phone calls of millions of Americans along with gathering private data and spying foreign Internet activity. The Washington Post later broke the news disclosed PRISM, a program can collect data on Internet users. The leaked documents publicly stated a vast objection. Many people were shocked by the scale of the programs, even elected representatives were unaware of the surveillance range. A nationwide debate over privacy rights have been sparked. Although supporters claim that the NSA only does its best to protect the United States from terrorists as well as respecting Americans' rights and privacy, many civil rights advocates feel that the government failed to be clear about the limit of the surveillance programs, threatening Americans' civil...
(NSA), had elevated security clearance and access highly sensitive information. At the present time, the amount of unreleased content in Snowden’s possession is unknown. After the leaks made by Poitras and Greenwald, the U.S. Justice Department charged Snowden with espionage, or “the practice of spying or using spies to obtain information about the plans and activities especially of a foreign government or a competing company.”8 After Snowden met Greenwald and Poitras in Hong Kong, he later flew to Moscow, where the Kremlin has granted Snowden temporary renewable asylum for one year.
To give the full picture of Edward Snowden I must start before his role in the government. Edward Snowden never graduated from high school, nor did he graduate from community college (Yann 1). In 2003 He joined the U.S. Army briefly until he was discharged when he broke both his legs in a training accident (BBC 1). His first job with the NSA was as a security guard, until he took a job at the CIA dealing with computer security (Yann 2). Edward’s final job, the one that gave him access to the leaks, was in Hawaii with a six figure salary (BBC 2). Snowden was a systems administrator, meaning he had the responsibility to go through the NSA database and move extremely sensitive documents to a secure location (NPR 1). His position was the perfect place for him to leak all the secrets the NSA held close. Edward Snowden’s activities were seen by the NSA the entire time, he didn’t have to hide that he was taking the documents it was his job (NPR 2). Mr. Snowden left for Hong Kong after he leaked his information, but once there he flew to Moscow because Hong Kong had a treaty with the...
Edward Snowden used to work for the NSA, a secret government surveillance program that collects private information. Snowden decided that keeping the program secret from the American people was immoral and tricked one of his superiors into giving him access to the database. He stole thousands of confidential documents created by the NSA, many of which are documents of personal and private information recovered from communication devices. This collection incriminated the NSA in illegal spying activities. After doing this, Snowden went to the media with the information, and the whole scandal was born.
Now, as to who the breach went to. At first he planned on telling the story to the New York Times, but in the end he decided not to because he found out that the New York Times had a great scoop in “the election year of 2004- that the Bush administration, post 9/11, allowed the NSA to snoop on U.S. citizens without warrants- but had sat on it for a year before publishing.” Snowden said that “this was the turning poin...
It is clear that Edward Snowden prior to his disclosure has think about all the consequences beforehand and decided this is the righteous thing to do. I too, believe that his action is the right thing to do and will produce a greater good.
The initial document released by Edward Snowden was an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) ordering Verizon to supply all of the metadata from their customers to the U.S. government on an ongoing basis. (Greenwald, 2013) At first glance this doesn’t appear to be too alarming. Metadata is strictly statistical data that identifies locations and length of calls, but doesn’t reveal the identity of the callers, or the content of the call itself. However, later documents released by Snowden reveal that this metadata was cross-referenced with other databases, which enabled the government to identify both callers. Furthermore, the government created software that analyzed the metadata to identify and track data patterns. (Roberts & Ackerman, 2013) Additional documents released by Snowden indicate that, through the creation of the Prism program, the government was able to conduct unlimited surveillance on Internet traffic through servers with Google, Facebook, Apple and others. Not only was the U.S. government using this data, but they were sharing it with allied countries. (Hopkins, 2013) Subsequent Snowden releases exposed that the U.S. was also spying on these allied countries. This is really alarming.
MATHEW, J. (2013 , November 15). Edward Snowden Leaked up to 200,000 NSA Top Secret Documents. Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/: http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/522484/20131115/edward-snowden-nsa-scandal-keith-alexander.htm
Primarily, the facts that are needed to address what exactly did Snowden wrong is what actually was inside the leaks. Edward Snowden did not dump sensitive data onto the Internet for the entire world, including enemies of America, to see. Snowden meticulously vetted the documents and data he collected to make sure that the leaks released contained only that which pertained to the N.S.A’s illegal collecting of phone logs, user data, and other private information. Even with the monitoring of overseas and foreign officials, N.S.A’s sweeping data collection technologies pulled out millions of private details from prominent U.S based internet companies, including Facebook, Google, and Yahoo. All of these activities were completed without specific warrants from courts that would otherwise either allow or deny these collections. The lack of oversi...
It is reasonable to argue that, governmental institutions or people with authority are subject to withhold a great deal of information from society. Many may argue that secrets are kept to ensure the safety of the nation. Thus, upholding the governmental duty of protecting the nation against possible threats. On the other hand, many believe that secrets may exist which violate our constitutional rights. Over the last year, Edward Snowden, has made headline news for leaking sensitive governmental information to the press. Edward Snowden is a 29-year-old high school drop-out, who was a tech specialist for the National Security Association. Snowden had discovered and later exposed the NSA for monitoring the nations e-mails, phone calls, and internet searches. As the allegations spread like wild fire, Edward Snowden sought asylum in Russia for one year. Snowden had a valid and justifiable reason to expose the NSA to the world because they were in violation of our fourth Amendment rights to unreasonable searches and seizures. The government called him a traitor, while others viewed him as a hero for exposing the government. Edward Snowden is a whistle blower because he felt that it is up to society to decide if governmental practices are just or unjust. Snowden does “express the highest respect for the law”, and he wanted to protect the right of privacy for American citizens.