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Essay on edward snowden
Essay about edward snowden
Essay on edward snowden
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Edward Snowden’s actions are Justifiable because he shines light on what the government has
been doing and he feels that the people have a right to know. This paper will contain what has
been happening in the Snowden case and some reasons to why Snowden did what he did and
why it was justifiable and how it did in a way enhance democracy in the United States. Snowden
believed that by releasing this information he is doing the right thing, he also believed that
people had a right to know that their privacy has been and was being breached.
Some background information on Edward Snowden is that he is 29 years old and he is from
Hawaii he flew from Hawaii to Hong Kong where he then told his information to reporters from
Guardian a newspaper from the UK that had two of their reporters fly to Hong Kong to do a
paper on him “Snowden said he later worked as a security guard for the NSA and then took a
computer security job with the CIA. He left that job in 2009 and moved on to Booz Allen
Hamilton, where he worked as a contractor for the government in Hawaii.”(Starr, Yan, 2013,
Man behind NSA leaks says he did it to safeguard privacy, liberty). In the Guardian interview
Snowden talks about how NSA has been going through peoples conversations and has even
gotten into Facebook and Google to track peoples e-mails and messages, etc. The Edward
Snowden case is about a former Central Intelligence Agency technical worker, who is
responsible for one of the worse information leaks. It all started when Snowden was working for
the NSA for a couple of weeks when he started to learn things that he didn’t like. Snowden
leaked files to Guardian a newspaper while in Hong Kong. In the interview Snowden says that
“Eve...
... middle of paper ...
...uardian, (2013,n.a.) NSA Files: Decoded,
Retrieved on Wednesday February 5th, 2014 from,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/snowden-nsa-files-surveillance-revelations-decoded#section/1
Guardian, (2013, July 8) Edward Snowden: 'The US government will say I aided our enemies' – video interview Retrieved on Wednesday February 5th, 2014 from,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-video-interview
Guardian, (2013, July 26) Edward Snowden and the NSA files – timeline
Retrieved on Wednesday February 5th, 2014 from,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/23/edward-snowden-nsa-files-timeline
Starr, B and Yan, H. (2013, June 23). Man behind NSA leaks says he did it to safeguard privacy, liberty Retrieved on Wednesday February 5th, 2014 from,
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/10/politics/edward-snowden-profile/
Snowden felt a sense of responsibility to inform American citizens of the existence of programs and policies that have been developed under
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?
"The Triumph of Technique – The Logic of the NSA." LibrarianShipwreck. WordPress.com, 22 June 2013. Web. 08 Feb. 2014.
Edward Snowden was an American computer specialist that worked for the CIA and as a contractor for the NSA. He disclosed classified files over several media sources, that were evidence that the NSA was collecting data from the phone calls and internet activities of most Americans. Snowden thought that by revealing these secret government activities that Americans would realized that their privacy is being invaded and that they need to do something about it.
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 ...
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...
In May of 2013 Edward Snowden who was then working at a National Security Agency office in Oahu, Hawaii began copying top secret documents that belonged to the American government as he believed the documentation contained unethical and immoral content that he believed the American people and the world in general needed to know about. (Snowden, 2014) The documentation that he collated contained information regarding projects such as Prism, which is a top secret NSA surveillance program that has the ability to access the data servers of some of America's large...
Yan, Barbara Starr and Holly, CNNs Matt Smith, and Holly Yan. "Man behind NSA Leaks Says He Did It to Safeguard Privacy, Liberty." CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 20 Jan. 2014.
Greenwald, Glenn, Ewen MacAskill, and Laura Poitras. “Edward Snowden: The Whistleblower behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations.” Theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 11 June 2013. Web. 18 May. 2014.
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...
Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency (N.S.A) subcontractor turned whistle-blower is nothing short of a hero. His controversial decision to release information detailing the highly illegal ‘data mining’ practices of the N.S.A have caused shockwaves throughout the world and have raised important questions concerning how much the government actually monitors its people without their consent or knowledge. Comparable to Mark Felt in the Watergate scandals, Daniel Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers, Edward Snowden joins the rank of infamous whistleblowers who gave up their jobs, livelihood, and forever will live under scrutiny of the public all in the service to the American people. Edward Snowden released information detailing the extent of the N.S.A breaches of American privacy and in doing so, became ostracized by the media and barred from freely reentering America, his home country.
told he was out of action for six months. It was here that he first
Many people have mixed feelings about how they should differentiate Edward Snowden as a hero or a traitor. It is true what he had done was unjust and could have been handled another way without all the drama and getting nicknamed traitor by many and hero by few. His act on the NSA forced him into making a deal with Russia to stay at an asylum for a year, because some people in Russia believed in what he had done and did not doubt him unlike some people who thought of Snowden as a traitor to the government. There has been many polls, articles and interviews on Edward Snowden and how people thinks about his act of “exposing” the NSA for spying into the citizens personal life. Some may differ with Snowden by saying, what the NSA is doing is to protect the pe...
Most people concerned about the privacy implications of government surveillance aren’t arguing for no[sic] surveillance and absolute privacy. They’d be fine giving up some privacy as long as appropriate controls, limitations, oversight and accountability mechanisms were in place. ”(“5 Myths about Privacy”). The fight for privacy rights is by no means a recent conflict.
It is likely to consider Edward Snowden as a whistle blower because he wanted the people to decide what the government can or can not do. According to the article, Man behind NSA Leaks Says He Did It to Safeguard Privacy, Liberty, Edward Snowden's believes that, “the public needs to decide whether these programs or policies are right or wrong.” (Barbara, Yan). M...