How Is Edward Snowden Ethical

Edward Snowden has chosen ethical and moral obligations over his oath to National Security claiming the public had a right to know. Mr. Snowden leaked information to a journalist; then after Russia gave him protection, he exposed even more information. Mr. Snowden claimed the information was of moral obligation to inform the public of the US government invasion into their privacy. The US government put trust in Mr. Snowden to protect sensitive information for National Security purposes. Upon taking the job, he signed a contract and took an oath to protect the information critical to national security.

Edward Snowden, just over a month after he began working at the NSA Cryptologic Center in Hawaii, failed to show up for work. He flew to Hong Kong with a massive cache of stolen secrets. While in Hong Kong, he gave a small portion of these documents to three handpicked journalists. Snowden disappeared again, this time for 13 days, before arriving in Russia, which gave him, protection from prosecution, and a global stage to expose further government secrets (Epstein, 2017). Majority of Mr. Snowden’s excuses for releasing critical information was an ethical and moral decision to stop the

Snowden’s actions, the US decision makers were forced to comfort the public that such observation was not illegal and part of national security. Many citizens found the information disturbing and considered the activity by NSA to be illegal. Tensions escalated with China because the US already accused China of Cyber attacks and then due to Snowden’s release found that the US was operating in a low the bar manner. It also made the standoff between China and the United States over hacking difficult to discuss. Some revelations angered Russia, Turkey, South Africa, and Germany all of which were targets at various times. Mr. Snowden's actions may have jeopardized the largest free trade agreement in the world, with negotiations between the European Union and the US (nd.