Reading 06: Snowden

After reading Snowden’s article about why he did what he did, I definitely understand him more. I especially liked the part where he said that he made an oath to the constitution, not to the NSA or the United States government. And that he felt his actions were justified in defending the constituion. I also think the Snowden’s actions force us to discuss some very important things regarding privacy and what the government has a right to do. His entire stance about government being for the people meaning that the people have a right to decide what their government can do it great. Like if we as Americans decide that the government shouldn’t be allowed to spy on us (at the potential expense of our safety) that should be a choice that we as citizens can make.

However, I still firmly would say that the Snowden’s actions were incredibly wrong. For all his talk about helping the individual citizen, the repercussions of what he did could harm Americans a lot. This is similar to what was discussed last week, but I think there is a way to be a whistleblower (even if it’s in a defiant way because I believe him that it’s very hard to create change by working through one’s superiors) in a more selfless, ethical way. Do the American people deserve to know the level of surveillance that the NSA is doing? Maybe. But they certainly don’t deserve to have their safety and years of NSA progress compromised becasue of one defiant individual.

The whole fleeing, sending documents to random journalists really just paints him even more as a criminal. Also the fact that he stole way more documents than were exposed makes me think he did this more to spite the NSA than to inform citizens as he claims. His actions uprooted so much of what they were doing without any benefit to Americans. I think that while he can make a good argument for his case and I’m sure he thinks that he did the right thing, I don’t think I will ever think his actions were ethical.