I am really shocked by the NSA conspiracy. Aren’t you?
With the NSA surveillance-related news making it’s way onto the HN from page almost every day, it was hard for me to ignore. But even harder it was to ignore our collective ignorance. People sound shocked, juts stunned by the fact that NSA is listening in and frankly, that’s the scary part.
First, there’s a perfectly valid argument for considering Snowden more of a traitor than a good guy. Yes, you may not want your private information to be snooped on by the government, and neither do I, but after all, if he didn’t like what he was doing, he should’ve quit and gone to do bigger and better things. He could’ve built a company to secure and encrypt data, he could’ve saved puppies from abuse… you name, but as a conscious human being, he could’ve found a line of work with which he actually agreed. Instead, from what I understand, he snooped on the information for a while, and then ran away, releasing the information to the people who were not supposed to see it.
Yes, of course, in this case the people who were not supposed to see this information were the citizens of the United States, in fact, the whole world was not supposed to know. But, if you consider it to be wrong, when say a Chinese spy steals US proprietary information and relays it to people who were not supposed to know (say, Chinese government), then you should consider it to be equally wrong when a US person relays that same information to the people who are not supposed to know it.
You might say the government shouldn’t be spying on us, and that it’s unconstitutional …etc. Fair point, you are absolutely correct! But, the reasoning for stealing and sharing information still stands. Now you just need to choose, do you love your civil liberties more than your criminal code, or not?
If you like your liberties, then Snowden is a hero, if you like your laws, then he’s a spy. Then of course, there’s also a question of - “what if I got to know of information that was highly unethical from my stand-point, should I be able to share it and correct the wrongdoing?” Lots of question and we all need to answer it on our own. But anyways, I digress.
What really bothers me is the fact that people are shocked by these news. It seems that everyone was living a happy live, thinking that the government was never ever-ever encroaching on their personal information, and now, kaboom!, now everyone is aware and stunned and confused. This massive-spread ignorance is scary.
Being socked by the news about NSA surveillance is equivalent to be shocked that say, even though your parents tell you “Bs are okay”, they are still hoping that you get all straight As in school.
Tell me, will you be shocked if I told you that US car manufacturers and dealers are colluding against Tesla, and spending all of their money on lobbying in order to squish the competition. Would you be shocked if I told you that Telecom companies are colluding in order to keep the prices high and to charge you for internet a high premium, just because they can. Would you be shocked if executives at McDonalds knew that their target demographic is somewhat obese, and only gets worse from their trips to fast-food joints? Would you be shocked that Hollywood and the music industry is doing everything in order to keep you paying for their products in a way that’s convenient for them?
None of the shocking revelations above should be news to you. Those are all things that you may safely assume are happening, whether or not you can gather evidence for them, because logically they should be happening.
Putting Snowden aside, the government and the life we create is of our making and is our own fault, because until a young analyst somewhere blows the whistle,we seem to be incapable of asking ourselves the obvious questions. More so, we don’t want to believe in the answers that we know are true, because that’s the inconvenient truth. It is just so much easier to live in denial, pretending that everything is okay, occasionally getting all aroused in a hot and shocking news story, only to forget the story, and the basics behind it the next day, when it comes to our everyday normal life.
The end.
