Civil Disobedience By Edward Snowden

It’s difficult to imagine a world where citizens follow laws they agree with and disregard those they are against. However, what if the laws they disregard should never have been laws in the first place? Civil disobedience is a method used to fight injustice in society. In the words of Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If injustice is not confronted, it will continue to seep into every facet of society. This can transform a once free society into one that is trapped under clutches of injustice. Therefore, peaceful resistance, although uncomfortable, positively impacts and preserves a free society.

Through time we have been suffering, from excessive force of power and authority, against human rights, and we witness people dying, because of their beliefs to bring changes for future generations and the well of their country. In other words civil disobedience indicates that the main objective of disobedience is to bring changes in the social or political order that would affect the freedom of citizens. This year we witness many

Civil disobedience allows citizens in the free society of the United States to express their opinions in a way that is sure to evoke governmental attention, while enlightening the public

The NSA program, uncovered by the former CIA agent and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, is called Prism. Snowden, while working for the NSA disclosed this information by leaking this classified information to a web site called The Guardian. The fact that the information was classified means that the NSA had no intention of telling the citizens of the USA about its ability to monitor and record this great amount of data. This program while legally not able to record the conversation in the of a phone call can detect and record the number who is making the call, the number being called, the duration of the call, and, if necessary, the cellular tower used to send the call. This is intruding upon a huge portion of what most people consider personal, private data. (The Guardian)

Everyone is familiar with the atrocity that occurred in New York on September 11, 2001. The hijacked planes, the towers crashing down, killing hundreds of civilians. Truth is, the attack left everyone in the county and around the world in an extreme state of shock. It was America after all, things like that were not supposed to happen within this country’s borders. Things like that only occurred in places thousands of miles away, places with unstable governments like Syria, and Iran. Fueled by extreme anger, and fear of another attack, many citizens demanded that their government improve its protection over its citizens. In response, the government presented the Patriot Act, a 342 page bill that gave federal officials more power to track and intercept communications, both for law enforcement and foreign intelligence gathering purposes. In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked information to the public that the government was spying and collecting hundreds of information from millions of Americans without the use of any warrants. This information was being shared throughout different departments such as the CIA, FBI and NSA. More than a decade has gone by and terrorism continues to be a threat to our society, Now everyone must ask themselves, to what extent should citizens allow its own government to increase its own power to protect them from terrorism? How many liberties are they willing to give up for for such protection?

“The concept of righteous civil disobedience is incompatible with the concept of the American legal system.”

Civil disobedience is one of the most peaceful ways to protest an unjust law in a free society and allows individuals to bring a law under public scrutiny. Free societies allow every citizen to make their opinion known and published, but if an important opinion is published in a smaller newspaper, it may not receive much attention or consideration. Civil disobedience is necessary because it brings attention to injustice by actively demonstrating oppression and mistreatment. The phrase "actions speak louder than words" is common, but not only do actions speak louder than words, but throughout history they have proven to be the only main way to push others in a society to action.

“Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,” said former NSA information technology contractor, Edward Snowden, as quoted in an article by CNN political reporter, Jeremy Diamond. Despite his low position in the National Security Agency, Snowden caught the world’s eye in 2013 when he leaked documents revealing the NSA and FISC’s plans for mass domestic surveillance in the United States. His decision to reveal classified documents sent the nation into widespread outrage. The NSA had access to not only metadata (records of activity), but also content containing personal information that Americans rightfully assumed was protected by laws such as the Stored Communications Act (SCA) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act

Ever since the American public was made aware of the United States government’s surveillance policies, it has been a hotly debated issue across the nation. In 2013, it was revealed that the NSA had, for some time, been collecting data on American citizens, in terms of everything from their Internet history to their phone records. When the story broke, it was a huge talking point, not only across the country, but also throughout the world. The man who introduced Americans to this idea was Edward Snowden.

In “How the NSA’s Domestic Spying Program Works,” the author reveals that many of “aspects of the (NSA) Program were aimed not just at targeted individuals, but perhaps millions of innocent Americans never suspected of a crime.” The author develops his thesis by detailing a few examples of major telecommunication companies that share customer’s call records to the NSA (AT&T, Sprint) and explaining that programs were implemented to monitor the emails of citizens (“amounted to at least 1.7 billion emails a day”). The author uses examples of how NSA decisions were made without a “warrant or any judicial oversight,” in order to increase citizen awareness of how the NSA functions. The author uses a erudite tone to address the audience of Americans

On September 11, 2001, tragedy struck in the United States; 2,977 people died in the iconic terrorist attacks (“September 11th Fast Facts”). In New York, New York, two planes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, and another crashed into the Pentagon, which is the military command center located in Washington D.C. Along with those three planes, there was a fourth plane that was hijacked, but the passengers overthrew the terrorist, and downed the plane in Pennsylvania. These attacks resulted in racism against the Muslim community and government agencies that changed their goal to preventing another terrorist attack on the United States and its allies (Gould, Eric D., and Klor). One of these agencies is the NSA; NSA employee, Edward Snowden leaked top-secret information in 2013, regarding their spying program (Greenwald, Glenn). This caused great commotion all across the United States about people’s rights. However, the NSA is here to protect the United States and other countries from potential terrorist attacks. The NSA should be allowed to collect people’s communication records to bring home more troops and prevent terrorist attacks.

Vaughn. Essay Civil disobedience is the refusal to conform to civil laws in an attempt to convince the government to modify its legislation and policy. Henry David Thoreau wrote Resistance to Civil Government to encourage people to stand up to the government and to address people who are upset with the rules of the government but still choose to follow them. Edward Snowden’s act of Civil Disobedience was abnormal to the government of the United States and some of the people, but Henry David Thoreau might have tried to justify Snowden’s actions. Stated by Ewen MacAskill,

Keeping the United States of America safe from foreign threats is far from an easy task. However, preventing domestic threats is a much more complicated and delicate one. Government organizations such as the National Security Agency [NSA] are known to have invaded our privacy through our connection to technology. The NSA has publicly admitted to the surveillance. Due to media coverage, the NSA is often viewed as the main agency that bulk collects data. Emails, phone calls, and even our text messages have been surveilled under an NSA program known as “PRISM” (“Domestic Surveillance Techniques”). Everyday government organizations invade our privacy for the sake of national security in an attempt to defend us from domestic threats, but it seems they often take surveillance a step too far. United States citizens should understand legality of these actions, as well as the purpose this data collection serves.

While working for the NSA, Snowden became aware of their extensive trespasses against the privacy of U.S. and international citizens alike. Upon considering the extent of these trespasses, Snowden felt that it was his moral duty, as he stated, “to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them”. His provided information showed the use of Internet surveillance programs, and the evaluation of phone records in the form of “metadata”. Many argue that Snowden’s leaking of information has hindered our government’s ability to intercept terrorist plots, by informing the world of the NSA’s capabilities, and therefore allowing terrorist groups to plot attacks beyond the reach of U.S. surveillance. In light of this, Snowden’s leak has indeed made us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, but does this justify the NSA’s chosen use of power? Since Snowden’s revelations, it has become evident that the NSA consistently uses their surveillance abilities to unjustified ends. One function of the NSA’s electronic data analysis is to find targets for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command to strike with lethal drone attacks. Many innocent civilians in middle-eastern countries have lost their lives as a result of this military sect’s reliance on the NSA’s data, rather than human correspondence. According to an anonymous former drone-operator, the victims of these attacks “might have been terrorists, or they could have been

I recently saw a movie called CitizenFour which was based on one of the biggest cases of whistle blowing in US history. This whistle blower went by the name Edward Snowden. Snowden worked for the NSA so he had a lot of information that involved the NSA doing "bad" things like tapping into our phone calls, and stuff that had to do with violating our privacy. So what Snowden wanted to do was leak all this information. But he didn't want to keep the info for himself. So he gave the info to the media. So they can release it to the public but at the same time not put anyone in danger like a spy for example. But the New York Time leaked something that wasn't properly blacked out and that caused a big problem. Snowden was charged with a crime that dated back to world war one. I think that what Snowden did wasn't very smart. In the sense that he gave the information to the media. As I watched the movie I asked myself why would he do this. Anyone can take a bribe and that information can go into the wrong hands. SO I think him doing this was a miss call on his part. But again i think that he did this because he didn't want to have all that power in his hand. Maybe he thought that he would be the one to eventually sell this info for his own well-being. I