Government Surveillance Has Been The Government Leaks Caused By Edward Snowden

Government officials try to put people’s concerns to rest with these statements, but the resentment toward the “snooping” continues (Zuckerman para 4) The government does, without a doubt have reason for the NSA’s surveillance.

How much involvement government/politics and businesses has on privacy towards themselves and people outside of their work has been an issue for many years, but it has recently became a big issue in the world today because of Edward Snowden, former U.S. contractor of the National Security Agency, who disclosed information of thousand classified

The Patriot Act was hastily passed just a month later October and it severely limited the privacy of Americans and gave unprecedented power to the government and private agencies to track innocent Americans, turning regular citizens into suspects.5 In addition, the great technological evolution and emerged of social media that occurred round the same time, and shortly thereafter, created the perfect storm for the emergence of the largely unregulated surveillance society that we live in today.6 The result is digitization of people’s personal and professional lives so that every single digital trace that people leave can be identified, stored, and aggregated to constitute a composite sketch of ourselves and its only getting worse. In 2008, passed the FISA Amendments Act, which expands the government’s authority to monitor Americans’ international communications, in addition to domestic communications.7 In short, after 9/11 the U.S is left with a national surveillance state, in which “the proliferation of government technology and bureaucracies that are able to acquire vast and detailed amounts of digital information about individuals with minimal or no judicial supervision and often in complete secrecy,” giving the government and corporations with access to the data that the government compiles the ability to single

Edward Snowden. This is a name that will be in the history books for ages. He will be branded a traitor or a whistleblower depending on where you look. Many Americans feel that Edward Snowden is a traitor who sold the United States’ secrets aiming to harm the nation. Others believe that he was simply a citizen of the United States who exercised his right to expose the government for their unconstitutional actions. It is important to not only know the two sides to the argument of friend or foe, but to also know the facts as well. My goal in this paper is to present the facts without bias and to adequately portray the two sides of the argument.

The NSA, or National Security Agency, is an American government intelligence agency responsible for collecting data on other countries and sometimes on American citizens in order to protect the country from outside risks. They can collect anything from the people’s phone data to their browser history and use it against them in the court of law. Since the catastrophes of September 11 attacks, the NSA’s surveillance capabilities have grown with the benefit of George W. Bush and the Executive Branch (Haugen 153). This decision has left a country divided for fifteen years, with people who agree that the NSA should be strengthened and others who think their powers should be limited or terminated. Although strengthening NSA surveillance may help the

The National Security Agency over the past few years was revealed to have spied on American citizens under what can be considered illegal or unconstitutional circumstances which sparked concern and outrage across most of America. This was first recognized in 2013 when the whistleblower Edward Snowden or traitor as the United States government considers him, leaked

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.

Government surveillance in the past was not a big threat due to the limitations on technology; however, in the current day, it has become an immense power for the government. Taylor, author of a book on Electronic Surveillance supports, "A generation ago, when records were tucked away on paper in manila folders, there was some assurance that such information wouldn 't be spread everywhere. Now, however, our life stories are available at the push of a button" (Taylor 111). With more and more Americans logging into social media cites and using text-messaging devices, the more providers of metadata the government has. In her journal “The Virtuous Spy: Privacy as an Ethical Limit”, Anita L. Allen, an expert on privacy law, writes, “Contemporary technologies of data collection make secret, privacy invading surveillance easy and nearly irresistible. For every technology of confidential personal communication…there are one or more counter-technologies of eavesdropping” (Allen 1). Being in the middle of the Digital Age, we have to be much more careful of the kinds of information we put in our digital devices.

In 2013, it was revealed by Edward Snowden that the National Security Agency (NSA) was spying on the public through tapping phones and internet records. Snowden encountered an ethical dilemma when he had to choose between being loyal to his employer and informing the public about the mass surveillance. While the intentions of the NSA were to keep the American public safe, their method of mass surveillance is a violation of people’s privacy and ineffective at stopping crime. This can be explained by examining who Edward Snowden is, why he exposed the mass surveillance scandal, and what exactly the mass surveillance scandal was. Edward Snowden worked as a system administrator for the NSA, where he was exposed to a lot of the NSA’s secrets and documents (Greenwald 2015:

Specific Purpose: My purpose of this presentation is to inform listeners about the dangers of government surveillance and why it should be stopped.

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

As history can attest, government whistleblowers act honorably for the greater good despite threat of prosecution. Government transparency, especially in acts of war, is important to a functioning democracy. J. William Leonard, former US classifications czar, In the documentary We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, illustrates, “To have those types of decisions, those types of deliberations, done in secrecy is a tremendous disservice to the American people – because these are things being done in their name – so, whether you agree with them or not, to have a free back-and-forth airing of these is essential”. In support of these concepts, those behind WikiLeaks and other government leaks have taken great risks. Birgitta Jonsdottir, member of WikiLeaks and Icelandic parliament, stated, “We were working on something that we knew that could get us into serious trouble and we were all willing to take that consequence” (“We Steal Secrets”). In We Steal Secrets, instant messages between Bradley Manning and the man who eventually turned him in, hacker

Whistleblowing is when an employee or member of an organization discloses illegal, immoral or illegitimate practices of the organization to someone who is capable of taking action and impacting the situation (Near & Miceli 1985). In June 2013, Edward Snowden blew the whistle on NSA’s extensive internet and phone surveillance activities that he felt were illegitimate. Snowden worked for the NSA through subcontractor Booz Allen Hamilton as a senior analyst, and during his time with the organization, he collected top-secret documents regarding NSA’s surveillance practices with the intention of disclosing them to the public. He then went to Hong Kong and disclosed those documents to the Guardian journalists. Soon after, newspapers began printing those documents detailing the widespread surveillance activities of the NSA through programs such as PRISM. It can be said that the people affected by this case include Snowden himself, the US/British government, NSA/ GCHQ, and all people in the world especially American citizens.

Privacy has endured throughout human history as the pillar upon which our authentic nature rests. Yet, in an age darkened by the looming shadow of terrorism, another force threatens to dominate the skyline and obscure the light of liberty behind promises of safety and security: government surveillance. As an employee of the NSA, Edward Snowden broke his vow of secrecy to inform the public of our government’s furtive surveillance acts, but does this render him traitorous? To answer this, we must first ask ourselves, traitorous to whom? When the very institution established to protect our fundamental liberties intrudes on our privacy from behind a veil of secrecy, should such informed individuals resign from judicious autonomy and

In early 2013 a man by the name of Edward Joseph Snowden began leaking classified National Security Agency (NSA) documents to media outlets, which in turn ended up in public ears. These documents, mainly involving intelligence Snowden acquired while working as an NSA contractor, are mostly related to global surveillance programs run by the NSA. This has raised multiple ethical issues ranging from national security, information privacy and the ethics behind whistleblowing in general. The reach and impact of these leaks have gone global and have put in question the very government that protects us as well as the extent of the public’s rights on privacy. Various foreign