No Place At Hide : Edward Snowden, The Nsa, And The U.s. Surveillance State

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.

Greenwald does an exceptional job of diving into the meat and potatoes of the issue, and gets right at its core with an essential question we need to ask ourselves in our growing digital world: “Why does our privacy matter?” In his TED Talk: Why Privacy Matters Greenwald explains how the Internet, which has been hailed for the liberation it brought is now being used as a zone of mass discriminant surveillance (Greenwald, 2014). It seems as though whenever the topic is brought up most ignorant people immediately assume that if the government is watching, it is okay as long as you don’t have anything to hide. With this train of thought comes the idea that there are clear lines between “good” people and “bad” people in this world, and its essentially okay for a computer to determine whether or not someone is good or bad based on a collection of phone records, Google searches and associates on social media. The group of those saying that there is no harm done in the breaching of ones privacy are those who have accepted that they are in no way shape or form a threat to our government in any case. To me, that is something that is simply unacceptable in a functioning democracy. If people are so willing to give up every aspect of their daily lives to the government, it becomes easier to track the exact schedules and routines of certain individuals and on a grand scale, the impending results can be more than scary. Greenwald explains that there has been many studies held that prove that when humans know they are being watched, their behavior dramatically changes compared to if they think they are alone. After someone realizes they are being observed they quickly start conforming to their surroundings because they’ve become imprisoned in their own minds for fear of

Edward Snowden is a whistleblower from the 21st century. Snowden was a man who had outstanding IT skills and eventually landed a job at the NSA. He gained access to numerous files that showed the crimes the NSA was committing against its own people and against other countries as well. They were spying on people’s privacy and claimed that it was for the national security that would benefit all people. Snowden said that he could not let this

Snowden outing the government for spying on citizens of the US. In regards to Benkler’s statement Snowden felt at the time that our unalienable rights were being violated and wasn’t complacent with letting the government get away with violating the Constitution, more

On June 6, 2013, The Guardian published a story about the National Security Agency's (NSA) secret Internet surveillance program, PRISM (Greenwald and MacAskill 2013). The story was based on documents leaked by one of the most successful whistle-blowers in American history, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents that Snowden has released up to this time have shown the NSA to be heavily engaged in the collection of personal Internet activity, bulk collection of telephone "metadata," and other forms of surveillance that have brought U.S. intelligence practices into question.

On June 6, 2013 the details of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance activities where given by Edward Snowden to the public; raising concerns of Americans about their privacy. Edward Snowden, a former employee of the NSA, gave the alarming details of surveillance programs in his interview on how the NSA accesses our emails, calls, internet activity, and anything else that is related to technology. In this system of surveillance the NSA can gather data from companies and tap the cables that are vital for moving around information from technological devices, they may also use their relationships with technology companies to get emails or information straight from U.S. servers. (Cawley, Kiss, Boyd, Ball) Nevertheless, the claim is

Lately, in the United States, the controversial topic of privacy has been rekindled by several occurrences, including the recent NSA surveillance scandal. When government actions are questioned, the

There is precedent for Snowden’s charges, as the court that supervises and manages the NSA spying decided that the agency’s domestic pursuit violated the Fourth Amendment’s constraint against arbitrary searches and seizures “on at least one occasion” (Kelley, 2013). The documents have also been validated assertions made by other whistleblowers, and increase genuine questions about the justice and honesty of what looks to be extensive lawless surveillance with dishonorable oversight. Georgetown law professor Laura K. Donohue wrote in the Washington Post, “As a constitutional matter, the Supreme Court has long held that, where an individual has a reasonable expectation of privacy, search and seizure may occur only once the government has obtained

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.

Additionally, Greenwald’s usage of qualitative data provides an insight into the problem of surveillance. For example, Greenwald uses descriptive statements about intelligence and surveillance based on observations, interviews or evaluations. For instance, Greenwald states, “those state authorities have been assisted in their assault on privacy by a

Edward Snowden was a man who worked for the NSA and exposed all of the information that the NSA was accessing from U.S. citizens and those people around the world. Through his actions Snowden did break the law, “He has been charged with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence” (BBC News). Even though Snowden knew he would be charged for his actions, he still wanted to do the right thing and expose to the people what the NSA was doing. Snowden was looking at the information that was being collected and realized it was not necessary to keep Americans safe. Instead, collecting this information was abruptly digging into their lives and going against their rights as human beings. When this information was exposed, the citizens wanted the government and the NSA to ultimately change what exactly they were accessing and how they were accessing it. This event that Snowden

In George Orwell’s 1984, Big Brother uses surveillance to spy on everything from people’s everyday actions to thoughts in their mind’s privacy. The government controls much of the citizens, and this book has left a horrifying image to its readers for the future of government surveillance. As much as it sounds extreme, this could be the near future of Americans if surveillance programs continue to grow. Due to the many findings of Edward Snowden on the flaws of surveillance programs, changes must be made to the NSA Domestic Surveillance Programs.

Greenwald, G. (2015). No place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the surveillance state.

Similarly Glenn Greenwald’s feature article (2013), of Edward Snowden in ‘Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSW surveillance revelations’, reveals

The leaking of documents by Edward Snowden beginning in June 2013 that revealed the surveillance operations of the National Security Agency, or NSA, drew international attention to the question of what governments can do in the name of protection and what crosses the line into unauthorized spying on citizens. It also drew many comparisons to George Orwell’s dystopian classic Nineteen Eighty-Four. After careful analysis of the novel it becomes clear that the NSA’s actions bear some similarity to the Big Brother of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but there are some crucial differences that prevent the United States from becoming the totalitarian society that Orwell warned against. Even though the mass surveillance that the NSA performs is more encompassing than what the Party was capable of,