Week 4 EOC: Eric Snowden

The Edward Snowden controversy is on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days. Whether some hail him as a patriotic citizen who cares for the American people or whether he is a traitor to his country and should be hanged, someone has an opinion. I personally believe, and this is just MY HUMBLE OPINION, that Snowden did us (the American people) more of a disservice than helped us.

Yes, the government has unprecedented access to our personal lives. Everything that we do from the phone calls we make to the emails we right, they have access to. There are many many Americans who are outraged at the invasion of privacy they see as unconstitutional and are calling for reform in Washington. However popular this stance, I would like to take a different one. I want the government to keep track of what Americans say and do (of course, not in a 1984 “Big Brother oppression” kind of way). I fear as an American, what the consequences could be if the government does not keep track of what people are talking about. CNN recently wrote an article detailing the response of the NSA in defense of the program in question, XKeyscore: “The training materials claim XKeyscore assisted in capturing 300 terrorists by 2008.” (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/07/31/tech/web/snowden-leak-xkeyscore/). This might or might not be true. We may never know. However, the sheer thought of our own citizens conspiring to hurt us in another terrorist attack is enough for me to say ok, listen in on us. I would rather give up some of my personal privacy to ensure 9/11 does not happen again.

I believe we, as Americans who love and serve our country, need to take a step back and focus on national security instead of personal liberties. As the Examiner wrote, Americans are concerned about the issue of how secure this personal information is if people like Snowden has access to the information. “Tens of thousands of us have access to national secrets? How has something like this happened? Why is it necessary for so many individuals to have knowledge of our nation’s security secrets? One might go as far as to say that it’s shocking more information isn’t released more often when there are so many individuals who have access to information” (http://www.examiner.com/article/the-nsa-s-edward-snowden-controversy-where-the-nation-goes-from-here). This does address the issue of our information being put in the wrong hands. This could possibly give our nation’s enemies valuable information on what we do.

There are other countries that are tied in with the controversy as well. Recently, the Bolivian president was denied access to a flying zone because of suspicions Snowden might be on the flight and seeking asylum in Bolivia. The Huffington Post reports that, “Latin American leaders were outraged by the incident, calling it a violation of national sovereignty and a slap in the face for a region that has suffered through humiliations by Europe and several U.S.-backed military coups” (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/05/spain-snowden-bolivia_n_3549346.html). The president’s staff assured the US Snowden was not on the plane, but expressed outrage over America’s allies restriction to airspace in their country to this flight. The implications are far outreaching just the American people’s rights to privacy. Diplomatic relationships hang in the balance because of this one man and the “Pandora’s box” he has opened.