Vanda Szatzker

Edward Snowden – Hero or traitor?

Nowadays the internet is used by more than 2 billion people all around the world and every one of them would like to keep their personal data safe. This is the reason of the huge uproar which followed Edward Snowden’s act, namely the leaking of thousands of classified documents which he gained during his work as a National Security Agency (NSA) contractor for Dell. This is an important area because the documents he revealed raise privacy and security issues. The purpose of this essay is to examine the steps which led to the leaking of the documents and to give examples to the surveillance programs which were used by the U.S. government.

Snowden worked in several places before he acquired the classified documents. In the beginning of his career, in 2006, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at the age of 23. He was considered to be a “computer wizard” which meant that he could take part in the work of the top computer team at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley. After he had a disagreement, he resigned in 2009. In the same year he started to work for Dell as a contractor. During this four year period he had the chance to meet with the chief technology officer and the chief information officer of the CIA. That was the time when Snowden started to download those documents which he later gave to journalists. According to him, the “breaking point” happened when he saw the Director of National Intelligence lying to the Congress under oath. Then he decided to resign again, and started to work for Booz Allen now with the intention of collecting documents about the National Security Agency’s data-collecting programs and later leaking them.

It was in 2012 when Snowden first anonymously approached a journalist, Glenn Greenwald and told him that he had “sensitive documents”. A year later, in 2013 he gave a part of the documents to Greenwald and Laura Poitras, an American documentary film director and producer. Later in May, Snowden gave an interview electronically to Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum, who is an independent computer security researcher and hacker. This interview was published in a German magazine called Der Spiegel. After the German newspaper, The Guardian was the first to publish an article based on the leaked documents. The story started to spread immediately and similar articles were published all around the world. Snowden’s identity remained in secret until June, 2013. Later on, numerous U.S. surveillance programs were revealed, such as PRISM, which provides access to Americans’ Google and Yahoo accounts; Boundless Informant, which is a big data analysis program; and XKeyscore, with the help of which almost any activity on the Internet can be checked. Furthermore, it also came to light that the NSA was collecting email addresses and contact lists, as well as tracking the location of mobile devices. Although these facts caused an uproar, probably the most shocking information was that the U.S. had spied on its allies in Europe and in Asia and on 35 world leaders, such as Angela Merkel, as well.

Shortly before publishing the documents, Snowden left the U.S. and went to Hong Kong, and stayed there for a month. On June 23 he left Hong Kong and flew to Russia. His plan was to continue his journey to Cuba, but he was unable to do that because the U.S. revoked his passport. Although four countries offered him political asylum, namely Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Venezuela, there were no direct flights between these countries and Moscow, so Snowden had to seek for asylum in Russia which he was given. Russian president Vladimir Putin said that Snowden’s presence in Moscow was “like an unwanted Christmas gift”.

Snowden has a questionable reputation in his mother country; he is considered to be a hero or a patriot by some people and a traitor by others, but according to a lawyer, he is safe as long as he stays in Russia.

Although it is not easy to decide whether what Edward Snowden did was right or wrong, because privacy and security are complex issues, it is important to keep in mind the content of the documents which were leaked by him. Everyone should think about the question whether a government has the right to track its own citizens’ online existence and their phone calls in order to protect them by filtering out possible dangers.

Bibliography

Edward Snowden. (n.d.). Retrieved April 10, 2015 from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden#Career

NBC News (2013, June 10). What we know about NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Retrieved from http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/10/18882615-what-we-know-about-nsa-leaker-edward-snowden?lite

Rusbridger, A., MacAskill, E., Healey, A., Sprenger, R. & Khalili, M. (2014, July 17) Edward Snowden: ‘If I end up in chains in Guantanamo I can live with that’ [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/jul/17/edward-snowden-video-interview