When the Edward Snowden story first
broke I was of the opinion that many were. None of his leaks seemed
to reveal anything that we hadn't learned from other leakers in the
last few years. It seemed like Snowden was seeking international fame
at the expense of discrediting the U.S. Government. To be fair, a lot
of the information that was first leaked was information revealed in
the past, perhaps Snowden felt that the public needed to be reminded
of the failure of those leaks to affect change. Nonetheless, the
leaks increasingly revealed more and more about domestic and overseas
spying programs. After I heard Snowden's interview
with Laura
Poitras and Glenn
Greenwald (Guardian, U.S.) in Hong Kong on June 6, 2013 I started
to change my mind. I have worked in the intelligence community and I
understand that, upon realizing the scope of American misinformation,
Snowden felt he had a duty to reveal. It seems many agree that
journalists and leakers deserve protection, as The Free Flow of
Information Act of 2013 is currently being reviewed in Congress and
grants better protections for those with delicate information to
publish (and leaves the definition of journalist open for
interpretation). While it seems cowardly to run, how else could
Snowden continue this work and avoid the black hole of a treason
trial? Snowden even took care to avoid leaking certain sensitive
information and has not acted like someone trying to bring harm to
the people.
Today many see Snowden's leak as a blow
to the country's protection and security, and that seems to be the
difference in the climate and time between Snowden's leak and the
eventual release of the Pentagon Papers. The public's trust lies
closer to the government today. We have proof that, after 9/11, there
were numerous terrorist attacks prevented. The Pentagon Papers were
released at a time when the people were willing to look at lies from
the government as dangerous for us all. Journalists were more
comfortable and supported in the endeavor to ensure the country was
“in the light” and deserved to choose their leaders with this
knowledge in hand. Today, many citizens don't understand how a
meta-data surveillance program affects them, after all they are not
committing any crimes. Many people feel that they are not losing much
privacy under some of these surveillance programs; but didn't they
deserve to debate that before the programs began?
Some support Snowden because they feel
a wrong is being committed by our government; others because they
feel a wrong is being committed by our telecommunications companies.
Glenn Greenwald, of The Guardian, reported
on June 5, “The National Security Agency is currently collecting
the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of
America's largest telecoms
providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.” Should
Verizon have filed some sort of lawsuit or even exposed the request
to the media? The FISA court threatens the ability of companies to
act in the best interest of their customers and dangles the
unimaginably serious threat of treason as a punishment. This threat
limits the scope of the debate on security and privacy, limiting our
free speech.
But it seems there are even more
unintended consequences when starting secret spying programs,
according to the Guardian on 20
September,
“Many cryptographic systems in use on
the internet, it seems, are not "properly implemented", but
have been weakened by flaws deliberately introduced by the NSA as
part of a decade-long programme to ensure it can read encrypted
traffic.”
and
“...it appears to involve getting
software companies and internet service providers to insert secret
vulnerabilities, or backdoors, into apparently secure systems. This
can be done by introducing deliberate errors into software or
hardware designs, many of which are developed in collaboration with
the NSA; or by recommending the use of security protocols that the
NSA knows to be insecure, in its dual role as cryptographic
standards-setter and codebreaker.”
This means all of our secure and
encrypted Online exchanges are no longer secure. The NSA's secret
search for security has resulted not only in a loss of privacy, but
also security.
For those interested in the repercussions of losing privacy Online, check out the United Nation's
report here.
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