Edward Snowden: Villain or Hero? “You can't have 100% security and then also have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience. Society had to make choices” said President Obama. It has become a given in society that it is on the government’s agenda to procure its nation’s safety in exchange of the privacy or freedom of the people. Edward Snowden, a paladin of social justice, has now come to light with outstanding facts as for what specifically it is that the National Security Agency (NSA) is able and willing to do for the country’s sake. Snowden, a 29-year-old NSA ex-employee, worked from Hawaii on his computer support for the recollection of data in bulk from the whole nation . Under the name of Verax, which means truth teller in Latin, he
Assange said “We’ve been involved in very similar legal and diplomatic and geopolitical struggles to preserve the organization and its ability to publish” . Snowden, as a free man, is said to be attempting to fly to either Cuba or Venezuela on his way to Ecuador. Fully trying to evade American prison, WikiLeaks’s legal team along with volunteers is giving him their best advice on the matter . Senator Charles Schumer publicly announced that running was not the way to make a stance and invited him to build his case against the accusations of treason in front of a jury. Hand in hand with the PRISM debate, it has become public that civilians are now exposed to the government’s will. Every bit of information can be tracked and stored, creating a doubt in the population of how much is enough and how much of this is really necessary. According to General Keith B. Alexander in the senate panel discussing the NSA surveillance issues, out of billions of data in-taken, this has prevented dozens of cases of discovery and disruption of terrorist threats . Not a mere percentage of the data is actually useful, this makes people like Edward Snowden, Private Manning, and Thomas Drake doubt the actual usefulness of the abuse these programs of surveillance have become . It is wise to keep in mind the position individuals are in against their government when it comes to matters like these, which are completely unconstitutional even if abiding