Vanity of vanities all is vanity — Ecclesiastes
It is human nature to want to be relevant. To know that to the world we are important. It does not matter who we are or where we live, that is a reality.
By his chosen career path, Edward Snowden demonstrated that he wanted to matter, to make a difference, and he acted on it, as all idealistic young men do. He took action, joining the Army to make a difference and ending up as a CIA technician where he “discovered” that Americans’ rights were being violated through the wide ranging collection of the electronic data we all produce every day.
Mr. Snowden discovered this; he claims it didn’t sit well and it was part of his disillusionment with the Obama administration; and so he made a hard copy of several classified computer files, fled the country and “leaked” information about a program that anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the national communications infrastructure and the nature of online content (once it’s there, it’s there forever) should have known was most likely happening.
Doesn’t anyone else have a suspicious and cynical mind?
Online information, especially content in social media, IS NOT SECURE, NEVER HAS BEEN AND NEVER WILL BE. Why? Because it flows all around us, a la wireless and sat phones. Plain and simply, anything that flows through the air and bounces off satellites is interceptible. Not only that, the electrons that make up all this “data” travel over an infrastructure owned by the US government, including our GPS system. It’s always been this way, and back doors have always existed. Aside from that, social media is just that. Social – and very public.
So, other than private emails, which should be encrypted, but probably aren’t, information posted on public forums, flowing over public hardware, is being scooped up and indexed by the very entity that owns the system, ultimately, and Mr. Snowden is horrified because it violates our rights, so he takes action and incites a firestorm of debate with the words treason, hero, prosecute, and triumph coming from all sides in the political sphere (although, I understand the left is persuading its following to go toward the “treason” side. Curious).
No discussion on whether or not information posted on public websites or flowing through servers owned by someone else is really private, but lots of discussion of a violation of rights, real and imagined.
Well, we Americans, yes, are touchy about our rights, particularly privacy, but how private, exactly, is social media?
Leaving that thought aside, Mr. Snowden, while claiming to look out for the rights of his fellow Americans since that was his stated motive, breached a contract he had with the US government regarding his security clearance in removing files without authorization (that’s called stealing), not just blowing the whistle. He also lied to family and friends about where he was headed when he went to China. I don’t know about the rest of America, but that raises a few red flags in the integrity arena for me.
In addition, there have been reports out of online ezines and social media sites for years about a program that the FBI was pushing to do exactly what PRISM is reported to do. That it really exists, and the FBI or NSA or CIA, whichever, was seeking legal cover should be no great stunner.
So, Mr. Edward Snowden, who felt he had to leave the country to expose the tyranny that the US government is wielding over Americans with a storage program that pinpoints messaging from foreign countries flowing over its own equipment, is now taking credit for “blowing the whistle” on it, even if there may well have been actionable intelligence being tracked which is now in the wind.
If the whole country wasn’t up in arms over the IRS actually targeting AMERICANS and subduing opposition to the current regime during last year’s election, would any of us seriously be calling this guy a hero? Treason may not be quite the right word, but he’s definitely guilty of bad judgement if intelligence operations in progress were disrupted (and maybe cost lives. We may never know the answer to that question).
Forget the national security concerns – at this point the enemy has moved to greener pastures, communications wise – why is a liar and thief being called a hero? Did he really do “the right thing”?
Edward Snowden wanted to make a difference. He has, in a way, as a debate that no one saw coming is now raging on national security vs. privacy rights. For that alone, we will know the name Edward Snowden forever. Having been raised in an America that fosters self worth, importance, esteem and the assurance of privacy where those feelings trump ethics, integrity, and common sense, his glory is assured.
However, at the tender age of 29, he cannot come home. He’ll never work in intelligence or security in or with the US. And employers everywhere will have reason to question his word.
That’s Edward Snowden’s price for being a glory hound. He better be willing to pay it.
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