Essay On Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden, the famous “whistleblower”, shocked the world with his revelations about the NSA’s database and the programs which allow the organization to access personal information not only of citizens of other nations, but also of citizens of the U.S. The most shocking revelation of all was not the existence of these programs, but the fact that the Obama administration allowed those programs to exist in direct violation of every U.S. citizen’s right to privacy.

Edward Snowden is an American computer specialist, former CIA and NSA employee who leaked classified documents of global surveillance devices to the media. He was born in North Carolina where his mother worked in the federal court and his father as a coast guard officer. Snowden dropped out of school around the age of fifteen and throughout the five years leading up to his twenties remained mainly unemployed and attended few community colleges. At one point in these five years Snowden decided to become part of the army and worked at the U.S. military base in Japan. He was enlisted for four months and was then discharged. His noble values were present even then, as he was eager to fight in the Iraq war claiming that he wanted to stop people being oppressed (Ackerman, S., 2013).

After the army, Snowden worked for less than a year as a security specialist at the University of Maryland. Nevertheless, the short work experience definitely helped him in his future career. In 2006, Snowden joined the CIA in which he continued working with computers as a systems administrator. Snowden’s work with the CIA led him to Geneva where he had to maintain computer network security. Three years of hard work with the CIA evidently did not please Snowden because he decided to resign in ...

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...on U.S. has access to and how this goes against the civil liberties of the people. Programs like PRISM, MAINWAY, MUSCULAR, Tempora, Boundless Informant and XKeyscore go against the Bill of Right and the US Constitution which clearly states in the fourth amendment that people have the right not to be searched without a proper warrant or valid reasons. The intelligence agencies state that they are doing this to protect U.S. citizens from further terrorist attacks, and even though that may be true, they are also granting access to private information to many people who most likely use it for themselves. It is an unacceptable government behavior since the government was created in order to ensure that the citizens are well treated and that their voice is heard. The agencies have crossed the line, they are going against the civil liberties and they need to be stopped.