Hero or traitor? What do you think?
Aside from Facebook and the like, over the past few decades of technological evolution, the internet has become so vast that people can use it with ease to steal, spy, terrorize and do almost anything else the mind can conjure up. (Well, the technologically savvy can anyway - and they do.)
This fact has the tendency to make a government as protective as the USA nervous and rightly so. Access to private government information can be a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands, but as we look to the supposedly "freest country in the world" which has written a constitution on freedom of the press and the right to speak your mind, you have to wonder how far a government should be able to go before they are breaking every oath and reason to govern there is.
During a recent scandal National Security Agency "leaker" Edward Snowden revealed to the public critical, top-secret information about the NSA's (National Security Agency) surveillance programs, including the fact that major U.S. phone and Internet companies were implicit in providing massive amounts of data about Americans to the NSA. It has also since been revealed that the Canadian government is performing similar surveillance.
Apparently, the 30 year old high-school drop-out was able to attain the information while holding a three month job at Booz Allen Hamilton, the recipient of billions in secret government contracts.
Snowden is now in hiding (reportedly in Russia) and faces life in prison if returned to the US but the whole situation leaves both Canadians and Americans to ponder - is Snowden in fact a hero or a traitor?
What Snowden did not only shows the government's interest in the activities of its own citizens, but that someone with very limited security access can easily obtain the documents to incriminate it.
So I say HERO. Someone who puts other people's freedoms and rights above his own life can, by all means, be considered by definition a hero. How many of you would like to live in a society where the government has so much unchecked power? Not I for one.
