This is not going to play well with many of my friends. But here goes: Edward Snowden is not a hero, despite how desperately he wants you to think he is.
It's easy to see how he might've been mistaken for one. After all, he single-handedly blew the lid off the government's PRISM program to spy on all our phone calls and internet communications.
Except that he didn't.
The not so clandestine anymore PRISM surveillance program has been operating since at least 2007 with the passage of the Protect America Act under George Bush. What Edward Snowden brought to light was the scope of the operation. But, contrary to his story, he didn't stumble onto it once he had the job at NSA. His motivation wasn't pure. His aim wasn't true.
Snowden at minimum is a vulgar opportunist. He intentionally set out to get his job and top-level clearance at the NSA specifically so he could steal - and steal is the correct word - the top-secret, classified information, which by the way is a federal offense. He also stole very specific information, most of it not dealing with our phone calls being monitored, but information that would be particularly useful to foreign governments. There was nothing random in his approach. It was a systematic search of the data. Opportunist may be the nicer name for him.
Not long ago I wrote a post that talked about the balancing act between the public's right to know and the governments need for secrecy in order to do the job we ask it to do. I'm really at a loss as to why it's so shocking to some that our government would do the things Snowden suggests. The only thing I can say is have you read the papers lately?
This is the world we live in. And it has been for a long time now.
If Snowden was in fact a patriotic whistleblower, he could've done many things differently. He could have collected the information then brought it to any members of Congress not on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or Senate Intelligence Committee (both of which have known about the program, its capabilities and its targets since the beginning) for investigation. Instead what he chose to do was flee to first China then Russia, guaranteeing that they now have a treasure trove of information regarding our surveillance of their countries. Foreign surveillance that does not impact American liberties. Snowden has said that they have not seen any of the stolen data, but that simply doesn't stand up to reason. It's the only chip he has to play.
I don't know if that makes him a traitor. At the very least it makes him a coward.
Am I comfortable with the degree of latitude the NSA has? Of course not. It definitely needs to be investigated and changes need to be made in the program. But seriously, when the Norwegian government starts talking about nominating Snowden for a Nobel Prize, something is terribly wrong.
Only one person knows what Snowden's true motivations were. And despite everything he's saying, he's not talking.
