Civil Disobedience
Civil Disobedience
Many people don’t think about civil disobedience, they don’t realize that it is around us at all times. For Thoreau civil disobedience was defying the law and doing what the people thought was right (Thoreau 1). In the world today, defying the law is frowned upon and the people who do break the law are given consequences. In today's society, it is a given that the government’s first priority is to procure its nation’s safety in exchange for the privacy and freedom of its people. Edward Snowden, a courageous American citizen, is now the main topic when it comes to the terms “privacy”, “secret information”, and “NSA information leakage”. Snowden, now ex-employee of NSA, worked in an office in Hawaii as a systems administrator through Booz Allen Hamilton (Jones 1). Although Snowden did not finish high school, he did spread a recollection of data in bulk that put the entire nation at risk (Francis 1). But did Snowden do this to risk the nation's safety or did he do this because he felt it was in the best interest of the other countries the United States was spying on?
In the eyes of the opposing side, Snowden is a whistleblower. A whistleblower is someone who purposely does something illegal (Swire 1). Many people have brought the point up that domestic surveillance is one of the most useful ways to protect the United States from terrorist attacks, and with ISIS being a huge terrorist group the information leaked could help them attack us (“Domestic Surveillance”). Although, terrorist attacks were not Snowden’s purpose for leaking the information, it is easy to understand where many of these people are coming from. Also the violation of privacy that has breached the regulated program could easily cost many their lives (“Domestic Surveillance). While the government is busy trying to fix the problem Snowden caused, millions of people's security is gone. Which makes it very easy for any one person to find anything out about another person’s private information, especially if that private information is the government’s (Jones 2). Enemy countries now have that fragile information about our beautiful country and they could use it to their advantage.
Just by looking at the opposing