Earlier this week, I got in an argument with my dad. My dad is an army veteran and contractor working for the Air Force on defense systems. Our conversation began with a mention of the recent statement by Apple that it would not create a backdoor for the FBI to get information from the phone of a criminal. While I argued about why I supported this decision, I mentioned Edward Snowden and how I was glad that he revealed the spying programs that our government has had in place on its own citizens. My dad was shocked that I was a fan of Snowden. Having taken the same oath that Snowden did, my father was outraged that Snowden broke his oath and compromised National Security for personal gain. Since this conversation, I have been reading a lot about Snowden and trying to decide what I think of his actions and what I would have done in the same situation.
First of all, it does not seem like Snowden sold any of the secrets that he stole. Given the dangers of releasing the documents, this makes me think that Snowden was motivated by helping the American people, not for personal gain. However, Snowden also told the Chinese government about US hacks of their systems, which I am unclear on how revealing this information to the Chinese helped the American people.
That being said, I am still grateful for a lot of what Snowden did. From interviews with him, it seems like he was trying to do the right thing. Some of the secrets he revealed are terrible abuses of power and trust by our government and by exposing them, he has helped to reform them. Unfortunately, Snowden admits that he could not read all of the secrets that he took and he willingly gave them to several public news sources that he trusted to release only safe information. This aspect of Snowden’s whistleblowing is a very dangerous one. Without going through the information himself, Snowden could very likely have released valuable government information that helps protect American’s security. I think it is irresponsible to hand over secrets to the public that might very well be legal and deserving of being kept secret. It is a slippery slope for me to think that Snowden choosing to reveal some secrets was okay because I (and the vast majority of the public) view them as unconstitutional while at the same time I condemn him for releasing the other secrets without evaluating him. Who is to say that his evaluations are right? It is hard to think that one man’s opinion is valuable enough to warrant revealing such highly protected information. But as of now, I can’t see anyway around this. I think Snowden was right to reveal the spying but wrong to hand over secrets that he did not think were wrong.
I think that had I been in Snowden’s position, I would hope that I would have let the reporters choose to reveal the secrets that they deemed should be public knowledge out of a small subset of what I stole. I would only give them secrets that I thought were unconstitutional and should be public knowledge. If the reporters agreed, the public would hear about it. If either party thought something should not be revealed, then it would never be in order to minimize the potential harm that could be done. Still, even in this situation it is dangerous to allow two parties to “play God.” But when there are some injustices as huge as the ones the NSA was committing, I don’t think it would be ethical to stand by and do nothing.
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