Edward Snowden Did More Harm Than Good - Essay Example

On Whether Edward Snowden Did More Harm than Good Table of Contents I. Introduction 3 II. Discussion 5 III. Integration 9 IV. Conclusion 10 I. Introduction This paper weighs in on both the harm and the good that Edward Snowden has caused by releasing classified information on the surveillance programs of the National Security Agency in the United States and its partner agencies in other countries, targeting its civilian populations and which have been justified on grounds that such surveillance is for national security and anti-terrorism purposes. To the extent that such programs have been compromised, one argument goes, and to the extent that such leaks have led to the possible elevation of the threat to the security and peace of the Britain and other populations in the west, then the Snowden leaks have been devastating and have caused a lot of harm (Scruton 2013; Whitehead, Hope and Swinford 2013). On the other hand, there are those who say that the Snowden leaks have done worlds of good. One, the leaks have awakened the American public to the reality of the massive, pervasive and unauthorized intrusions into their privacy by government. Such awareness has in turn caused many Americans to speak out and spark a debate into extent of civil liberties and the right to privacy on the one hand and the need of government to secure its well-being and the safety and peace of the general population through the conscious trespassing of those liberties on the other (Desilver 2014; Newport 2013). On balance, this paper argues that Snowden’s actions have both had done harm and good A nuanced consideration of the arguments from both sides of the debate tell us that the consequences of his actions are complex. The underlying issues of personal freedoms and civil liberties versus government policing and surveillance in pursuit of securing the peace has ever been a source of tension in a rich and never-ending tug and pull dynamic between these opposing forces (Mirkinson 2013; Scherer 2013). On the one hand we have legal experts opining that the surveillance programs and tools used by the NSA and counterpart agencies in other countries are in essence necessary evils in a world where terrorists have access to the same technologies, and where those programs and tools have aided in the suppression and arrest of terrorists and their activities (Omand 2014; Johnson et al. 2014). 9/11 is being highlighted in discussions of how such surveillance programs have averted potential recurrences of such an event moving forward from that catastrophe, in an argument in support of the general view that by compromising such activities to detect and prevent 9/11 events, Snowden has terribly harmed the nation and the world (Borger et al. 2014). On the other hand we have civil liberties groups and ordinary citizens in majority numbers applauding Snowden and viewing his work of divulging his hoard of evidence to the press as heroic. Polls in major parts of the world, excluding the United States, show large majorities in many countries viewing Snowden’s actions and their impacts as generally positive. In Germany for instance, half see Snowden as a hero and more than a third has expressed willingness to hide him in their own abodes from the authorities (Answers Corporation 2015). He is also well-received in Russia, where he has been accepted and granted refuge from persecution by the US, and where Russians see him too as a kind of hero and a positive force in the world (Bamford 2014). As the debate rages, this paper attempts to weigh in on all the arguments and evidence to come up with an assessment of the overall impact, good or bad, Snowden’s actions have had on Britons, people in the west, and the world at large (Quora 2015). II. Discussion It is important to note that Snowden deliberately harvested NSA and related government databases and computer systems for data that he would later use to reveal to mainstream media in order to expose the mass surveillance activities of the NSA, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and related government entities. He did this while working with the latter agencies, and as a contractor working for Booz Allen Hamilton. The NSA surveillance programs had the direct involvement of many foreign governments too, including those in Europe. He would be charged with espionage by America, but he would find his way into the welcoming hands of Russia, who granted him a residency permit to stay anywhere in the country for a period of three years, after an initial year-long asylum. What shocks many is the extent of the surveillance programs as well as the extent and size of the data dragnet perpetrated by the NSA on ordinary Americans in the hundreds of millions. The NSA was able to tap into phone records and social media and personal communications over the Internet, through Facebook, Google and Microsoft, as well as communication platform Skype. The data collected also reached hundreds of billions of pieces of unique information, coming from and collated from countries such as Iran, and even America’s allies in the Middle East and Europe (Cassidy 2013; Johnson et al. 2014). The targeting also has occurred domestically, via the tapping into the private phone and Internet communications of ordinary Americans, whose records are collated and kept by the NSA for indefinite periods of time. All these reflect a massive breach of privacy in a surveillance effort that did not have the blessing of the American public (Perlroth, Larson and Shane 2013; Gellman and Soltani 2013). To start with the good that he caused, naturally his cause has been taken up by civil liberty groups and libertarians of various stripes and persuasions in the west and in many other parts of the world. In the write up on Snowden for his runner-up finish for Time Person of the Year in 2013, for instance, one can see many of the things that have been cited by those who argue that he has done the world a world of good. He did this by revealing what libertarians term as illegal and draconian measures to gather surveillance data about ordinary people, all in the name of national security. The high cause that Snowden took on, in the words of Snowden, involved letting the world know that their freedoms are essentially in danger, and that there is hidden from view a dynamic that is changing the nature of the relationship between ordinary people and their governments. This dynamic relates to the consequences of the massive and pervasive surveillance of their very private and personal communications on the Internet and their phones. That change is about governments, without checks, able to gather information about all citizens with the kind of pervasive eye that impinges on some very basic and legal rights. He differentiates this kind of illegal dragnet into the communications of citizens from legal means to do surveillance that protects civil rights. The impact on the world, on the other hand, shows the essence of the good that his backers have been touting, from his actions. That good has been the transformation of the dialogue and debate about the nature of government surveillance programs on the one hand, and the nature of the violations of the privacy, legal and civil rights of the very citizens that the government says it wants to protect, on the other hand. The leaks, it is said, have opened the eyes of the American public about the way government has deliberately violated legal and civil rights and chiefly privacy rights in order to do its surveillance job, while at the same time also misleading the American public about what they were doing and how they were keeping and using the data that they collect without permission. Having awakened the people in the west moreover, those who argue that Snowden has been a positive force also say that his leaks have opened the floodgates for greater discussions and scrutiny of the policies and actions of the government relating to surveillance and breaches of privacy (Scherer 2013; Cassidy 2013). On the other hand, where libertarians and free thinkers have crowned Snowden as a hero who has done an unalloyed good thing in the world, detractors point to the harm that Snowden has caused not only to government efforts to secure the peace but also to the very citizens that Snowden wanted to alert and to rouse into action. There are many perspectives tied to this alternative vision of Snowden’s actions as doing a world of harm, in contrast to those who claim that he is a hero. Omand for instance was insistent in saying that in acting alone, like a lone wolf who wanted to do good but was not in a position to reflect deeper into the consequences of his actions, Snowden did the very thing that he wanted to avoid, and that was putting the national security of the United States in peril. This is because instead of handing over the documents to parties that have the most vital interests of America at heart, such as the US Congress, Snowden chose to hand over the information to a wider mainstream press that in their individual members may have agendas and positions that are not fully supportive of the interests of the United States nor of the welfare and security of ordinary Americans. Mass media, Omand argues, sometimes also undertakes the role of also misleading the general public about events and issues, and so in this regard one can question whether Snowden was really acting in the interest of America or was plain wrong in the way he chose media over more conventional and legal channels to divulge his information. In defense of the UK’s security practices for instance, he differentiates between what mass media describes as mass surveillance, which is against the law and which the UK government does not undertake, from bulk Internet access, which is legal. In other words, sifting through the nature of the chosen channel and the kind of misinformation that the mass media is also capable of perpetrating, Omand is saying that Snowden is wrong, and that he is wrong in such a way that America’s wider interests in security are compromised. The compromise occurs on many levels, from the way the secret procedures, tools, technologies and processes of data gathering of the NSA and other intelligence agencies are compromised, to the way the intense scrutiny has made it more difficult for the agencies to do their job of catching and arresting the bad guys (Omand 2014). The leaks, as some put it bluntly, have together done a great deal to cripple the legitimate intelligence efforts of such agencies around the world, and certainly those in the United States and its allies. In the same vein as those are crippled, the powers and abilities of the enemies of the west, the terrorists and the pedophiles and the financial criminals, increase (Johnson et al. 2014, pp. 794-797, 804-806). Therefore in this nuanced sense, Omand is saying that Snowden caused more harm than good in acting the way he did towards the information that illegally procured as Omand claims (Omand 2014, pp. 1-5). Other voices add to the weight of arguments that basically posit that Snowden inflicted more harm than good on western interests and the very American population that he so wanted to protect. Some frame the harm that he has done in terms of the way his rash judgments about getting the information in a secretive fashion and then exposing it to the world as naive and dangerous, with consequences that are not yet fully understood, but definitely including some very harmful consequences to Americans when such leaked information reaches the hands of their enemies (Johnson et al. 2014. pp. 796-797). There are arguments too that frame the harmful effects of Snowden’s actions in terms of the damage that his leaks have inflicted on America’s ties with Europe, and with countries such as Germany, whose prime minister’s phone was also made the target of surveillance efforts by the United States (Johnson et al. 2014. pp. 801-802). III. Integration Taking a step back and looking at all of the perspectives on the harm that Snowden’s actions have caused, the most significant relate to the way the leaks have paradoxically resulted in the American public being rendered more vulnerable by the leaks because of the way the leaks crippled the efforts of the intelligence agencies, and because of the way the leaks potentially exposes Americans to having their private data stolen by enemy states such as Iran and used as ammunition in undermining America’s public peace and security (Johnson et al. 2014; Omand 2014). On the other hand, the gist of the arguments of those who claim that Snowden is a hero who has done a world of good relate to the way his leaks have opened the eyes of the world to the mass surveillance programs and the way those erode privacy and civil rights, and the way the leaks have sparked debate and intense scrutiny relating to the legality and bounds of intelligence practices and the balance between legitimate intelligence work on the one hand and protecting the sacred personal spaces and liberties of ordinary people on the other. The picture that emerges finally is one that is complex and not easily judged in black and white terms, and the final answer as to whether Snowden caused more harm than good seems to lie in the future still, as the debate rages and more insights emerge (Johnson et al. 2014; Cassidy 2013). IV. Conclusion Linking the discussion to the paper’s initial aims, one can say it is difficult to weigh in on the good and harm from Snowden’s actions, with two opposing camps both presenting compelling arguments. Those who say Snowden is a hero point to the gains that the libertarians have made in terms of bringing to the attention of the world the surveillance practices of governments and how those impinge on civil liberties and privacy rights in particular. On the other hand, those who say Snowden did more harm than good point to arguments relating to how the leaks have compromised security and intelligence operations, programs, strategies and information to the world, which the enemies of the west can then use to modify their strategies and activities to elude surveillance, with potentially damaging consequences for the populations of the west. Sifting through the evidence and the arguments is difficult especially in the context of the shifting borders of this latest incarnation of an age-old battle between the forces pushing for greater personal space and liberties and those pushing for caps on such freedoms in the name of securing the peace and of vital national interests (Scherer 2013; Cassidy 2013) References Answers Corporation. (2015). Edward Snowden. Answers.com. [online]. Available at: http://www.answers.com/topic/edward-snowden#Recognition [accessed 4/10/2015]. Bamford, J. (2014). The Most Wanted Man in the World. Wired. [online]. Available at: http://www.wired.com/2014/08/edward-snowden/ [accessed 4/10/2015]. Borger, J. et al. (2014). The Snowden Revelations: Transcript of Q & A. Chatham House- The Royal Institute of International Affairs . Cassidy, J. (2013). Why Snowden is a Hero. The New Yorker. [online]. 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Edward Snowden Might Be Doing More Harm Than Good to our Civil Liberties. Mic.com. [online]. Available at: http://mic.com/articles/50821/edward-snowden-might-be-doing-more-harm-than-good-to-our-civil-liberties [accessed 4/10/2015]. Whitehead, T., Hope, C. and Swinford, S. (2013). Sir David Omand: Snowden leak is most catastrophic loss to British intelligence ever. The Telegraph. [online]. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10371541/Sir-David-Omand-Snowden-leak-is-most-catastrophic-loss-to-British-intelligence-ever.html [accessed 4/10/2015]. Read More