Edward Joseph Snowden and the National Security Agency (NSA) - Assignment Example

The amount of disclosure availed by Snowden has been termed as immeasurable. And has been in terms of files and email accounts of many key individuals. Moreover, the areas covered the range from uninformed surveillance, security details, and what the NSA terms as very sensitive for the operation of the security affairs of the state. Snowden’s actions instigated debates over government’s secrecy, the extent the government can go when it comes to surveillance and the rights of the public to the privacy of information (ONeill, 2013).

It was clear that the government was snooping on civilians and would tap servers of major Internet companies for emails and documents without the public’s consent (Dickson, 2013). This would leave the public perplexed especially this being a government it had trusted for long and was aware of the laws and what the constitution deems as unalienable with the people, that is their right to privacy. The matter had some moral implications in general. Edward Snowden revealed a dozen of things that the government was doing behind our back.

Taking our information without our involvement and in a secret way was a violation of rights considered inseparable from the people and deemed as so by the constitution (ONeill, 2013). The data collection is unconstitutional and happens to be an infringement of the right to privacy (Cohn, 2014). Every democratic society considers privacy as a human right that is fundamental to the liberty of the people. The government has no right to commit arbitrary interference with privacy, as that would constitute a constitutional attack.

It insults people dignity and autonomy. The government has termed such encroachment on privacy as modest yet it felt the need to perform it undercover, an element that suggests that there could be more to hide (Dickson, 2013). Snooping calls with no intention to listen to the conversations would be