Coming from someone who was appalled by the Chelsea Manning leaks, it should come as no surprise that I am not an Edward Snowden supporter.\u00a0 Anyone who willingly compromises US national security as Snowden should certainly not be viewed as an American hero (and perhaps could even be labeled an enemy of the state).\u00a0 However, there are important differences between Snowden\u2019s disclosures and Chelsea Manning\u2019s leaks that I believe make Snowden more justified than Manning.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Though he also released far too much data, Snowden showed far more purpose in assembling his leaks than Manning did.\u00a0 Snowden felt strongly that the NSA surveillance program was both immoral and unconstitutional, and especially given his oath to support and defend the Constitution, he believed that the only moral thing to do was to come forward with the information to inform the public.\u00a0 This conviction was only further justified when John Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence at the time, lied to Congress claiming that the NSA does not collect \u201cany type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.\u201d\u00a0 When a concerned individual like Snowden hears a lie like that and has been unsuccessful in his attempts to complain internally about the unconstitutionality of the program, it is easy to see why reporting seems like the only option.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In stark contrast, Manning showed absolutely no discretion and demonstrably less purpose in his leaks.\u00a0She admitted that she was going through a very difficult period mentally while she was leaking secrets in an attempt to justify her actions.\u00a0 Though there was certainly some troubling information in the Manning leaks, it does not seem as if the foremost purpose of her leaks was to combat a US injustice.\u00a0If it were, then she could have simply leaked a few documents like the videos showing military attacks that killed civilian targets.\u00a0 Instead, she indiscriminately leaked an enormous trove of data that put Americans in danger and left authorities struggling to protect them.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the end, though I wish Snowden had done a better job limiting the scope of the documents he released, I am glad that he came forward.\u00a0 I am inherently skeptical of the ability of any government to avoid abusing power, and in today\u2019s age, information is power.\u00a0 Therefore, I do not believe that the government should be able to collect data on millions of Americans without their consent or some sort of warrant.\u00a0 Besides the fact that this is a clear violation of the 4th<\/sup>Amendment, it also places the executive branch of the government one step too close to authoritarianism.\u00a0 As we now know from the Russian election manipulation campaign, a devoted party can do enormous damage when armed with information, so just imagine what the NSA would be capable of with their massive trove of metadata on Americans.\u00a0Note that I am not advocating for surveillance programs to be shut down \u2013 they are an essential piece of our counterterrorism efforts today \u2013 but I just think that the government should have to follow the constitution that was put in place to restrain it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reading06: Snowden Coming from someone who was appalled by the Chelsea Manning leaks, it should come as no surprise that I am not an Edward Snowden supporter.\u00a0 Anyone who willingly compromises US national security as Snowden should certainly not be viewed as an American hero (and perhaps could even be labeled an enemy of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3162,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3162"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/john-mcguinness\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}