Edward Snowden As A Traitor

Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA’s massive program in collecting metadata on millions of Americans. Is he a hero, traitor, or something in between? The American government argues that he is a traitor that has caused catastrophic damage that will result in lethal consciences to the American public and troops. Others describe him as a heroic martyr that sacrificed his way of life to expose an unbelievable breach of privacy. We will examine both sides and attempt to draw conclusions on this well-known event by searching for the details that to this day are still quite a mystery to most.
Our first step to uncover some of the mystery is to ask a though question, did our government breach the law? This approach inevitably leads to additional questions like the following, if they did break U.S. law, how many did they break and how many times? What is the extent or degree of the breach? Did they try and conceal their actions or did they simply make a mistake in which they didn’t realize a breach existed? In other words, were they breaking the law unwittingly? Answering these questions should greatly help our examination in trying to reasonable determine if Mr. Snowden leaked NSA files with criminal intent or out of sincere concern for the public.
The first question is difficult to answer. Did …show more content…
Snowden take the best route to expose the NSA invasion of privacy and disregard for Americans rights? It could be argued no, that proper channels should have been used instead of exposing the program to the world. Would Snowden have lived long enough to legally expose the NSA program? That’s a legitimate concern. If the NSA or CIA feels threatened to the point that they can claim that national security is at sever risk, one would question what limits they would go to in attempting to eliminate this threat. It’s difficult to make the claim that Snowden committed treason knowing many of the facts resulting to this charge, but it is clear that he did violate U.S.