By Mary Best
Opinion and Advisory Editor
The National Security Agency (NSA) is just one giant spider weaving the World Wide Web at this point.
While that hopefully doesn’t come as a surprise, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s June reveal of top-secret government documents outlining NSA surveillance programs divided the American public to assume one of two extremes.
Either Snowden’s a traitor and should be charged with treason, or he’s an American hero.
Even though the end of Snowden’s American freedom is hardly a headline anymore, a propaganda assignment for my advertising copywriting class regarding the NSA’s surveillance programs got me thinking — why would he throw his lifestyle away to reveal this information?
I used to think he was crazy for doing so, and even though I’m not sure he is a hero, he most definitely isn’t a traitor.
In June, FBI Director Robert Mueller defended the NSA’s surveillance before Congress, saying if the government had these tools before 9/11 that they have now, they might have been able to derail the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to a June 13 CBS News story.
Around the same time, President Obama said there had been at least 50 terrorist threats averted because of this surveillance, according to an Oct. 23 Huffington Post story.
That’s great and all, but where’s the hard evidence? Dodging questions and spouting numbers isn’t nearly enough proof to justify this
kind of invasion of privacy.
I might be radical for demanding such classified government information. But if I am being investigated by the government just in case there might be a possibility that I could at some point threaten national security, I think I, as well as the rest of the American people, deserve to know how this service is actually helping.
Personally, I don’t see how grossly expanding the search area for potential terrorist threats or criminals is going to help the government find any of them. Even though there are computers scanning through most of that data, how is adding more information to look through going to separate the innocent people from the bad eggs?
I understand that nothing I put on the Internet is private. But that doesn’t mean that everything I do is open for investigation and should be recorded. Think of all the electronic space and time being wasted on people who are doing nothing wrong. As I see it, there are still plenty of tragic events filling news broadcasts that were fueled by terrorism of some sort, whether it be against one person or a country as a whole.
The NSA claims to have thwarted some threats, but unless they have Jack Bauer-ed their way into preventing an attack or can decrease the number of violent terrorist events happening in the present day, they need to get their priorities fixed before it gets worse or, God forbid, they self-destruct from the inside out. (Live Free or Die Hard, anyone?)
This editorial probably secured me a spot on a NSA watch list. Although I am proud to be among the other “criminals” who are probably only guilty of googling Snowden, it’s a shame to be punished for “freedom” of the press.
bestmk10@bonaventure.edu
