Are we free? Really and truly free?
In light of the movie "Snowden" coming out and all of the information that follows really makes you think about what the government is doing behind our (the citizens') backs. For those of you who don't know, Edward Snowden was a former NSA contractor that leaked information about the NSA secret program in 2013, that collected phone records of tens of millions of Americans. The average person might naively say that, "I'm not doing anything wrong, so why should i care?"
But you should care. You shouldn't just care, you should be furious. You should feel violated just by reading this, because it's not just that they intercept all the information, (i.e. phone calls, text messages, social media post, etc) it's that the NSA and the government continuously denied ever using such software.
It's like a slap in the face to Americans. It's an obvious abuse of power and violation of basic rights. You may not think this is a big deal until you think about all the personal messages and calls that you made to family members and friends, containing sensitive information about your personal life or work life. The NSA is literally collecting information they say is legal under the USA Patriot Act, to take apart and analyze your life and to assess whether or not you are a potential threat, without your consent and little oversight. If you're like me, then this drives you crazy. How could a government entity abuse their power so much and not be held in contempt for this insane overreach of authority?
This question continues to plague the American public and to this day has yet to be directly addressed by the government. Edward Snowden may be a hero to you or maybe he is a rat, as some say. But nonetheless, he has shown the public that we are not as free as you might like to think.
You may think that you aren't being surveilled or "spied" on, but are you sure — really sure that no one is watching when you're at home or work or even on "private" property? I encourage you to read more into this, because as it turns out, you are being watched. Not just watched either, you are being tapped into on calls and your messages are directly being read and stored in files. Maybe you agree with what I said, but if anything you should take away that you can't always trust the governing authority and you should be skeptical of not just decisions that they make, but policies that they make.
Everything and everyone is subject to criticism, especially a government entity such as the NSA. Don't ever think that you are completely free, it's never that simple. If the government blatantly lies about such programs then what else has it lied about? If this is true, why are all the other programs not subject to this much or more scrutiny? Is this ethically right or even morally right? These are the kind of questions that rise when you talk about this topic. If we researched into more programs would we find more ethically gray areas? Are they abusing power in more than these ways? What else have they done without "alerting" the public?
I encourage you to go further than I in this article. Don't be afraid to speak out — the world needs more Edward Snowdens to keep the government accountable to the public and to make sure that the morally right decisions are being made.
