Essays on Edward Snowden

The article entitled as ‘Edward Snowden is No Hero’, by Jeffrey Toobin, addresses the issue related to the unauthorized access to the individual’s personal details to the government organization. The author has discussed the concerns of Edward Snowden about the prevalence of access to the personal information of a large amount of population without the adequate judgment about the use of the information by the organization. The concerns of the author are considered as a whistle-blower issue that can enlighten and address the wellbeing of the society by indicating the prevalence of an unethical practical. Moreover, the author’ ...

Is Edward Snowden a Traitor or a Hero?

In this research paper, we would like to talk about the controversy that chases the society on every corner of the 21st century and how our beloved Social Media can become a reason of the risk. Also, the main topic of our research is a life story of one of the most controversial personalities alive nowadays. He is a true superhero. The authorities hate him, simple people rely on him. The man who was not afraid to disclose the confidential data of the US government in order to protect the people of the whole wide world. One may say ...

Abstract

It is well-known fact that people in the US are watched, listened and even recorded against their notice and surely, will. It is also known, that all these undemocratic actions are performed in the name of security. The United States of America is not always related to an advanced technology, high-quality of education and excellent art venues, and Hollywood, sadly, the term “police state” often pop-ups and is being closely affiliated with the America. George J Bush introduced and implemented Patriotic act shortly after September terrorist attacks (2001), however, Barack Obama kept his legacy and Edward Snowdens’ famous leaks ...

In the system of practical philosophy, ethics occupies a special place. It specifies the ethics and inspires a well-known formula of the ancient philosopher Protagoras that man is the measure of all things, justifying the idea of man as the highest value and self-worth, the sense of life and how to achieve happiness. Ethics calls to treat a man as the aim and never treat man merely as a means. Ethics is a philosophy of morals, values, and ethos. The concept of morality is often limited to the level of elementary culture of communication, so the meaning and the ...

Government Survaillance is unconstitutional and should not be conducted. It deprives citizens their right of liberty. Peolpe’s privacy should not be sacrificed for the sake of security. Security concerns have often been used to justify a breach of citizens’ privacy. Law enforcement groups have created different measures such as the use of surveillance cameras including in many public places to monitor the activities of unsuspecting citizens. In the surveillance process, the agencies involved use high-tech machines. These devices are controlled from a private area and are mostly invisible to the public (Norris, 2010). The tools are made in ...

The giant technology company, Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were involved in a fight that gathered attention from all over the world. The standoff regards the breaking of an encryption of the terrorist responsible for the San Bernardino attack. The government claimed that unlocking the phone was important in their investigation of the family and the terrorist group he may have been involved in. Apple declined the request to create a backdoor for the encryption since it would be a violation of privacy. However, the government would consistently insist that it would use the backdoor tool only ...

In the last century, the Right to Privacy in America and most countries globally has evolved significantly. According to Dorff, Supreme Court Judge Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren wrote an article that gave a warning the country had no laws that took into consideration the privacy of the regular citizens who did not have much to hide and went on with their lives (para 3). A case in a New York Court in the year 1902 ruled that no law prevented any company from using pictures of individuals without permission or paying them. Giving evidence that the public was ...

The question of conformity is a complex one. For cultures endorsing individualism, non-conformity is promoted as independence and innovation. For cultures endorsing collectivism, conformity is sanctified. This difference in approaching conformity is highlighted in handling dissent. More specifically, in expressing views not abiding by acceptable normative influence, dissenters are handled differently in individualistic and collectivistic cultures. For individualistic cultures (e.g. U.S.), dissenters, or whistleblowers, are differentially endorsed or rejected by boarder community based, primarily, on a given issue. For collectivistic cultures (e.g. Asian), however, dissenters are predominantly "brushed off" as outcasts, if not disrespectful to established conventional norms and ...

TERROR, SECURITY AND INTERNET: ISSUES OF ENCRYPTION AND PRIVACY

Terror, Security and Internet: Issues of Encryption and Privacy Introduction Security is indeed of immense importance to every nation of the world. This is why nations of the world do their best to fight against terrorism. With the advancement of the technology, terror and security issues are made more pronounced over the internet. The internet is obviously the greatest wonder the world has ever known. Its relevance is obvious in every aspect of life, and it has gone a long way in making the twenty-first-century life very easy. However, the security and privacy issues posed by the internet make ...

Since September 11, 2001 and the beginning of the War on Terror, the United States has become heavily focused on combating terrorism, both at home and abroad (Greenwald). However, unfortunately for the American people, combating terror has come to be largely synonymous with collecting intelligence on the American people. Never has this become so apparent as it was after Edward Snowden, who worked for a contractor with the United States government, downloaded 1.5 million files from his employer and turned these files over to the American media. The resulting firestorm changed almost everything. Snowden is now in exile, condemned ...

Since September 11, 2001 and the beginning of the War on Terror, the United States has become heavily focused on combating terrorism, both at home and abroad (Greenwald). However, unfortunately for the American people, combating terror has come to be largely synonymous with collecting intelligence on the American people. Never has this become so apparent as it was after Edward Snowden, who worked for a contractor with the United States government, downloaded 1.5 million files from his employer and turned these files over to the American media. The resulting firestorm changed almost everything. Snowden is now in exile, condemned ...

The paper will focus on examining the tools that are enacted in the United States to help fight against organized crime and terrorism in which diplomacy, criminal law, financial control, military force and intelligences are all critical components that need to work correlated and coordinated. The thesis of this paper is that in every counterterrorism toll beside the advantages there are many disadvantages and controversy present. The important documents accepted in the recent time regarding the counterterrorism will be examined with the main focus on the Patriot Act. The negative and positive sides of the use of wiretapping, metadata, ...

There is a consistency between the need to kill a loved one’s murderer and that of being against capital punishment. Said consistency finds basis in the emotional involvement of the news recipient in the matter at hand. In addition, their ability to think rationally when faced by the circumstances plays a role in the level upon which everyone acts on their emotions. The idea of losing a loved one because of natural causes or an accident is hard for every person to process. However, having a life of one’s loved one taken in the hands of a murderer is even harder, if not ...

Crimes are rampant today and laws have been implicated to prevent crime and impose regulations in a nation. Many laws have been reformed from brutal tortures to a lighter punishment which is imprisoning the law breakers. Even if this is more humane than the previous punishments, prison is still criticized by many. Michel Foucault was one who criticized imprisonment in his book ‘Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison’. He discusses the disciplinary power and its difference from the sovereign power of the state. In his book, he discusses a prison, Panopticon, of Illinois State Penitentiary. His idea was adopted in ...

Nowadays, Edward Snowden is the person, whose activity connected with the leak of top-secret documents about a variety of the classified N.S.A. surveillance programs, who is widely discussed all around the world from ordinary people to high-ranking officials. Being a computer system contractor for the N.S.A., Snowden collected a pile of documents linked with the U.S. surveillance activities towards ordinary Americans (Smith). The whole society was shocked with his revelations, though an overwhelming majority of ordinary citizens approve the act of Snowden, people who are in minority ask themselves: ‘Why Edward Snowden is a hero? (Turley)’ The answer to this question can ...

INTRODUCTION

The history of human civilization is built upon the names, actions, and achievements of people whose contributions have an impact on society. Some of these people and events, be they famous or infamous, become part of the paradigm of the cultures all over the world. In a diverse world, it is not surprising that sometimes society does not always see eye to eye on some of the events that make up history. These actions and impacts may be perceived by some as wrong, while others may support the individual wholeheartedly. That is most certainly the case with Edward Snowden. One ...

NSA Leak

Ethics and Integrity- Loyalty For Edward Snowden, ethics and integrity meant belief what was right while disregarding all the consequences. He belied that it was unethical and wrong for the government to put the public’s rightful decisions in its hands. Snowden could not have done things differently because of his ethical responsibility to the citizens of America, which made him expose various programs of mass surveillance to the citizens who were unaware of the power and capacity of the intelligence companies in the country. From his actions, it reveals him as a responsible and courageous character because he ...

Introduction

The Guardian aired a report on the surveillance programs of the National Security Agency over one year ago. The report based on leaked information from one of the agency’s contractors named Edward Snowden. The national opinions from several interested parties concentrates on simplistic debates evaluating the tradeoff between individual privacy and national security. However, it is an important time for the government and other stakeholders to begin weighing the benefits and costs associated with the surveillance more carefully. In spite of the strong defense by intelligence officials in favor of the NSA programs, the officials fail to table any credible ...

Democracy is, indeed, killing America as a democracy does not necessarily provide liberty or any other sort of freedom. It only provides control for a group of people that are elite in contrast to the general population and rather than elections or other electoral platforms are held to fulfil government selections for the people, my opinion is that such platforms are held to select government goals instead and these goals, like any other, hold interests of the elite, not the general public. My opinion is that the liberty is needed for democracy, but democracy is never needed for liberty. Democracy ...

[Title of Institution] Derby, M. (2014, July 3). Robust June Hiring Moves Forward Likely Fed Rate Hike, J.P. Morgan Says . Retrieved July 4, 2014, from The Wall Street Journal Website: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/07/03/robust-june-hiring-moves-forward-likely-fed-rate-hike-j-p-morgan-says/?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories Summarize the article: The article spoke about the strong employment rate that seems to favor the second half of 2014 in the US. This was something that was not expected by the Feds. Thus, they have projected interest rate to be closer to zero to compensate for the declining economy and help somehow raise expenditure by encouraging consumers to borrow from the bank. However, in the wake ...

Introduction

The National Security Agency (NSA) is the largest intelligence agency of USA that gathers information to detect any potential threat to USA. Recently in 2013, it created a lot of buzz when Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, revealed to the media about the clandestine surveillance programs of the NSA (NCPA 2014). According to the documents leaked by Snowden, the NSA spies on over a billion of people worldwide by intercepting their calls. Not only that, the NSA has access to the phone records of all the American citizens for the purpose of mass surveillance. It was also revealed that PRISM, the ...

On February 19th, 2014 Facebook announced the acquisition of WhatsApp, which resulted in heated debates regarding privacy of over 500 million WhatsApp users (Statista). However, this is only the most glaring example, confirming the trend: applications for instant messaging are gaining immense popularity not only among users, but also among investors. Although the acquisition of WhatsApp can be seen as a successful purchase of millions of new users, it clearly shows the problems of Facebook in gaining a new audience. Facebook is continually losing popularity among the younger generation that feels uncomfortable seeing too many adults using Facebook and monitoring their ...

Community

The California insurance marketplace has experienced a couple of events this year, in terms of the member registration and signing up for insurance covers. California has signed up more Asian-Americans and Asian immigrants than Latinos. The major method that these Asian communities are using to sign up for the Covered California insurance policy is through Certified Insurance agents rather than community groups. Fourteen percent of the eligible population in California consists of individuals from the Asian descent. Thirteen Percent of those signed up with Covered California is comprised of Asian individuals (Aliferis, 2014). The news value evident in this ...

Introduction

Public safety is a significant part of every society life. To be happy, people need to feel safe. Moreover, safety s one of the stages in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. On the contrary, every individual has rights. I some cases, public safety and individual rights conflict with each other. This essay is aimed at researching the issue of relations between public safety and individual rights. The essay will be divided into four parts. In the first part, I will research the issue of statutory authorities and responsibilities of government officials, security personnel, and private citizens. The second part ...

Edward Snowden was one of the Central Intelligence Agency agent and National Security Agency contractor who leaked almost two thousand top secret documents to the renowned news agencies namely ‘The Washington Post’ and ‘The Guardian’. The documents were mainly about NSA mass surveillance programs like Tempora, PRISM and XKeyscore. Some call Snowden a hero while others call him traitor or whistleblower. However, Snowden states that he only aimed to let Americans know what fair and unfair practices were adopted by the government behind them. During 2012, Edward Snowden was working for NSA as a system administrator/ infrastructural analyst, meaning that ...

An excerpt from the main book Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon, 1988) indicates a recognition of the functions of the mass media to communicate messages and assist familiarize the populace with values and beliefs that will help integrate them into the society at large. This role, as pointed out in this excerpt, is not possible without ‘systemic propaganda’. Media is controlled monopolistically and censored for being politically incorrect whenever their reports are not in sync with the positions held by the elite, who are strategically positioned to decide how the society operates. In an interview with various interviewers in 1992, Noah ...

The story of Edward Joseph Snowden who was born on June 21, 1983, began as soon as he broke American and international law and presented many classified documents that were simply stolen from secure databases. His career as a computer specialist and former NASA contractor developed successfully. Until it was some certain moment, when Snowden delivered about 200,000 documents to press. Day by day, and week by week, they were published in Guardian, claiming some day that only 1% of the overall amount of documents was published. That gave many opponents and proponents to expect many more documents, as ...

The issue of national security is a very critical and sensitive issue in the U.S., because of past terrorist attacks. The government has a duty to protect its people and hence it puts in place measures that can prevent future attacks. The NSA ”Information Assurance (AI)” is tasked with the responsibility of executing measures that prevent enemies of the U.S. from gaining access to sensitive information or classified security information (NSA). The “signals intelligence (SIGINT)” collects, analyses, processes, and dispatches foreign information signals for purposes of intelligence, counterintelligence, and support of military operations (NSA). The NSA’s is crucial because timely ...

Edward Snowden, a high school dropout who later studied computers, was a subcontractor from Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corporation in National Security Agency (NSA). In May 2013 he disclosed the mass surveillance to the media that involved revealing the operational details of NSA, and the procedure by which NSA collected personal information of the American and foreign citizens. The documents that he got from NSA contained vast information on the NSA’s domestic surveillance practices, including spying on millions of American citizens under the umbrella of programs such as PRISM (Biography Channel website). Kevin Mitnick, the hacker, currently turned consultant termed ...

In today’s world, information travels from one source to the other in no time. This maybe not only accredited to the advanced technology that is incessantly progressing, but it may also be caused by great minds. The best example that has currently strangled the government and the international media is the case of Edward Snowden who is the person behind NSA leaks. The National Security Agency (NSA) is USA’s official cryptology intelligence organization which was founded in 1952 with the aim of safeguarding the integrity of the national communication system along with looking into the matters ...