Think about the prominent list of whistle blowers in history. I am immediately draw to the Watergate scandal.

The most powerful man in the United States, the President, breaks the law in one of the worst possible ways and then lies. Nixon not only shamed himself, but he also shamed his country. Would the American public ever known that Nixon was a liar without Deep Throat recently released to the public as Bob Woodward. In addition Daniel Ellsberg the one who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the public is another infamous whistleblower involved with Watergate. The question is, are these whistleblowers heroes or villains. I want to take a look at Edward Snowden the NSA whistleblower and decide if what he did increased the security of our country or not. Lets start from the beginning Snowden dropped out of high school and pursued his GED at a local community college. After dropping out of the local community college Snowden decided he would join the military. He later dropped that venture after four months due to a broken leg he says. After he dropped out of the military Snowden again pursued his GED at a community college. After receiving his GED he landed a security job with the NSA and somehow got a job in information technology with the NSA. This is where I want to stop first, how did the NSA let a man without a good college education work for the NSA. Did the NSA hurt themselves by placing a high school dropout in charge of some portion of our national security. I always thought that working in a government national security position was a prestigious position. I think that he fell through the cracks and he got that job as an unqualified individual and now the NSA probably wishes they had dotted their is and crossed their ts more carefully. Continuing with the timeline leading up to the whistle blowing he continued to work for the NSA until he got a job working for a private contractor that worked with the NSA. Snowden procured a job with Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton and eventually secured a position within the company where he would be making around 200,000 dollars a year when he decided to blow the whistle and leave the country. He had been noticing documents that he called disturbing and decided that he would begin collecting them. Reports have been released that he unethically obtained passwords from coworkers to get the information that he would eventually copy and release to the world. On June 5th the first leak was released and I dont think Snowden was prepared for what would occur in the next few months. The plight of the whistleblower is one that he can tell very well. First off he had to leave the country and go into hiding because he being hunted because he committed a sever form of treason. Federal prosecutors charged Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence with an unauthorized person. The last two charges fall under the Espionage Act. He had to go to Russia because that is the only place he could gain amnesty, but only after waiting about a month in an airport to hear if he would be granted a year of amnesty. On the following day, June 6th , the Guardian and the Washington Times released Snowden's leaked information on PRISM, an NSA program that allows realtime information collection, in this case, solely information on American citizens. A

flood of information followed, and the American people, the international community and the U.S. government have since been scrambling to either hear more about it or have Snowden arrested.(biography.com) You can dive further into the documents, but Snowden asked for clemency. (Clemency basically is if the government would drop charges against him or reduce them) Snowden was harshly rejected and without his request granted his ability to be in the public spotlight was severely diminished. He would not be able to travel to different countries to tell his story, or talk to other governments that where involved in the controversy. I ask do you think this was harsh by the USA government or not? I think this depends if you think what Snowden did was beneficial or not. If you think Snowden did the right thing then you probably believe that the USA should grant him clemency and allow him back into the country. If you think that Snowden is the next coming of Benedict Arnold then you may not believe that the USA was harsh enough. As I think about the leaks, and not the content, but just the leaks I wonder how incompetent the USA government had to be to allow a man to accrue all of this information and not have been found out. You would think that if the NSA was as prying as they seem to be that they would have been paying extra careful attention to people who had easy access to all of this classified information. I am not going to go into detail into the actual documents because I would be writing for another year, but I will do is offer up the opinion of the President and his opinion on the actions. Given the fact of an open investigation, Im not going to dwell on Mr. Snowdens actions or motivations, Obama said during a speech at the Justice Department. Our nations defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nations secrets. If any individual who objects to government policy can take it in their own hands to publicly disclose classified information, then we will not be able to keep our people safe, or conduct foreign policy. I think that these are strong words by our president; basically he is saying that he does not agree at all with the actions of Snowden and that in Snowdens attempt to show this huge scandal he has put lives at risk. OUR LIVES at risk and this is why I take issue to what Mr. Edward Snowden has done. I have said this before and I will say it again now, I do not care if the government reads my emails or texts and listens to my voicemails. You wont hear much, but my grandma calling to check up on me. If the NSA wants to know that then good for them I am sure they are a lot smarter for it. What I dont take issue with is them listening in on conversations of Americans that are looking to commit a crime or commit mass murder. If we travel back to 9/11 the government knew that there where terrorists in the country, but where unable to find out what their plans where. With the ability to tap phones and monitor emails the government can take the next step to assuring our security. My accounting professor said something that resonated with me the other day, If the person that you value most would not be content with your action then you probably should not do it. My point is who cares what the NSA knows, think of the NSA as your grandparents, they are just looking out for your best interests. The NSA is not going to come arrest you for Jwalking or texting during class, but they may be able to stop the next great attack. As the President said, if there are no secrets then we cannot operate in the world we live in today. Remember people, America is a

premiere country in the world and has groups of people trying to harm us. We can not be nice, we have to be harsh and crack down on those who may be in our country, but still want to hurt us. Just remember big brother government is always watching. Lets finish with this quote The agency cannot legally collect much of this data on Americans. But data does not have borders.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/barack-obama-edward-snowden-nsa-leaks102316.html#ixzz2uaBewmt4

http://america.aljazeera.com/topics/topic/organization/nsa.html http://www.biography.com/people/edward-snowden-21262897?page=1 http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/2/11/what-the-nsaleaksprovedaboutsurveillance.html