Assignment task:
During his brief period of employment in NSA's signal intelligence ("SIGINT") station in Hawaii, NSA contractor Edward Snowden quietly and surreptitiously downloaded massive amounts of classified data documenting the agency's data collection and analysis efforts and findings. He then fled with the stolen data, first to Hong Kong, then to mainland China, and eventually sought political asylum within the Russian Federation in order to avoid capture and arrest by the FBI. He released portions of this information to the Guardian and other news media, charging that the secretive U.S. intelligence agency was engaging in massive cyber espionage, data collection, and surveillance activities throughout the world, including extensive surveillance of American citizens. These revelations and charges stimulated international outrage and concern.
Edward Snowden unquestionably violated law and agency regulations and stole highly classified data in order to bring these revelations to the attention of the wider public. His justification for doing so was that he was said to have been engaged in "whistle-blowing." "Whistle-blowing" is a form of civil disobedience in an organizational setting that generally involves violating laws and regulations to which one has previously given assent (through the voluntary swearing oaths, the making of promises, and the signing of contracts). More than anything else, "whistle-blowing" constitutes the height of disloyalty to one's own immediate group. The harm done by the whistle-blowing itself must, therefore, prove to be proportionately less than the good achieved.
Drawing on the assigned readings, post a thread to Discussion Forum/Topic #2 addressing the following questions. Was Snowden engaged in legitimate "whistle-blowing," seeking to inform and protect the American public against government misconduct intended to infringe on their individual liberty and privacy, as he and his supporters maintain? Or was his an act of treason (as angry critics and detractors responded) in the midst of a desperate, ongoing, proactive, and possibly new kind of "preemptive" war of national self-defense?