Cybersecurity Ethics by Manjikian Mary

Author:Manjikian, Mary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017-10-24T16:00:00+00:00

Box 5.1 Going deeper: who is Edward Snowden?

In December 2012, American citizen Edward Snowden made news headlines when he released a large number of classified government documents to the journalist Glenn Greenwald, who worked for the British newspaper, The Guardian. Snowden, who is facing charges in the United States for violating the Espionage Act, is estimated to have released between 50,000 and 200,000 US documents, as well as large number of Australian and British documents. Snowden received access to these documents while working as a Central Intelligence Agency contractor, and the documents are predominantly from the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Prior to Snowden’s release of documents, American citizens and the international community were unaware of the amount of surveillance which the NSA was engaged in, both in the United States and abroad. Citizens were also unaware of the amount of information which the NSA was collecting and saving. As a result of the Snowden revelations, the US Congress held hearings on the question of surveillance and many citizens have become more conscious of the ways in which their privacy may be at risk.

Snowden has been called both a traitor and a hero. He currently resides in Russia where he was granted political asylum, and is only 33 years old. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes in the areas of human rights and freedom of the press and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Some see him as a whistleblower – calling attention to corrupt and dangerous practices at his place of work. However, others believe that he has endangered US national security by calling attention not just to US intelligence collection practices, but also to procedures and methodologies used by these agencies. In doing so, he has arguably made it harder for the United States to defend itself against terrorists, since they quickly abandoned certain practices once these details became known.

Others have questioned security procedures at the intelligence agencies themselves. Snowden was largely self-taught as a computer programmer, did not have a high school diploma and was given unprecedented access to US government computers as he worked on a data migration project. Ironically, Snowden achieved Certified Ethical Hacker qualifications, and may have used these skills in his later unauthorized and illegal exploits.

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