Snowden the Scapegoat

The lay man's cyber crime espionage

Edward Snowden, a freedom fighter in his own right, shattered the misconceived public view years ago. A man who sacrificed everything to stand by what he believed in has been painted as a public villain, a pesky nuisance to support a fabricated narrative of the great nation. 

Snowden, a former NSA contractor, made it his personal mission to show the world how the US citizens privacy was being breached by their very own government. His courageous decision revealed the true colours of the National Security Agency; how they were tapping into cloud providers to harness sensitive and personal information without the consent of their own citizens. The land of the free faced massive backlash after the Guardian and the Washington Post published hoards of top secret documents, obtained from the NSA by Snowden. A freedom fighter in his own right Snowden stated  "I'm willing to sacrifice [my former life] because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building,"

The United States government retaliated by prosecuting Snowden for “theft of government property”. However snowden garnered public support with over a hundred thousand signatories  requesting President Obama to pardon him. The damage was done and a man who worked for the greater good was forced to go into hiding so as to avoid being incarcerated by those who violated the trust of the people they claim they serve.

“Snowden caused tremendous damage to national security, and the vast majority of the documents he stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests — they instead pertain to military, defense and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries,” was the defense stated, clearly averting the problem-the spying upon citizens by their own government. When this story broke it send the entire world into pandemonium, and the world is still facing its impacts, specifically the Snowden effect.

The Snowden effect is the increase in public concern regarding information security and privacy, resulting from the Snowden disclosure.

A study published in 2013, concluded that by the end of 2016 the cloud computing industry could potentially lose over thirty five billion dollars, because the American populations simply was not  comfortable using their services for fear that the government could access personal information.  American agencies like google, Cisco and AT&T lost a large chunk of international business for the mistakes of others. The effect even leaked its way into consumer goods with many speculating that the apple Ios 8 update which encrypts all data within it being directly linked to Snowden. 

Due to cyber espionage by the government on its own citizens, the mental health and peace of many was adversely affected. Tapping into private information for the ‘greater good’ can not justified and is a blatant violation of the trust placed by citizens in the government. Furthermore US officials have accused Snowden of threatening america's sovereignty and putting vital programs at risk by the horrifying crimes of making the american people aware that they are being spied on. American intelligence officials have pointed fingers at Snowden for their inability to predict Russia’s ‘invasion of Crimia’. Not only a blatant lie that pins all the blame on Snowden, a convenient scapegoat, it also bolsters the faulty argument that Snowden has done ‘irreparable damage’ to the United States. 

The Snowden effect will manifest in ways at the grassroot level in ways unimaginable and undocumentable. He revealed to the world the hypocrisy of the US government and how, at the end of the day, the citizens are the ones who will receive the backlash. Snowden now recieves continued asylum within Russia, where he may remain till 2020. 

DISEC

The Russian Times 

( Editorial )