OPINION: Edward Snowden should be allowed to return to United States – The Daily Evergreen

You are constantly being watched.

Its a given in this technologically connected day and age, a reality we treat as an inevitable byproduct of living in the information era, but your information is not private. Not even close.

We joke about being on watchlists, or our FBI agent, as if a specific person is assigned to each of us to keep tabs on our emails, messages and search history.

But thats ridiculous. Obviously, the FBI isnt devoting people 24/7 to watch your online history. Thatd be next to impossible and highly inefficient. Relax, you can breathe a little easier.

Instead, theyre delegating the task to a multi-billion dollar, international, highly sophisticated data collection program that monitors the internet and online traffic of every single American citizen. Its always on, and its always listening.

Feel better? You shouldnt. The program is called PRISM, and its run by the National Security Agency. Weve got a similar program, called ECHELON, running in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., New Zealand and Australia, that does essentially the same thing.

Many countries have some sort of data collection system in place, supposedly to preserve national security. However, the scope of the programs that the U.S. runs every single day is historically unrivaled, making PRISM and ECHELON, without exaggeration, the largest single data collection efforts of all time, processing millions of phone calls, emails and texts per day.

The only reason were aware of all this is because of one person CIA employee Edward Snowden, who was one of the NSAs top analysts in the field of cybersecurity and data mining. In 2013, Snowden fled the country to Hong Kong and leaked a massive amount of information to multiple news sources about the NSAs data collection programs, many of which he had helped build.

Since 2013, Snowden has been in political exile, seeking asylum in Russia. Hes considered by the U.S. government to be a traitor to the nation, wanted on multiple counts of treason, all because he made the choice to stand up and do the right thing. Snowden risked his life and his freedom to hold the government accountable for blatant abuse of power.

I believe he did the right thing, said Charlie Hanacek, president of the WSU Linux Users Group, and senior computer science major. I wish there had been more effective channels of accomplishing what he wanted to do but overall, I believe it was more beneficial than not.

Snowdens release of thousands of classified documents helped alert people to what was truly going on behind the scenes at the NSA. The fact that there was tech surveillance existed was known to an extent in computer and legal circles, given the NSAs long history of wiretapping and surveillance. However, Snowdens information gave the American people the true scope of what was going on.

I think a lot of the tech surveillance was already kind of an open secret, and its good for the public to be aware of, said Kelly Marshall, a third-year political science student.

Awareness of government misdeeds is one thing, but the fact that Snowden has had his passport revoked, his citizenship scrapped and been made a fugitive from his own country is simply abominable. The grounds for prosecution the government has brought against him are based on century-old rules that have no application under the circumstances, especially the counts of treason, based on legislation from before World War I.

Succinctly put, the government has little legal precedent or justification to call for Snowdens arrest, and multiple examples and reasons as to why he should be accepted back into the country as a legal citizen with charges dropped.

Arguments have been made that Snowden should have gone through the proper legal channels to bring suit against the NSA, rather than dumping thousands of documents, but in his particular case, the information was too highly classified, and his job too secretive for an open-court trial to have been effective or allowed.

Im absolutely for making sure you exhaust your other channels of whistleblowing before you go as big as possible with it, Hanacek said, referring to Snowdens method of releasing information to journalists.

Regardless of means or method, Snowden changed the world of large-scale surveillance, information technology and more importantly, our fundamental understanding of how the government keeps tabs on its citizens.

This does not mean, however, that the NSA has reversed its practices, or that its the only player we should be worried about in the information collecting game.

Any kind of change needs to happen from a top-down level, in terms of legislation, Hanacek said, with regards to government data collection. Also, dont work at unethical companies They cant write the code if they dont have the developers.

Snowdens leaks have helped damage the veil of secrecy that hid a significant amount of NSA projects and surveillance, and for that, everyone who communicates via technology should thank him. He played a key role in unlocking the vast vault of unethical government secrets, and he should be praised for it, not condemned.

Its time to honor a national hero and drop charges against Edward Snowden. Its time for him to come home.

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OPINION: Edward Snowden should be allowed to return to United States - The Daily Evergreen