Essay Edward Snowden: Traitor or Whistleblower

Edward Snowden. This is a name that will be in the history books for ages. He will be branded a traitor or a whistleblower depending on where you look. Many Americans feel that Edward Snowden is a traitor who sold the United States secrets aiming to harm the nation. Others believe that he was simply a citizen of the United States who exercised his right to expose the government for their unconstitutional actions. It is important to not only know the two sides to the argument of friend or foe, but to also know the facts as well. My goal in this paper is to present the facts without bias and to adequately portray the two sides of the argument. To give the full picture of Edward Snowden I must start before his role in theshow more content

Others believe that he is a hero shedding light onto the secrets of the government and should be pardoned of all his charges. The arguments against Snowden are that he accepted a position of trust in his relation to the government (Stone 1). The job Snowden accepted had the condition that he was not to share the secrets he was working with (Stone 2). Edward Snowden did not have to accept the job if he did not want to agree to the conditions. The Supreme Court decided in the case of Snepp v. United States that the government can constitutionally require that employees agree to keep information relating to their classified activities private (Stone 3). Since the job Snowden had required that level of discretion then he broke an agreement with the company he worked for, and the government. The argument against Snowden is that not only did he break his agreement but that no one individual can decide what should and should not be shared with the citizens under the government (Stone 4). Many believe that Snowden was arrogant to think that he should decide what to do with the information he leaked. Geoffrey Stone from the Huffington Post believes that Snowden should have taken that information to a responsible member of Congress rather than take it upon himself to leak the information to the world (Stone 5). Those who agree with Geoffrey Stone would brand Snowden a criminal. The issue

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Essay Edward Snowden: Traitor or Whistleblower