Snowden 1705

I watched a movie about Edward Snowden and found it very interesting to say the least. Slate magazine review of the movie was very critical. I think Oliver Stone makes thought provoking movies. The central theme of the movie seemed to me to be is he a traitor or a patriot?

Last night I watched David McCullough, the famous historian and writer and one of his speaking points was that during the American Revolutionary War, only one third of the country wanted the war, one third did not and the final third sat and watched. The war was treason against the king of England. Americans here were mistreated, over taxed and generally abused. A brave few met in Philadelphia, in secrecy, to right a wrong forced upon us by the English monarch. The Americans  were traitors and patriots at the same time. It just depended on how a person looked at the situation.

I remember when the Snowden thing first hit the news, I was sure he was a low-life scumbag and a traitor. I admit I have not read all that has been leaked, but then I doubt anyone else has read it all.

I remember back in the Litton days, we were making back-panels for the NSA computers. They were as big as a coffee table and had many layers in thickness. I wondered what they could be for? It turned out that the NSA was illegally monitoring nearly every phone call in the USA. There are secret federal courts that can issue warrants to spy on certain people for cause, but not the entire country.

Ben Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” In 2001 the congress passed the Patriot Act, which gave the NSA the green light to monitor all phone traffic in the entire country, which violated the fourth amendment to the constitution. The act was supposed to hit the sunset limit in 2011, but it was extended to 2019. Section 215 of the law was revised to force the NSA to obtain a warrant and provide reasonable justification of what they were looking for and why. Apparently the NSA has only followed that on occasion.

Snowden saw what the NSA was doing and what the CIA was doing and what the government was doing and he had to make a decision on what, if anything to do about it.

His decision was not what I would have done! It cost him his generous livelihood, his citizenship and put him in danger for the rest of his life. It was not an easy decision to make. He may have thought it was his patriotic duty, just as the founding fathers did. I do not know for sure what he thought; I just know what he did.

I would not have had the courage to do what he did. Had I been in his place I would like to think I would have quit the job and walked away because I could not continue to do the things he did. But then, while I never shot and killed anyone in Vietnam, I handled a lot of bombs during underway replenishment operations and loaded them into the ship’s magazines. I know where those bombs went and while I didn’t drop them I had a part in the operation. I did not think much about it in those days. I guess I drank the government Kool-Aid and believed what the government told us; but I think a lot about that these days.

I also had a hand in building and shipping those computer back panels the NSA used and probably is still using to spy on everyone, good and bad alike. I thought about leaving Litton when I found out what the panels we made for the NSA enabled them to do, but I had a family to support, so I made the decision to continue to work there. At that point I had a choice and made it, despite my feelings against it.

In summation, I don’t think Snowden’s choice was right, but I have to admire his guts to do it. I give him the benefit of doubt in that I feel he thought it was necessary to do it, unlike me when I continued to do  things I did not think were right for me to do.