#6 // Forty years of government deceit and dishonesty revealed

We debated, err battled, the Snowden case for a bit in class. I've said it before, but I'm a pot stirrer by nature so naturally I loved sitting in and listening (although I didn't have much to say because I was not very well informed on the case). 

If you were like me, and have little understanding of the case - watch these videos: 

(kind of silly, but helps get your barrings) 

To get a little more heated reading about this guy, I just googled, “Edward Snowden, good or bad?”  and found this article that I thoroughly loved. 

http://entertainment.time.com/2013/06/11/hero-or-bad-boyfriend-edward-snowden-and-the-personalization-of-public-debate/

Really. I just want to post the whole article on this blog. Because it’s awesome.

They made some new-fangled points on how the publics are debating this scandal. Instead of looking at the actual problem of NSA Surveillance Techniques being leaked, journalists are trying to pin whether Snowden is a “Villain or Hero.” Why should anyone not personally connected with Snowden give a rats about how good a person he is? Author, James Poneowozikm, said, “As critics of the leak begin attacking the messenger and defenders elevate said messenger as a way of counterattacking. A major public issue becomes another celebrity story, like a Hollywood divorce. The person becomes a proxy for the cause; to admit any flaws (on the one hand) or nobility (on the other) is to give comfort to the enemy, and so he becomes sainted or demonized, depending whose blog you’re reading.” Nobody puts their support for or against the information released in the leakage, but instead they are putting their voices behind this character, Edward Snowden. I know that as journalists, we should be worried about the journalist and whether his actions fall under SPJ’s Code of Ethics. But isn’t there also a part of us that should just be worried about the issue? That if Edward Snowden had the money of Bill Gates or the looks at Tom Cruise it still wouldn’t matter and the problem at hand would remain the same? What I found when researching is that as they seek to please the audience, they write about Snowden. And Snowden alone… why he ran away to Hong Kong & Russia, why what he did was wrong, why he is a total hottie, why he was justified and why he is a bad boyfriend. But in the end, these arguments are stand-ins for the actual issues; they’re not the issues themselves. Shouldn’t we really be thinking, oh shit… Enemy organizations now have a lead on our tactics, or oh well I guess we should decide how much control on privacy the public has. Ya know?  Which is why I think the whole this team/that team thing is so dumb! So silly! You need to have a stance on each issue… not just pick a side and stick with their attitudes. Come’on people! So while it may address the larger privacy-vs.-security issue to argue whether Snowden is a hero, it also says something about people’s inability to frame political issues now through anything other than tribal affiliation.

My side? Snowden was wrong. And he knew it. He is really thought he was doing the public good, he wouldn’t have immediately run into hiding. But we shouldn’t be discussing that. It happened and the privacy info is out – so let’s talk about that. (Maybe I'll even write a part II post) 

But in the end, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say.

And we probably won't know the true story for many years, if at all.