Snowden : Friend or Foe?

Due to some recent topics in one of my classes at school, I decided to watch Oliver Stone’s film “Snowden” in an attempt to gain some insight into the event and it the pop culture world. In the interest of being honest, I found the film to be slow moving and incredibly boring while by simply watching “Citizenfour” trailer I was infinitely more interested and impressed. Regardless, to talk about the missteps of the movies, it was interesting to see the perspective on Edward Snowden. His story really conflicts with the idea knowledge is power. Although I agree with this, it is hard to find this agreeable for his case. Snowden was obviously incredibly smart and did a lot with a relatively small amount of his time.

I think his “whistleblowing” came from a place of fear but ultimately with the desire to give hope. He himself, in the movie, is characterized as a man who loves his country. His revelation, was in his eyes, to be a wake-up call for the American people as it many ways it was for him. He became very disillusioned with the government as he saw how far their reach is. However, for as smart as he is, I wish he would have presented a solution. I think a lot of what Snowden did was instill fear into the country that they are being watched and be that as it may, how does it stop and how do we change it?

I think Edward Snowden did not publish this media anonymously for not only the reason that he believed he would get caught but also that he wanted to be a celebrity. He has won numerous awards and is now a world-wide name. However, on the basis of the law, he broke an oath against the government. It is up to each person to decide for themselves if his ends justified the means.

Overall, fear is an extremely easy thing to find in today’s world and today’s media. What is more important is how do we find hope? Not ignorance, or blind confidence, but true hope in our government and our country.  I think there is a realization that we must agree to that if we want other people’s information hacked for the “good”, then ours has to be too and that is a price to pay. If this is not something that we can agree to then, we as a society, have to redefine security.