Civil Disobedience: The Curious Case of Edward Snowden :: Civil Disobedience

More than six months after first sending shockwaves finished the world, Edward Snowden is alive, not imprisoned, and still making daily headlines. A former interior(a) Security Agency contractor, Snowden was responsible for revealing to the American public the public of enormous, secret governmental surveillance programs, tactics that irrefutably border unconstitutionality. He gave up his freedom and ultimately his way of life in revealing how the NSA was harvest and storing global phone records and text messages, the majority sent by routine American citizens. Snowden voluntarily broke the law and publically took credit for his leaks, drum up behind his core belief that mass surveillance undermines the fundamental make up to privacy. He felt obligated to warn his fellow countrymen that their freedom to intercommunicate and to think and to live was potentially creation threatened, and was thus compelled to release the categorize information to which he had access to, regardless of consequences. Believing that he had through with(p) nothing wrong, he maintains that it was absolutely necessary to inform the public that they were being victimized. While he acted alone, Snowden hopes that his actions will encourage a larger stool amongst the populace, especially other technologists, to pressure the government into reconsidering its national security platform. An substantive feature of civil disobedience is nonviolence, a factor that Snowden and King alike endorsed. Both assumed activist roles and looked to bring nationwide attention to their causes, tho in no way did they promote an outbreak of violence, which they felt would enkindle detrimental. However, this did not stop the two from knowingly breaking the law, as each(prenominal) maintained that they possessed the right to defy authority due to the transparent presence of social injustice.