Edward Snowden, the NSA whistle-blower who exposed the seemingly callous and inappropriate handling of sexually explicit photos among employees garnered through illegal government surveillance, appeared in an interview last month in Moscow. Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian and its correspondent Ian MacAskill assures full disclosure of its contents which lasted seven hours.
Snowden puts up a brave front when he affirms that he will accept his fate even if it means jail time in Guantanamo. According to him, allegations of his being a Russian spy is all a lie to tarnish him and that he’d rather take his chances in Russia than go back and face the farce of a trial back in U.S. soil. However, Snowden still wants to be able to defend himself in court. He feels he deserves a fair and objective hearing at least, because it is also for the benefit of “public interest” and that he has valid reasons for his actions.
In his defense, Snowden tries to gain the sympathy of the people, excusing the blatant disrespect of sensitive materials to the young ages of the government agency workers and their lack of maturity in being given assignments wherein they have complete access to any private information and records. But whether because of immaturity, boredom or even stress, these are still acts of perversion!
In the middle of snooping and coming across persons, presumably the more attractive female, in either sexual positions or simple nudity, the material is passed from hand to hand much like an adult magazine. To just imagine the crude remarks directed at the innocent victims of this kind of voyeurism is sickening.
Pointing fingers at technology companies such as cloud storage facilities for not having adequate security measures to protect the public, Snowden also discloses the lack of auditing system on files and records stored at NSA including subsequent actions being done with them. Any Tom, Dick or Harry in these government agencies conducting covert monitoring is privy to someone’s most private moments and most intimate secrets.
So, aside from the more scandalous yet titillating expose of grown men acting like horny teenagers in their jobs as supposedly protectors of the public, the confirmed evidence of Big Brother intrusion on private citizens’ lives is indeed a cause for alarm. This is only one small piece of red flag practices already made public by journalists regarding these mass surveillance leaks.
