Next month “Snowden” will be released in theaters which will dive into the life of Edward Snowden and focus on the decisions he made. In today’s world, many have debated whether he is a traitor or hero. I believe he is a hero. Many say that he illegally broke an oath to the United States swearing he would protect classified information, and that he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Edward Snowden was a former National Security Agency employee, who discovered that that secret organization was doing illegal things, so Snowden escaped to Hong Kong, where he released documents that revealed the NSA was eavesdropping on American phone calls and reading our emails. While in China, the U.S. government became furious over the leak and attempted to catch Snowden. Snowden fled to Russia where he is being protected by the Russian government.

In reality, Edward Snowden’s leak has made America safer. Americans were elected on the promise of transparency. President Obama claimed he would be the most transparent president ever, we saw how that turned out. Edward Snowden could have accepted what was happening, but instead, he said enough and risked personal safety exposing the government’s secret spying on all American citizens. Edward Snowden woke America up to the discussion of privacy. He recognized that the ease which this program can be abused is absolutely startling.

Now, all of this leaves out the question of whether what he did was actually right. I think it was. I think what was going on is a classic example of the veil of secrecy around the intelligence community being used to control a dangerous and disturbing growth of surveillance and the invasion of privacy. From what I can tell, he didn’t expose anything that compromised existing operations or put lives at risk, This program was secret to avoid embarrassment, rather than to protect the country.

Snowden’s revelations now force us to ask ourselves: Do we feel comfortable giving our government this kind of incredible power? The elected representatives who lied to us with promises of transparency are the same leaders who will demand that this young man be imprisoned. They are backed into a corner, and must defend this short-sighted, despicable program by denouncing him for its exposure. Don’t fall for it. Edward Snowden is a hero.