At some point, all Americans have heard of the (in)famous whistleblower Edward Snowden. He had something to do with the government and leaking information.
To be honest, this was all I knew before tonight.
Knowing that my peers and I would be given a once in a lifetime opportunity to talk to a US fugitive of the law (and an American hero to many), I couldn't pass it up.
In a nutshell, Snowden told the audience in Gray Chapel on a large projector screen about his life, how he discovered all of the secrets the US government was holding back from us, and how his whistleblowing uncovered the lies.
For a short summary of his professional life, Snowden didn't graduate from high school, but did do a couple of short years in college. He entered the Army Reserves to do special-forces training. Eventually, Snowden obtained a information-technology job at the CIA. Afterwards he worked a private contractor for Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton.
Snowden was describing how he believed in the government when he first started working with the government. He also stated that he realized afterwards that he was naive.
It was when he was granted clearance to all of the documents and information of the NSA that he started to realize the kind of information he was seeing.
"This unsettled me," Snowden said.
One of the documents Snowden discovered was a heat map of world that shows the amount of the spying the US is doing in each country. The disturbing part, from Snowden's perspective, was that the US was spying more on Americans than they were the Russians.
Snowden also described how the NSA keeps a data repository that collects metadata. Some examples of the type of metadata that the NSA collected is the location of where a message was sent from, the device that sent it, the time the message was sent, etc.
"They don't need a warrant to track this kind of information," said Snowden.
Snowden copied numerous documents. One day, he quit his job, and flew to Hong Kong, China. Where he gave all of the documents to Pulitzer Prize winning newspapers like The Guardian. He gave the information to them and let them decide what the public should know.
Since then, Snowden has been in exile. His passport was evoked by the US government, leaving Snowden without a country. He has video chatted many times to the US, such as the talk at Ohio Wesleyan.
Snowden stated that we must be careful with the public officials we trust.
In the Q & A section, Snowden urged the audience to not be passive when it comes to the fight for basic rights. To try to make a change in the world.
Whether you view Snowden as a patriot or a traitor, he changed the way we think about data and privacy.
