After watching the new movie Snowden, about the controversy surrounding Edward Snowden, Steven Mike and I decided to have a cute little discussion. Click below to hear.
I think Snowden made a good decision, wrapped around a bunch of bad decisions. Overall, I definitely agree with his decision to leak certain information to the American public. Privacy is a big issue and we deserved to know about how our data was being collected. However, I'm not entirely sure if Snowden's motivations were one hundred percent pure, and I think some of what he leaked probably should have been kept as government secrets. As civilians, I don't think we should know everything that happens within the government: there would be no safety that way. But there has to be compromise: I also think the government should have a decent level of transparency. Like I discussed with Steven, I definitely suspected some level of public spying from the government before the Snowden debacle, but the leaks still changed the way I view our government. It's a lot different to suspect the worst and actually being proven correct.
However, if I were in Snowden's place, I'm not sure if I would have handled it any differently. Honestly, I'm too afraid of confrontation and making decisions that I might have collected the information and passed it on to someone I worked with that I trusted, and have them make the decision of what to do. I think what Snowden did was very brave, but to some people, like Steven, what he did actually seemed pretty weak.
All in all, if I had to make one decision out of all of this, it would be that whistleblowing is the ethical thing to do. If there is very clearly shady stuff going on, and the public should or deserves to know about it, for their own sake or in order to make a greater change, I think that a person has a right and even a duty to leak that information. That said, it takes a lot of courage to actually sacrifice your personal and professional life for the greater good. There are many tradeoffs. But if silence is the only other option, the clear path to take is to whistlebow.