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| An example of a decent human being. |
This is a guest post by Tristan Ryan.
Before I begin, I’d like to apologize for my sub-par writing
skills. Although I’m not the worst out there, I don’t do this often, and what you get might be more of a rant or something very rough (perhaps both!) than anything. On top of that, I have my nephew in the same room as me playing with my dogs. I love him to death, but god, he can be distracting.
Anyways, if you’ve been keeping up
with current events recently, you might know about all sorts of things
happening in America and across the globe, from that verdict in the Trayvon Martin case that let another child murderer get away to Edward Snowden and his noble work to put information and power into the hands of the people. Today, instead of racial tensions emerging from the Trayvon Martin case, I’ll
be focusing on our good ol’ pal, Edward.
I’ll give a quick summary for those who haven’t been keeping up with current events recently or just haven’t learned about this yet. Edward Snowden was an intelligence contractor and system admin for the NSA (National Security Agency) who exposed the USA and UK’s spy programs, called PRISM (US) and Tempora (UK) that were (and still are) violating the privacy of not only their citizens, but citizens of other people from other countries. When he leaked this data, a cocktail of people got pissed for a cocktail of reasons. The people and other governments got pissed for being spied on and having their privacy violated, and the governments that were spying got pissed for having their privacy violated (because they honestly seem to care about privacy).
Wait… let’s think about this for a
moment, okay? The US and UK governments, who were violating the privacy of
others, are upset because they had their
privacy violated in return? Because privacy is so sacred?! You feel like you
can violate our privacy all you like, but God forbid that yours get violated
for the benefit of everybody that’s a victim of this illegal treachery! I wish
I could say with honesty that I can’t believe that they’d do this, but this is
something I can believe. This is the kind
of the shady crap that my government would do. God bless the USA.
Snowden lived a comfortable life in
Hawaii with a girlfriend, a good job, and an awesome surname before he told us
about this. He flew to Hong Kong and revealed this treachery of the US and UK goverments on our right to privacy to the world, a noble move
that cost him everything (except his awesome last name; seriously, isn’t it just
dope?). He’s since been stuck in Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow, Russia.
He’s been seeking asylum in a few countries and, according to recent reports,
has had a hard time getting to other countries because of, you guessed it, the good ol' US government.
Snowden is a hero to me. This guy gave up his good life to do the right thing, something which most of us wouldn’t do (let’s face it, we enjoy our normal lives and wouldn’t throw them away in the name of what’s right and good, but this guy did just that). This guy has been through hell for three weeks in an airport and I wish him Godspeed through his journey and struggle.
