Edward Snowden in His Own Words: Why I Became a Whistle-Blower

Humanosity says…Snowden’s revelations have been described by some as the worst intelligence disaster in US history. For others, his actions were a courageous act designed to warn people from sleepwalking into a surveillance society. In this article, he explains why he became a whistle-blower in his own words….

Here’s a short video where Snowden explains why he revealed so much about the covert intelligence gathering methods that he witnessed.

Here’s a short excerpt from the article. To read the full account please click on the link at the end.

At the age of 22, when I entered the American intelligence community, I didn’t have any politics. Instead, like most young people, I had solid convictions that I refused to accept weren’t truly mine but rather a contradictory cluster of inherited principles. My mind was a mash-up of the values I was raised with and the ideals I encountered online.

Over the course of my career, it became increasingly difficult for me to ask these questions about the technologies I was responsible for and not about my country. And it became increasingly frustrating to me that I was able to repair the former but not the latter. I ended my time in intelligence convinced that my country’s operating system—its government—had decided that it functioned best when broken.

This article was excerpted from Permanent Record, by Edward Snowden.

Sources: www.wired.com, The American Civil Liberties Union, Permanent Record, by Edward Snowden