Last week in class, we discussed the Pentagon Papers. In 1971, a man named Daniel Ellsberg gave information to The New York Times containing details on the United States' role in Indochina and thousands of pages of sensitive government documents. If you'd like to take a peak, a portion of the original Pentagon Papers can be found here.
Ellsberg is certainly not the only person to blow the whistle. Other well-known examples include Bradley Manning and Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame (Check out this trailer for the new WikiLeaks movie The Fifth Estate....Benedict Cumberbatch for the win) and more recently, Edward Snowden. A former CIA and NSA employee, Snowden released classified information on government surveillance programs. As a result, he's fled the country and has been both condemned as a traitor and hailed as a hero. So, what should we think of people like Ellsberg, Manning, Assange and Snowden?
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Image retrieved from http://robrogers.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/061313_Traitor_or_Patriot.jpg |
"Snowden and Manning -- whether traitors or heroes or neither -- should rightly be regarded as the first arrivals of the wave still to come."
Digital security is fighting a losing battle and these leaks are only the tip of the iceberg. That's the important issue at hand.
*For extra credit this week, I commented on Alex Clark's blog post.
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