Digital Media and Social Justice weekly BlogPost #1

              I chose to blog about this Video depicting Edward Snowden being interviewed about his decisions, intentions, and motives. The interviewer goes on to asks Snowden what his initial intentions were when getting into the government, Snowden replies that he had no intention of becoming someone who would leak information. Snowden Also goes on to say that after joining the government he payed attention to the information about Iraq in the media with contrast to the actual information only to realize that the two were very different from each other. The government had interfered with the information that was broadcast through the media in an attempt to "create a certain mindset in the global consciousness." He believed to be a victim of this because he believed in the nobility of the US's intentions of freeing the oppressed people of Iraq only to find out that there was little nobility actually based on the US's involvement. After the interviewer changes the subject; Snowden starts to talk about how much the government is actually involved in the internet as a whole. Everything you do on the internet is monitored, processed, analyzed even down to the littlest "happy birthday" wish you post on someones wall. He talks about how big internet based companies you have learned to depend on, support and trust are really not as confidential with your information as you may have thought. Companies such as Google, Verizon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook give direct backdoor access to your information, searches, interests, and habits. So essentially you can't use the internet without all information being relayed to the NSA. The rest of the video talks about other accounts of the government using abusing their power to wrongfully eavesdrop on not only the american public but a number of international groups, communities, and companies.
             Personally I don't view Edward Snowden as a "Traitor" because in essence he worked to keep the general population correctly informed, which was supposed to be the government's job in the first place. Now don't get me wrong, I believe what Snowden did was highly Illegal and he should't have leaked some of the that compromise our national security. So to reiterate I don't view Snowden as a hero because he's not, he chose a lesser of two evils to benefit the american public's knowledge and freedom.

Source: http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2013/jul/08/edward-snowden-video-interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_qdnyEqCPk