Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald and NSA reporting provided an overwhelming benefit to US public

Prior to the disclosures by Greenwald and Poitras, little information existed about the NSA other than official statements. A few samples: BOUNDLESS INFROMANT: A NSA program demonstrating the "NSA counts all the telephone calls and emails collected every day from around the world with mathematical exactude. Snowden had placed these files so prominently not only because they quantified the volume of calls and emails collected and stored by the NSA" literally billions each day" but also because they proved that NSA chief Keith Alexander and other officials had lied to Congress. Repeatedly, NSA officials had claimed that they were incapable of providing specific numbers" exactly the data that BOUNDLESS INFORMANT was constructed to assemble." (1) Prism: A program used to collect the data directly from the world"s largest internet firms including familiar names like Google, Facebook, and Apple. Slides from an NSA PowerPoint presentations for intelligence officers can be found retrieved here (2,3,4) PROJECT BULLRUN: A collaboration between the NSA and its British counterpart "to defeat the most common forms of encryption used to safeguard online transactions"" (5) "EGOTISTICAL GIRAFFE , which targets the Tor browser that is meant to enable anonymity in online browsing; MUSCULAR, a means to invade the private networks of Google and Yahoo!." (6) SIGNIT: The aim to collect, store, and exploit all signals intelligence around the world"this is not targeted at criminals or potential threats by other countries or terrorist but everyone. XKEYSCORE: A program that requires no court approval to access emails, chats, as well as access your computer monitor in real time with as little information as an email or IP address. (7) There are a couple responses people against these releases use: first, who cares; second, we already knew something like this existed; third, this information is harmful to national security or puts the United States and its citizens at risk. One reasonable take is what I would call the George Carlin or Bill Hicks defense which is that politicians, businessmen, and those in power have always been corrupt or in the language of Deadwood characters "no good, downright cocksuckers." Many well-informed people adopt this position and I am sympathetic to this attitude but it does not negate the benefit of the reporting or the information revealed in the disclosures. Another variation of the "who cares" argument says I have nothing to hide. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google CEO Eric Schmidt advocated for this position (8,9). Zuckerberg is so devoted to openness and transparency he bought the four homes adjacent to his to ensure his own privacy. Schmidt, equally consistent "insisted on a policy of not talking to reporters from CNET, the technology news site, after CNET published Eric Schmidt"s personal details" including his salary, campaign donations, and address, all public information obtained via Google" in order to highlight the invasive dangers of his company." (10) Prominent figures and many other people state they do not care that the government or business can peer into every piece of information about them. If this is the case why are powerful factions and influential figures so adamant about protecting their own privacy at all cost? For average people, few people are sincere in their belief. If they are then please provide me with their social media and email passwords, medical records, record your phone calls for for me to listen to, and copies of your hard drive. I have no malicious intent, no criminal record; I just want to know about people that have nothing to hide and are willing to hand it over to government and business. US Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis express a different attitude in 1928 about privacy and fundamentals values of the US constitution: The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man"s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone. Argument two is the position of the government in the initial wake of Snowden revelation but quickly moved to position three as anyone whose examined or looked into the actual documents. The third argument has been the favored position of the government but they have so far failed to provide one single example of how these disclosures have harmed national security or put US citizens at risk. Plus, this misses the point since the reporting provides a clear picture that the motivation of the NSA has less to do with combating terrorism and enemies of the United States but as Greenwald writes in No Place to Hide "great quantities of the [NSA] programs manifestly had nothing to do with national security. The documents left no doubt that the NSA was equally involved in economic espionage, diplomatic spying, and suspicionless surveillance aimed at entire populations." (11) 1. Greenwald, Glenn. No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (Kindle Locations 1607-1610). 2. http://www.theguardian.com... 3. https://firstlook.org... 4. http://www.glenngreenwald.net... 5. Greenwald, Glenn (2014-05-13). No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (Kindle Locations 1629-1631). 6. Ibid. 7. http://www.theguardian.com... 8. Mark Zuckerberg interview with Michael Arrington at TechCrunch in San Francisco, January 9, 2010. 9. Eric Schmidt interview with Maria Bartiromo, CNBC, December 29, 2009. 10. Greenwald, Glenn (2014-05-13). No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (Kindle Locations 2319-2321). 11. Greenwald, Glenn (2014-05-13). No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (Kindle Locations 1632-1634).