Matt Ceaglio
Mrs. Biggs
Government
February 18, 2015

Patriot or Traitor?

The United States offers us citizens with great amounts of freedoms. Every person United States citizen who lives in this country looks forward to their rights that they have been given. Don’t get me wrong, we U.S citizens are not literally free, we have many restrictions along with limitations especially involving the freedom of press and speech.
A man by the name of Edward Snowden was accused of leaking information to our government, giving them the accessibility to see what we are doing on our phones, with our internet, and other social media websites. This has brought up many speculations weather this is harmful to the citizens of the United States or if it is actually protecting us. With this being said would this be considered a crime or the use of one of his freedoms?
Many people get the freedom of speech mixed up with the ideas of threating someone physically and socially. In Snowden’s defense he is being considered of committing a crime that involves him violating secret information that he was trained to withhold. On NBC News he stated that he is a very patriotic man, who was also a trained spy. His explanation made me see that he is a person who cares about the public’s interest, he showed that buy having the opportunity to express that thought his freedom of press. Yes he did illegally steal confidential information but should he really be getting in trouble for something the government has been doing longer than him?
The government is here to protect all us American citizen’s form the dangers surrounding our country. Along with protecting us from the surrounding dangers they protect our freedoms we have as citizens. In Snowmen’s case this proves that we all deserve the right to know what the government is really doing, especially when it comes to invading our own