What if a friend told everyone the code to your safe where you keep all of your money?

Most people would feel betrayed. Recently, a situation similar to this happened except that it was on a much larger scale. Edward Snowden was a technical contractor for the NSA and the CIA. He recently released personal information about millions of people in order to prove that the US Government is recording the communications of its citizens. This traitor violated the trust the CIA, NSA, and his bosses had in him to keep this information a secret. In addition, he also put the safety of the U.S. citizens in danger.

Snowden was supposed to keep secrets as a technical contractor at the CIA and the NSA. As an employee he was obligated to listen to his bosses even if he disagreed. This time, he did not! “By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things (trust, cooperation, respect for common procedures)," said David Brooks of the New York Times. Snowden broke his promise as well as his contract. Although the information that Snowden leaked was important and probably should at some point be known to Americans, he still betrayed the very organizations that are trying to protect the U.S.

By betraying the organizations that are trying to protect Americans, Snowden put all of us in danger. “The exposure of the PRISM program under which the NSA monitors foreign terrorists on the Internet, as well as the leak of a top-secret court order requiring Verizon to share calling data with the government, are incredibly damaging to national security. These leaks give terrorists information they did not have about our collection activities,” columnist Marc Theissen of the Washington Post said. What this means is that Edward Snowden spread vital information about the U.S. government. Foreign terrorists now know they can be monitored in the U.S. So the terrorists will now most likely strategize a way to avoid being heard and watched.. Since Snowden leaked this information, the job of the U.S. Government to protect its citizens has gotten harder.

To wrap it all up Edward Snowden is a traitor. He has violated the trust the CIA, NSA, and his bosses had in him to keep this information a secret. This means he has put us citizens in danger. Some might think that his spreading of this information is heroic. However, now that this information has been released there is a greater possibility that it could fall into the wrong hands and families would be put in danger of terrorist attacks. Now he is on the run and the U.S. government must catch him before he and the information he leaked are captured by terrorists and America’s enemies.