The question before all Americans, “Is Edward Snowden a whistle blower and a hero or a criminal and a traitor?”

Barbara Starr and Holly Yan, CNN, on June 23, 2013, wrote a blog for The Guardian entitled: Man behind NSA leaks says he did it to safeguard privacy, liberty.

Starr and Yan reported that Snowden acknowledged he had revealed the source of documents outlining a “massive effort” by the U.S. National Security Agency to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of “virtually all Americans.” As reported by Starr and Yan, Snowden “wanted the public to know what the government was doing. ‘Even if you’re not doing anything wrong you’re being watched and recorded,’ he said.”

Starr and Yan reports that Snowden told The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom that he had access to the “full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community and undercover assets around the world.” They report he said, “I’m just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watching what’s happening, and goes, ‘This is something that’s not our place to decide.’ The public needs to decide whether these programs or policies are right or wrong,” he said.  of NSA controversy

I voted against the Patriot Act

“You’re living in Hawaii, in paradise and making a ton of money. What would it take to make you leave everything behind?” he said in the Guardian interview.

“I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

As reported by Starr and Yan, “Some residents on Oahu island are glad Snowden left.”

“From a Hawaii standpoint, good riddance, thanks for leaving,” Ralph Cossa told CNN affiliate KHON. “I’m sure the guy had an overactive Mother Teresa gene and thought he was going to go out and save America from Americans, but in reality he was very foolish,” Cossa said. “We expect the government to honor our privacy, (secrecy) but we also expect our government to protect us from terrorist attacks.”

Based on what Snowden reports the NSA of doing, it’s conceivable that the government was not entirely honoring our privacy (secrecy) in their efforts to protect us from terrorist attacks. To the extent that our government had ready reference to all our past telephone conversations with whomever we talk to is an invasion of our privacy, or secrecy, is not in itself troublesome to me. It’s how they use the information in the future that’s of concern to me. I say that because contrary to what Cossa told CNN affiliate KHON, “We expect the government to honor our privacy(secrecy), but we also expect our government to protect us from terrorist attacks.”

That statement contains mutually exclusive concerns, that being, he can’t both “expect our government to honor our privacy” AND “to protect us from terrorist attacks,” because as I’ve said in prior blogs, they are both mutually exclusive events. Everything else being equal, we have to sacrifice our secrecy to maintain our freedom. And conversely, we have to sacrifice our freedom to maintain our privacy.

That same thinking applies to Snowden’s activities as well. He’s wrong to be described as a “whistle blower, “ or a “hero” for what he did because before that decision can be made, it would have had to be specifically demonstrated how what was done to an individual or group of American’s was an invasion of their rights and why such action was so grievous. That information would then not only need to be contrasted to how what was done protected them and all of us from a terrorist attack, but also show how in all probability the terrorist attack would have occurred if such measures hadn’t been taken . If that can’t be definitively done, and the United States Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff and against the government that individual’s rights have indeed been violated, the status quo in preventing terrorism from occurring in this country should continue.