Whistleblowing Is Not Just Leaking - It's an Act of Political Resistance
Although the length of this manifesto is much longer than the first one written in 2013, it is absolutely flooded with information.
"One of the challenged of being a whistleblower is living with the knowledge that people continue to sit, just as you did, at those desks, in that unit, throughout the agency, who see what you saw and comply in silence, without resistance or complaint. They learn to live not just with untruths but with unnecessary untruths, dangerous untruths, corrosive untruths. It is a double tragedy: What begins as a survival strategy ends with the compromise of the human being it sough to preserve and the diminishing of the democracy meant to justify the sacrifice." (Snowden, 2016)
In this section of the manifesto, Snowden touches on the fact that there are people currently working in the CIA that are just sitting there and not doing anything about it. It demonstrates the humanity in Snowden as even the thought of others sitting around doing nothing irritates him and hurts him as a citizen of the earth. As well, Snowden recognizes that the CIA and NSA being able to tap into everyone's phones etc, is something that has been going on as soon as 'government' exists and how it truly is shocking that it took so long for someone to expose such breaches of privacy.
"I've agreed that whistleblowers are elected by circumstance. It's not a virtue of who you are or your background. It's a question of what are you exposed to, what you witness. At that point the question becomes Do you honestly believe that you have the capability to remediate the problem, to influence policy?" (Snowden, 2016)
Snowden makes a really good point in this quote by saying that if you do not think that you reveal will change anything, then why do it? The purpose of exposing something such as the NSA documents is to let people know in hopes of them being aware and potentially doing something about it. Snowden had access to a large amount of documents (all which have been handed off to journalists trusted by Snowden) and although his current life situation isn't ideal, what he did made people all around the world aware of the unnecessary power given to governments.
