This Edward Snowden interview puts the spaying carried on not only by the US, but other governments it quite new perspective. It comes to show how no government has clean hands on this matter, and the importance of securing data has to give people at least a minimal amount of privacy.
It's not that surprising to me, that the laws on the books at the moment aren't follow in spirit. There are many loopholes that allow governments to virtually spy on their own citizens while technically braking the law. The worse part is, that such spying doesn't have to be justified to the courts of law that are supposed to see that our rights aren't wrongfully violated by the government that has the obligation to protect them.
Edward Snowden is right to point out that moving our data behind closed gardens isn't the best solution. Even if our data is protected that way, without it being properly secured it doesn't matter where we put out data in. The key is to secure our data in way that it can't be retrieved without the government going to the proper channels to justify the need to get the data of any individual.
In more than one way, we shouldn't be questioning the actions of Edward Snowden, but the actions of the governments that have the mandate to protect our rights even against the government's own actions. All government surveillance shouldn't be massive, but targeted to the individuals the government has reasonable suspicions of engagement in unlawful activity and can give sufficient evidence to support such claims.
The actions of Edward Snowden are not those of a traitor, but of someone that brought our attention to the wrongdoings of the US governments. It's the US government that it's at fault, and has to do all to restore the confidence not only of it's citizens, but the trust of the rest of the word.
Even if you don't agree with what he did, the important thing is why he did it.
