ENEMY OF THE STATE PART ONE: THE HACKER

Edward Snowden, as a person, can be hard to define, mostly due to his questionable motives. For example, can Snowden be considered a hacker? Yes and no, for a variety of reasons. One reason why Snowden could very well be considered a hacker is due to the details of his young career. In The New York Time’s article entitled “Résumé Shows Snowden Honed Hacking Skills”, an account of Snowden’s career as a hacker is detailed – from his taking “a course that trains security professionals to think like hackers and understand their techniques” to choosing to work with and be a contractor for the NSA, an organization that is all about hacking into other peoples’ information. Many people also can attest to his classification as a hacker, for without being a hacker, he would have never been able to gain access to the classified NSA documents that he proceeded to steal and leak. They also define his job in relation with the government as being a hacker. For example, former NSA official John R. Schindler blatantly referred to Snowden as a hacker when he questioned the legitimacy of Snowden’s background check and allowance for top security clearance. He said, “For years, N.S.A. and now the Cyber Command have struggled with how to relate to the hacker community. It’s obvious that some sort of arrangement to allow hackers to work for N.S.A. and the intelligence community in a systematic way is needed.” Contrarily, when defining a hacker, one must look past the mere facts of a person’s life, and consider the stereotypical definition of a hacker as well. This definition seems only to provide for the kind of tech wizards that live by a different set of rules – hackers who live on the dark side of the Internet whose moral compass seems to be malfunctioning. Does Edward Snowden fit this definition of a hacker? Certainly not. No matter how large the secrets were that he leaked, he does not live the life that most hackers tend to live. Snowden, once again, is ever difficult to define, and hacker is a title that suits him in some ways, and in others, does not.