NSA hackers hold the keys to cyberspace

Knowledge is power.  Businesses, researchers, and government officials rely on encrypted data to secure sensitive material, which is pivotal to their daily operations, while all individuals have a need for secure internet access to protect their identities and their personal affairs.  From free speech to economic stability, our society must be able to trust in our information technology firms in order to function in the modern world.  Thanks to Edward Snowden, solely thanks to Edward Snowden, the American and the other Peoples of the world have learned the NSA has the ability to break and bypass encryption protections.  Quite frankly, this is exactly what the NSA should not be doing, if it respected the need for balancing national security and civil liberties interests.  In fact, reporting on this revelation is exactly why we need whistle blowers and a free press, which this type of overreach undermines. 

Given the world’s dependency on information technology, the Nation Security Agency should be helping to secure the data behind legitimate activities instead of breaking the encryption that protects the sensitivity, private information of all people, especially from abusive corporations and oppressive governments.  Not only is this terribly hypocritical of the United States, it gives the NSA too much power over the international community, the American People, the Peoples of the world, and political leaders of every government.  Bluntly, the NSA having such a broad ability to easily crack the encryption of so much data of so many people is unacceptable.  America’s national security apparatus needs to help information technology firms secure data and afford them the tools they can use to help identify possible wrong doings; they should not have direct access to the data of so many people.

(Feel free to check out this blog post on the subject for further information; http://washingtonoutsider.weebly.com/1/post/2013/08/much-to-do-about-whistle-blowers-but-what-about-official-channels-for-whistle-blowing.html)